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CDs are making a comeback.

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auntblabby
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23 Dec 2022, 12:53 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
I've not heard of any studio bothering to put a digital recording through a vinyl step.

i don't remember the outfit but there was a 78 rpm music project where they duplicated 1930-circa analog recording setup consisting of a 110# weight-powered cutting lathe and tube cutting amplifier and tube microphone [singular] that all the artists gathered 'round just like in the old days, and played their acoustic instruments/voices for the microphone while the cutting lathe squiggled their sounds into the groove. there is a youtube of them in action but i can't for the life of me find it. but the sound quality [they used virgin vinyl and not shellac for the 78 recording disc] was several degrees better than back in the day, and these recordings were transferred to digital media if not CD and were available on amazon.com.



blitzkrieg
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23 Dec 2022, 1:13 am

auntblabby wrote:
blitzkrieg wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
blitzkrieg wrote:
Which is better for sound quality - vinyl or CD?

vinyl has surface noise and tracing distortion of various kinds, those are totally absent on tape/digital-sourced CDs. now of course there are CDs out there mastered from vinyl or even shellac that faithfully reproduce the distortions embedded in those sound mediums. but overall CD has the capability of pure music playback without surface noise and tracing distortion, just pure uncompressed digital sound, so of course CDs will objectively and subjectively sound better.


It makes sense considering CD is a technological successor to vinyl on a chronological timeline.

in the final baroque period of the LP, various technological developments came along to make ordinary [not half-speed mastered boutique LPs such as Mobile Fidelity et al] sound very much improved on all fronts, a worthy competitor to CD based on sound quality at least. CX noise reduction, direct metal mastering, new generation CBS discomputer et al combined to make these vast improvements in the last decade of LPs broad-market existence before CDs took over. the same kinda thing happened to compact [phillips] cassettes, what with vastly improved real-time duplicators, dolby hx-pro, improved CrO2 formulations et al, on good cassette decks most folks couldn't hear any daylight between those new cassettes and CDs based on audio quality. even 8-track tapes registered similar tech and sound improvements [dolby NR, redesigned cartridge designed to eliminate overheating/spills/tape stability/wow and flutter, improved tape formulations and duplication equipment] shortly before they became obsolete. a pity these things weren't enough to forestall the march of technological progress in terms of the CD. the last gasp of the analog was the phillips digital compact cassette whose players were backwards compatible with analog cassettes, but the new digital compact cassettes were a digital format on tape, with the concomitant improvements in sound quality over the analog cassette [no noise, no wow and flutter, no drop-outs over time] but it failed in the marketplace.


I'm too young to remember the analog era. :D

I'll take your advice on this matter. 8)



auntblabby
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23 Dec 2022, 1:20 am

blitzkrieg wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
blitzkrieg wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
blitzkrieg wrote:
Which is better for sound quality - vinyl or CD?

vinyl has surface noise and tracing distortion of various kinds, those are totally absent on tape/digital-sourced CDs. now of course there are CDs out there mastered from vinyl or even shellac that faithfully reproduce the distortions embedded in those sound mediums. but overall CD has the capability of pure music playback without surface noise and tracing distortion, just pure uncompressed digital sound, so of course CDs will objectively and subjectively sound better.


It makes sense considering CD is a technological successor to vinyl on a chronological timeline.

in the final baroque period of the LP, various technological developments came along to make ordinary [not half-speed mastered boutique LPs such as Mobile Fidelity et al] sound very much improved on all fronts, a worthy competitor to CD based on sound quality at least. CX noise reduction, direct metal mastering, new generation CBS discomputer et al combined to make these vast improvements in the last decade of LPs broad-market existence before CDs took over. the same kinda thing happened to compact [phillips] cassettes, what with vastly improved real-time duplicators, dolby hx-pro, improved CrO2 formulations et al, on good cassette decks most folks couldn't hear any daylight between those new cassettes and CDs based on audio quality. even 8-track tapes registered similar tech and sound improvements [dolby NR, redesigned cartridge designed to eliminate overheating/spills/tape stability/wow and flutter, improved tape formulations and duplication equipment] shortly before they became obsolete. a pity these things weren't enough to forestall the march of technological progress in terms of the CD. the last gasp of the analog was the phillips digital compact cassette whose players were backwards compatible with analog cassettes, but the new digital compact cassettes were a digital format on tape, with the concomitant improvements in sound quality over the analog cassette [no noise, no wow and flutter, no drop-outs over time] but it failed in the marketplace.


I'm too young to remember the analog era. :D I'll take your advice on this matter. 8)

will you trade with me, i'll give you my age and experience and i can have your youth? ;)



blitzkrieg
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23 Dec 2022, 1:24 am

Quote:
will you trade with me, i'll give you my age and experience and i can have your youth? ;)


Sure, let's do it!

*swaps*



auntblabby
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23 Dec 2022, 1:25 am

blitzkrieg wrote:
Quote:
will you trade with me, i'll give you my age and experience and i can have your youth? ;)


Sure, let's do it!

*swaps*

ah, would that i could do away with the handful of pills morning and night, pain and stiffness et al, but i'd not wish them upon you ever no matter how much of a youthful superman you are :star:



blitzkrieg
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23 Dec 2022, 9:02 pm

auntblabby wrote:
blitzkrieg wrote:
Quote:
will you trade with me, i'll give you my age and experience and i can have your youth? ;)


Sure, let's do it!

*swaps*

ah, would that i could do away with the handful of pills morning and night, pain and stiffness et al, but i'd not wish them upon you ever no matter how much of a youthful superman you are :star:


Haha, I wish I was a youthful superman! But thanks anyway. :)



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31 Mar 2023, 12:53 pm

I'm glad I kept most of my childhood DVD collection and I've recently started to burn my own blank CDs and DVDs. Sadly, the DVD player on my TV doesn't work, but I do have a portable DVD player (I believe the one I own was released around 2002/03 and I got it from eBay last year). I also have an MP3 player and I usually take that with me whenever I go somewhere. I highly value physical media, especially in this day in age where streaming services can literally remove or censor content at any moment without warning.

As I often say, born in the 2000s and living like it's the 2000s.


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PhosphorusDecree
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31 Mar 2023, 1:01 pm

I've never stopped collecting CDs. Partly because I'm into classical music. CD is still thriving in that genre, and it really works as a way to package long, multi-section works like your average symphony. I also lose mp3 files more easily than I lose CDs.


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auntblabby
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31 Mar 2023, 10:54 pm

i use both CDs and custom CDRs for home stereo and MP3 for stereo on the go.



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01 Apr 2023, 2:37 am

auntblabby wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
I've not heard of any studio bothering to put a digital recording through a vinyl step.

i don't remember the outfit but there was a 78 rpm music project where they duplicated 1930-circa analog recording setup consisting of a 110# weight-powered cutting lathe and tube cutting amplifier and tube microphone [singular] that all the artists gathered 'round just like in the old days, and played their acoustic instruments/voices for the microphone while the cutting lathe squiggled their sounds into the groove. there is a youtube of them in action but i can't for the life of me find it. but the sound quality [they used virgin vinyl and not shellac for the 78 recording disc] was several degrees better than back in the day, and these recordings were transferred to digital media if not CD and were available on amazon.com.

Ah, that's a bit different - not just a vinyl step to get the supposed "vinyl warmth," but also the whole recording chain going retro, right down to the single old-school mic. I remember the video and thinking they were doing very well indeed with such primitive gear.

But what I was referring to was that the studios don't seem to bother putting an already-done, modern digital recording through a vinyl stage before burning the CD, and I'd have thought that if it really made music sound significantly better, they'd be doing that. Trouble is, I guess there's more jobs-for-the-boys and money to be had by selling vinyls as an alternative to the purely digital format. Just that from the buyer's point of view, digital media that had already been put through a high-quality vinyl stage by the studio would be a lot more cost-effective than buying vinyl records, decks, cleaning equipment, etc., and a lot more convenient. So much for the free market driving up efficiency.



funeralxempire
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01 Apr 2023, 3:13 am

The thing about old gear is that you can just capture an impulse response from it and impose that over any recording and get the same outcome.

Similarly, you can create impulse responses based on entire signal chain and room combinations to almost exactly imitate how some other existing recording sounds.

Like (as an example), if your goal is to imitate the sound of all the gear used on Master of Puppets, you can do it with IRs.


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ToughDiamond
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01 Apr 2023, 9:41 am

funeralxempire wrote:
The thing about old gear is that you can just capture an impulse response from it and impose that over any recording and get the same outcome.

Similarly, you can create impulse responses based on entire signal chain and room combinations to almost exactly imitate how some other existing recording sounds.

Like (as an example), if your goal is to imitate the sound of all the gear used on Master of Puppets, you can do it with IRs.

That's a good idea, and theoretically makes it possible for anybody to add the "vinyl sound" to their digital music, pretty much free of charge if they can just get hold of a good IR file. Wouldn't be much of a problem finding a free DAW and a plugin to run the thing, unless things have changed a lot in the last few years.

It would also make it rather easier to get the "tape effect" onto original home recordings, again if an IR file exists. I'm rather less of an atheist about the idea that putting a digital recording through a tape stage could make it sound better. Tape is known to subtly compress the HF content, and if your ears are good enough, you'd probably be able to hear the difference.

Ironically, during the years when tape was all they had, they put a lot of work into reducing that difference, and then after things went digital it was realised that some of the "distortions" of tape had actually sounded quite good, and that a perfectly faithful record-playback chain as such wasn't the best way of hearing music, though obviously it can't possibly be worse than the original sound. Also ironically, AFAIK expensive hi-fi stores don't offer open-reel tape players and pre-recorded tapes to music fans like they offer then vinyl gear. Maybe that's because a lot of recording studios put their work through tape at the mastering stage anyway, or maybe it's just that the marketing people haven't thought of re-hashing tape players yet.



auntblabby
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01 Apr 2023, 11:00 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
Ah, that's a bit different - not just a vinyl step to get the supposed "vinyl warmth," but also the whole recording chain going retro, right down to the single old-school mic. I remember the video and thinking they were doing very well indeed with such primitive gear. But what I was referring to was that the studios don't seem to bother putting an already-done, modern digital recording through a vinyl stage before burning the CD, and I'd have thought that if it really made music sound significantly better, they'd be doing that. Trouble is, I guess there's more jobs-for-the-boys and money to be had by selling vinyls as an alternative to the purely digital format. Just that from the buyer's point of view, digital media that had already been put through a high-quality vinyl stage by the studio would be a lot more cost-effective than buying vinyl records, decks, cleaning equipment, etc., and a lot more convenient. So much for the free market driving up efficiency.

there is the vinylizer, a VST plug-in which tries to duplicate vinyl sound. another related program was the "grungelizer" that came out a few decades earlier. you've doubtless heard examples of both in pop recordings over the decades, such as in weird al yankovic's "amish paradise."



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01 Apr 2023, 1:27 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
The thing about old gear is that you can just capture an impulse response from it and impose that over any recording and get the same outcome.

Similarly, you can create impulse responses based on entire signal chain and room combinations to almost exactly imitate how some other existing recording sounds.

Like (as an example), if your goal is to imitate the sound of all the gear used on Master of Puppets, you can do it with IRs.

That's a good idea, and theoretically makes it possible for anybody to add the "vinyl sound" to their digital music, pretty much free of charge if they can just get hold of a good IR file. Wouldn't be much of a problem finding a free DAW and a plugin to run the thing, unless things have changed a lot in the last few years.

It would also make it rather easier to get the "tape effect" onto original home recordings, again if an IR file exists. I'm rather less of an atheist about the idea that putting a digital recording through a tape stage could make it sound better. Tape is known to subtly compress the HF content, and if your ears are good enough, you'd probably be able to hear the difference.

Ironically, during the years when tape was all they had, they put a lot of work into reducing that difference, and then after things went digital it was realised that some of the "distortions" of tape had actually sounded quite good, and that a perfectly faithful record-playback chain as such wasn't the best way of hearing music, though obviously it can't possibly be worse than the original sound. Also ironically, AFAIK expensive hi-fi stores don't offer open-reel tape players and pre-recorded tapes to music fans like they offer then vinyl gear. Maybe that's because a lot of recording studios put their work through tape at the mastering stage anyway, or maybe it's just that the marketing people haven't thought of re-hashing tape players yet.


Like auntblabby said, there's also VST programs that can give a lot more control when imitating something like vinyl or tape.

If you're mostly looking to imitate an era rather that a specific recording VSTs can give a lot more flexibility, but either way it's pretty easy to emulate earlier eras recording sounds, or even mix elements of them.


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01 Apr 2023, 9:37 pm

I just recently changed my primary care physician. I caught all sorts of hell from her for having almost 3000 CD’s. I can’t sell them, since most of them were backups of cd albums I bought when the CD format came on the scene almost 45 years ago, and quite a few were from vinyl albums I converted to digital once I could afford a computer with a cd burner. I keep these disks only because Apple Music under Mac OS (and iTunes under Windows) has the nasty habit of losing and deleting songs from the respective databases. I’m beginning to wish that should have asked my former pastor to write a new backend in IBM DB II to replace the sorry excuse of a database these 2 applications sport. (Pastor, his wife and I graduated from the same university. He and his wife were employed by IBM for almost 20 years (he as a developer, she as a business specialist) before he decided to attend Seminary.)



ToughDiamond
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02 Apr 2023, 1:45 am

auntblabby wrote:
there is the vinylizer, a VST plug-in which tries to duplicate vinyl sound. another related program was the "grungelizer" that came out a few decades earlier. you've doubtless heard examples of both in pop recordings over the decades, such as in weird al yankovic's "amish paradise."

That's interesting, but not the kind of effect I thought the vinyl purists were aiming at. There seem to be 2 different goals - one is to conspicuously damage the sound with crackle, distortion and poor frequency response for an obviously "retro" sound (which seems to be what Vinylizer is about), the other is to emulate the effect of a clean, high-quality vinyl record played on excellent gear, to give this supposed "subtle warmth." The latter is usually the approach that studios take when they put their music through a tape stage (only the effect is tape, not vinyl of course). I see there are plugins that claim to get the effect of hi-fi tape and the effect of crappy old cassette recorders. Hopefully there's a similar range of choice for vinyl emulators as well, perhaps even with one of the free ones. It might even be that Vinylizer has a hi-fi setting, but if so I've not seen it talked about. But essentially all you'd need would be for somebody with access to quality studio equipment of the right kind to create an IR file, one for vinyl and one for tape, and put them into the public domain. The advantage would be the simplicity of fewer unnecessary controls.