Why does vinyl (analog) sound better?

Here's some interesting reading from a recording engineer:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue26/dsd.htm

 

Two relevant quotes from that interesting “Positive Feedback” article that LeeS just posted:

“I think SONY has trouble finding it’s a** with both hands on a good day, and their ineptness and arrogance concerning DSD/SACD is simply breathtaking. It is stupidity of such a virulent nature, it is probably catching and the Center for Disease Control should be alerted. Instead of learning from that whole BETA mess, it's as though they institutionalized that stupidity meme into functional company policy. Nefarious.”


“You want to listen to Red Book and convince yourself that 44.1 PCM is equivalent to DSD? Be my guest. Hell, I don't even care if you prefer to have your music sent to you on Edison cylinders or cassettes. To each his own.
The distribution medium is irrelevant. The RECORDING medium is the battle we should be fighting. And it is a much smaller and easier battle to fight, and one that just MIGHT be won.”

 

Then indeed we may have had a communication breakdown. I thought the issue was what do we use as a reference when we judge what we hear from our systems. Many including myself think live acoustic music is the best reference. So in that discussion a reference is an ideal, a goal. So when it was suggested that a master tape be used as a reference I suggested that it is useless as such because to use a recording as a reference you are ultimately using some sort of playback system as a reference. Once you do that you have a problem. You have just set the bar below that of live music (unless you have that magic system with those magic recordings that are in tandem indistinguishable from the real thing).OTOH you may be get to achieve your goal. Just buy the system used to playback the master tapes and you have your reference.

Accurate to what? What are you comparing to the master tape?

Over the monitors? Fine you are comparing one electrical signal to another. Certainly i can see the value of this to a recording engineer. not so much to an audiophile.

To the mic feed? Right?

Just what constitutes "accurate" playback? Seems fairly elusive.

 

100% of mine were. I guess we just realized one of the complexities of the mastering engineer's job, but it has not stopped you from producing a quality product.

I agree 100% but in the absence of the live event if you have recorded something previously and know the tape to be good then that works as well.

The live event.

You are making this too complicated Scott. You just rewind the tape and play it back and make a judgment if it captured the live event.

 

Probably around 80% of mine. I also did a bit of work on other people's recordings. And seriously, you walk into one room, and there's air and space and a sense of "Palpable Presence (tm.)", you know---the living breathing thing. And you go back to the monitors, and the air gets sucked out. Maybe not all of it, but always some of that air and space. And this is true, no matter how good the mike feed, no matter how good the recording chain, no matter how pure and accurate the monitor. Like I said elsewhere, entropy ain't planning on leaving us anytime soon. Live vs. "Memorex" is the ultimate test, and "Memorex" always loses, at least if you can still hear and you're being honest.

 

With pop music, a good 80%+ is a manufactured sound, so all bets are off. I guess the best you can do there is pick a reference and tweak to your liking.

 

What, no double-blind testing with the clock running and musicians on the payroll while you compare live vs. tape?

 

Seem's like we're talking about two different "Master Tapes". I could see being able to compare the rough, un-mixed recording that was just done; you'd have the band/singer
right there to do an A/B. After it was mixed though, unless it's done direct to disk,
you wouldn't really have an accurate representation of the actual event. Steve's Master's
seem to be a step away from that, unless he's able to get back to the individual finished track's for each song like the 24K Elvis . Even then, there's the final level matching/"Breath of Life" that happens. I guess you could pay the band to stick around till that was done to compare the two, but I don't think they'd sound the same. They'd probably be tired and drunk
I'll agree with Robin's post, too. I haven't heard a playback of anything I've ever done drum wise that has the same sense of space. They can be close, but.. I do recall seeing a picture of a nice Ludwig kit that Steve mentioned using as a reference on occasion.
Thanks to everyone for the great thread! I'm no expert and I'm in over my head but how
else do you learn to swim?!

 

I don't think I am making things complicated. I think they are complicated and I'm just pointing it out.




Again you cannot compare a master tape to a live event. You can compare a master tape and a playback system to a live event. But then you have two variables and a smoke and mirrors (stereo playback) experience. I think this issue is a major part of the objectivist/subjectivist debate and I think both sides are basing part of their position on the same huge huge false assumption. That assumption being that the end result is the original event minus the sum total of each component's deviation or distortion of the signal that went into it. From there the divide between the two camps goes as such. objectivists figure the distortion of each component can be measured and the less distortion the better. The subjectivist thinks the audible distortion of each component can be heard and judged, measurements be damned if it sounds more like the original. The components must have less meaningful distortion. Sooo when we get into a discussion like this one LP v. CD the objectivist says the CD measures better so it must sound better and if it doesn't then it's a problem with the recording that it is just being transfered accurately. Subjectivist simply says if it sounds better(more like live music) then it is better(less distortion that matters). But lets get back to the common false assumption that being the end result is the live event minus all the distortions imposed by each component. That_is_not_how_it_works. Now to explain it. That's the trick. It all boils down to how the microphones/speakers transfer the original acoustic event to the listening room. It is a system that is not designed to transfer the sound. It is a system that is designed to fool the listener from the listening position that he or she is hearing what they would have heard if they were at the original event. The system does not even try to actually transfer the original event! This is very important and totally unintuitive. The issue is the accuracy of the *illusion* not the true accuracy of all the components in sum. I think I am doing a very bad job of explaining this but given the fact that *fidelity* is such an issue in audio I think this common misconception is both real and significant.

 

You're right, Steve's right, everyone seems to be right. The recording does not usually make justice to the original. Yet, when all you have is the recording the original recording master tape is the nearest to the experience that anyone can hope to get. Any version that makes justice to that is the nearest we can get to the real thing, even if it is a way away from the original.

I think that practically any of us who have been in a recording studio either as engineers, musicians, producers or just listening in must have had that 'quite not exactly like the real thing' experience. But, truly, what is heard in the studio is the nearest anyone else not there will ever get to the original experience. And since there is no way to get closer to the original experience any other step that comes as close as posible to that is, usually, better than masters from copies of copies and the like.