I’m a really big arse.
That’s cool – thanks! This is a subject I only have a little exposure to (but want to learn more about), other than alot of music makes my ears hurt and/or eventually gives me a headache, especially if I listen for too long (at any level), and the few occasions when it hasn’t it’s been a particularly nice setup.
I recently was doing research on different formats, and came across some old but very interesting articles (rants, really) by an audio engineer about the move to digital (it was pretty damning of the studios, of course), which then led me to a bunch of articles getting into dynamic range and resolution, comparing scope output from various media, etc.
Basically that’s what led me to start trying some of the new, remastered albums in the new formats, and DualDisc is widely available now so this first purchase was an experiment with a nice result.
Switching gears entirely, you know those people who “see” color when they hear live music? One of the more interesting comments I’ve heard from one of those people was that they experience some color when listening to recordings, but that older analog recordings usually produced much more than digital ones (the comparison CDs would have been pretty early, given the year of the interview). Odd but intriguing stuff.
Just checked, it’s 24/96 5.1. I really dig that site, btw. Alot of the albums on various formats have reviews specific to that format, although the quality of the reviews (as always) can be a bit hit or miss.
Case in point, from that Dark Side of the Moon SACD:
Awesome!
5 Stars
Reviewer: Andre Porter
Had the technology been available then, I believe this is how the artists would have wanted the album to sound.
and then:
were only in it for the money
1 Stars
To truly listen to and enjoy this album, and I do mean ALBUM, and not SACD, you need to get the QUAD Vinyl or the 8-track version. AS that is how the BAND really mixed it with Alan Parsons. Now dont get me wrong, James Guthries is great, but the SACD just to me is VERY LACKING. Not to mention te fact that Sony paid for the making of this, to help promote their own format of SACD, while DVD-Audio has existed for years, making us buy all new decks to listen. I say skip it and wait for the REAL version!
I’m an arse.
My methodology is pretty half-baked, and subject to change :)
I mostly just pay attention to dissenting opinions. I usually do this without formulating an opinion of my own if it’s a topic I don’t know a lot about; I just file it away.
And so it was way back in the beginning of CDs, when I read an interview of a respected engineer who called CDs “the greatest step backwards in the history of recording” – this was back when CDs were all the rage and brand new, and this fellow was pointing to a particular reel to reel recording I think of a piano and saying that it was the best we’d collectively managed to date, so it was quite a thing to hear. So I filed it away in the back of my mind.
Over the years, vacuum tubes regained popularity – again an apparent analog counter-revolution.
Then the vinyl resurgence.
The color vision phenomenon (possibly irrelevant, but interesting anyway, especially when the fellow says offhandedly “yeah, I get the same thing from records, too, although much less strong, but not from CDs… /shrug” ).
I wish I could find the anti-CD article that really set me off looking hard at formats, though. It did seem to focus on what they did and the equipment / process they used more than anything inherent in the format, with an interestingly illustrative point that some of the very worst production of the time was DDD. Just a really cavalier attitude from the publishers tearing through back catalogs chasing dollars and trodding over what was historically a highly skilled, methodical process, and then having that same hurried and sloppy methodology become the standard for new music.
Bob Dylan’s recent comments are another addition to the pile.
I knew that there had been work over the years (SACD, DVD Audio) but that they hadn’t really taken off, but as I was looking for some good examples to try out I came across references to DualDisc – and it looks like this going to become a widely-used format. And it probably has to – the studios need to add value for the physical media, and this is a good way to do it. In Bjork’s case, she’s taken the opportunity to go back and re-master everything artistically, calling them “Surrounded” mixes. The results are really nice, and they throw in the videos from the album to boot – all for the same price as the CDs (or within a couple dollars). The pain is in the playback or ripping of the content, since it basically just plays back like a DVD.
Acoustic Sounds stocks all of the interesting formats, digital and analog, including high-grain vinyl (various grains actually, all listed separately if you want). Fun stuff… it’s alot to explore. I still do everything on my Mac (currently just a Mac Pro with some old Cambridge Soundworks 2.1 speakers hooked up), so I doubt I can explore the heights of audio quality to any great extent… but these new albums sound very good.
Tips for ripping:
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It’s not the volume level of a recording that will make your rip sound bad (or the CD itself), it’s the signal to noise ratio and the amount of signal contained at higher frequencies (see #2). Lots of steps in going from the musicians playing to the CD in your hands can be the cause of a bad disc - recording, engineering, mastering, etc. Sometimes they did a bad job recording the analog master tapes to digital. Sometimes they take digital signals and record it “hot” so that the peaks actually cut off beyond the CD’s dynamic range. Record companies thought that people think louder stuff sounds better to customers, so they kicked up the amplitude on a lot of CDs in the 90s (and even today) beyond what a 16-bit dynamic range can handle. Result: the orginal recording sounds compressed. Loud, but compressed. STUPID. There’s a good wikipedia entry on the “loudness wars” here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
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MP3 uses a low-pass filter at 16KHz. For the layman - it chops off all frequencies above 16KHz, so there’s less to compress. Some encoders give some wiggle room with setting this, but that only goes so far because the MP3 technology is old and just doesn’t compress wider frequency bands well. There’s a lot of “color” in those high frequencies, even for lower-frequency instruments and voices.
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The quality of an MP3 depends a lot, and I mean a LOT, on the quality of the encoder. LAME probably produces the best quality at high quality settings, but dear lord, it can take forever. So no matter what you’re ripping, use a really good MP3 encoder if you’re dead set on using the MP3 codec.
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At comparable bitrates, even high bitrates, AAC and WMA9 sound better. They just don’t take as many liberties with the original sound before compression, so you get more precision and “color” all around. If your player will handle those formats, you’ll probably be happier with the results.
I also am an arse.
What a know-it-all, dismissive thing to say about an admittedly anecdotal observation that you simple have no experience with yourself.
For artist Carol Steen, who paints the music she sees, it’s also answered more prosaic questions, like: which type of recording produces richer sound - CD or vinyl?
“Vinyl,” she says. “The colors are more beautiful, as if someone gave them an extra shine.”
I also am an arse.
I’m pretty sure it was just speculation… it’s one of those odd little things that just makes you wonder “why”.
We should totally be listening to everything on vaccuum tube amps.
Teehee, this is awesome.
I also am an arse.
I’m an arse.
I’m an arse.
I also am an arse.
I’m an arse.
I also am an arse.
You have my sincerest apologies. Give me a moment to take care of something and I’ll PM you.
Could it be that maybe to some extent…we agree?
The more I go back and read your posts, the more I think that might actually be the case. Oh fuck me, this is so embarassing.