Perfecting Sound Forever

[hsosdrum]

I totally understand the preference for tube instrument amplifiers among guitarists and bass players, but remember that those are sound creators, not sound reproducers, making them part of the musical instrument. As such they are not bound by the requirements for accuracy to which good hi-fi audio gear should adhere.

My experience with analog vs. digital reproduction is 180-degrees out-of-phase from LowPhreak's: I've spent more than 50 years on a drum stool, and I've never heard an analog system that didn't render cymbals with more "politeness" than they sound to me in real life. The same goes for violins, brass instruments or anything else that has grit and edge in its live sound. To my ears analog always softens and warms-up these components of these sounds, rendering them more pleasantly, but less realistically. And forget about trying to stuff a real drumset's 80dB+ dynamic range onto a vinyl disk without compression - ain't gonna happen. Of coure, YMMV.

P.S. I loved the book. Should be required reading for all participants in the analog vs.digital debate.

[LowPhreak]

Well, I was born out of phase.


Edit: I've had decent tube audio gear, and I'm well aware of its limitations and foibles. I finally switched to all SS after getting tired of the care & feeding, and somewhat rolled off top end.

As I said, I like analog but not always over digital, mainly because of the better spatial presentation of good analog along the gist of what Widget said. Also, I don't get the fatigue with analog as I have with many digital components and recordings, though that has gotten much better.

[Mr. Widget]

...system that didn't render cymbals with more "politeness" than they sound to me in real life. The same goes for violins, brass instruments or anything else that has grit and edge in its live sound.

I agree that most popular speakers and popular tube electronics are "too" polite to reveal the "edge" of live instruments. In my experience this isn't a digital vs. analog issue though. That said I do agree that to truly capture a rock drum kit getting a good workout is not something that I believe I've ever heard convincingly played back via a vinyl album. For that matter I've only heard four or five speaker systems capable of pulling it off... JBL 4350/55 and the Everests DD66000 are on that short list. Most speakers regardless of their many other wonderful traits just can't reproduce the explosive dynamics, scale, and SPLs of a real kit.

Luckily for most of us this isn't a chief determining factor is loudspeaker selection.


FWIW: I guess I'll have to pick up the book.


Widget

[Mr. Widget]

...system that didn't render cymbals with more "politeness" than they sound to me in real life. The same goes for violins, brass instruments or anything else that has grit and edge in its live sound.

I agree that most popular speakers and popular tube electronics are "too" polite to reveal the "edge" of live instruments. In my experience this isn't a digital vs. analog issue though. That said I do agree that capturing a rock drum kit getting a good workout is not something that I believe I've ever heard convincingly played back via a vinyl album. For that matter I've only heard four or five speaker systems capable of pulling it off... JBL 4350/55 and the Everest DD66000s are on that short list. Most speakers regardless of their many other wonderful traits just can't reproduce the explosive dynamics, scale, and SPLs of a real kit.

Luckily for most of us this isn't a chief determining factor in loudspeaker selection... nor is it typically an important qualifier for source material.


FWIW: I guess I'll have to pick up the book.


Widget

[Ducatista47]

... That said I do agree that to truly capture a rock drum kit getting a good workout is not something that I believe I've ever heard convincingly played back via a vinyl album. For that matter I've only heard four or five speaker systems capable of pulling it off... JBL 4350/55 and the Everests DD66000 are on that short list. Most speakers regardless of their many other wonderful traits just can't reproduce the explosive dynamics, scale, and SPLs of a real kit.

FWIW: I guess I'll have to pick up the book.

Widget

Regarding vinyl, a big clue that there is limited capability there - in the 180 gram I am familiar with, the 45s do drums much better than the 33s. Cartridges versus laser/DACs, electro optical systems are a great deal less speed limited than electro mechanical systems. By several orders of magnitude. Round (pick a number) of chose your audio compromise. Microphones, thank goodness, are not nearly under the constraints that carts are. They are the Keck to cartridges' binoculars.

I have heard a speaker system that did this superbly. The Kingsound III system I heard at AXPONA last year was, in my and some higher profile observations, the best in show. Not surprisingly a large electrostatic panel. The breakthrough is great bass without a helper speaker. I don't know how they do it. Electrostatics remain the only non high efficiency transducer capable of top flight sound that I am aware of. The only reason these exist is because the company was put together with improving audio the main goal, not profit. The main owners already had enough money.

Widget, you will be way more knowledgeable than most about what is discussed in the book. I think it might still be a fun read, hope so.

[Radley]

I have to say it depends. The product put out for the public is a compromise. Is it the 1960's and Top 40 radio is king and you mix with the midrange and a lot of limiting? Is it from a multi-track tape that has been overdubbed and mixed to death so the low frequency is thin and the high frequency is just about all gone? Every time you play back that tape it is loosing fidelity. Is it a SACD that was mixed from a 96k recorder?

I think we all know that early CD's were direct transfers from tape masters that were mastered for vinyl. All of the mastering houses I worked with used to start rolling off the low end at 50Hz because LF was such a problem for turntables to playback. That's not say there wasn't anything below 50Hz, but there were compromises.

Vinyl mastering is all about compromises. The length of time per side, the volume level, the amount of bass, the stereo separation, dynamic range, the phase of the tracks to each other, ect...

I think maybe the music we really like were a result of a golden moment where the tape wasn't rewound over and over and the mastering engineer really knew what they were doing and magic happened.

[fpitas]

Something to keep in mind too, is that the typical album is mixed and mastered with listener acceptance and enjoyment in mind, not necessarily realism. Anyone who has heard an actual drum kit being played enthusiastically knows that it can be sonically fatiguing. Few recordings will even try to achieve that level of reality.

Francis

[LowPhreak]

Are you saying you don't want to hear my drum solos?

[fpitas]

Are you saying you don't want to hear my drum solos?

Not me...it's those darn mixing and mastering engineers

Francis

[LowPhreak]

I hear ya. I hate having my cymbals or snare gated and effed with too much on the EQ. I've been known to threaten going 'Keith Moon' on control rooms, sound boards, and engineers.





Sometimes violence is the ONLY answer!

[Ducatista47]

At this point my basic thought concerning recording is that maximum detail and minimum noise makes the most sense, and preserving that down through at least some of the process. I am finding the television camera analogy the most useful. After the initial image capture there is degradation almost every step of the way. It is better now than in the completely analogue era, but it is still so.

Asking the recording process to capture less detail or more than the minimum possible noise is like asking the manufacturers of lenses to soften them up a bit so the end result is easier for some viewers to take. Anywhere before the later stages of audio reproduction is too early to introduce deliberately euphonic results. Throw things out or add distortion later. Don't sully the initial capture with throwback analogue techniques like tape or with microphones and boards that have a sound of their own. If you want vinyl, speakers and playback electronics with euphonic characters, fine. If you want to master it to remind yourself of a particular recording from a studio in 1978 Jamaica, or lord forbid a disco hit or a Hannah Montana release, feel free. Write a new algorithm. But don't introduce distortion from the get go because you like the way things used to sound. You can't go back and recover lost information. Someday newer technology might allow for a new way to interpret reality, so don't ruin it for the future us.

Alexander Skip Spence recorded Oar on an old three track machine and it sounds spooky and totally awesome. We have means now to do such things without precluding future possibilities yet unknown.

Once a musician gets the sound they want from their instrument - and that includes a tube amp for electric instruments and a Green Bullet for harmonica, those are basic sonic choices like whether to play a bassoon or a piano, just get every possible nuance preserved. Then tailor it to your Worldview. If this all seems too abstract, listen to a CD from MA Records. Recorded directly, and as perfectly as currently possible, in magnificent acoustic spaces.

I feel a good sense of perspective about these conclusions since reading Perfecting Sound Forever. It imparts a great deal of knowledge about how recording's march to the present happened, not just what happened. It even shines a light on why it happened the way it did.

[Ian Mackenzie]

I think the other consideration here is that the digital process has moved closer to vinyl in terms of the warmth and tonal density of vinyl in recent years.

This is happening in production and with contemporay DAC design.

So the argument of the vinyl versus digital sound not such a big issue except for die hard vinyl addicts.

Some HiFi equipment manufacturers offer valve buffers that can be switched in or out to add warmth to the sound (Peachtree )

Does this suggest that listeners have a preference for a warmer and more romantic sound that is closer to vinyl back in the day?

I think mainstream digital recordings are more listenable than they were 5 or 10 years ago in that the hot sound of prior digital has been replaced with resolution and more warmth.

But I also think the production values and the types of technology utilised with vinyl in its hey day are a significant factor in characterising reproduction qualities of vinyl recording as it was versus digital sound of today.

[SEAWOLF97]

I think the other consideration here is that the digital process has moved closer to vinyl in terms of the warmth and tonal density of vinyl in recent years.

This is happening in production and with contemporay DAC design.

So the argument of the vinyl versus digital sound not such a big issue except for die hard vinyl addicts.

Some HiFi equipment manufacturers offer valve buffers that can be switched in or out to add warmth to the sound (Peachtree )

Does this suggest that listeners have a preference for a warmer and more romantic sound that is closer to vinyl back in the day?

I think mainstream digital recordings are more listenable than they were 5 or 10 years ago in that the hot sound of prior digital has been replaced with resolution and more warmth.

But I also think the production values and the types of technology utilised with vinyl in its hey day are a significant factor in characterising reproduction qualities of vinyl recording as it was versus digital sound of today.

interesting post ,Ian.

I replaced my CD players with 24/192 DAC'ed DVD players that sound very good and detailed. The sound is tempered out a bit using a tube buffer. (Van Alsteen) ..result is quite good.

[Ducatista47]

So the argument of the vinyl versus digital sound not such a big issue except for die hard vinyl addicts.

But I also think the production values and the types of technology utilised with vinyl in its hey day are a significant factor in characterising reproduction qualities of vinyl recording as it was versus digital sound of today.

I am in complete agreement with your entire post. This last bit is so obviously true. Care was lavished on recording, mixing and mastering in those days and there was a lot more money in the Record Label business back then. Vinyl's limitations required the attention in any case.

Reading this book showed me that what happened when digital came along was unexpected. It's flexibility enabled easy access to distorted sound. It wasn't anything about digital that made it sound that way, it was all choices made by musicians, producers and engineers. Digital also made formerly labor intensive tape tricks quick and easy. I can't recommend this book enough. It really sets the record straight, no pun intended.

Another sad revelation was recording engineers and radio engineers taking turns driving the loudness wars. As soon as one abandoned it or at least called a truce, the other would regain interest and drive it forward. It was the dynamic from hell.

One of the last things covered in the book is Auto-Tune. It is interesting to me that the engineers who use it, voluntarily or otherwise, all go on about how fake it sounds. Harmony singing done with it "sounds like a car horn." Cher's "Believe" was done by simply using Auto-Tune's most aggressive setting. The recording engineers tried to keep it a trade secret.

[hjames]

One of the last things covered in the book is Autotune. It is interesting to me that the engineers who use it, voluntarily or otherwise, all go on about how fake it sounds. Harmony singing done with it "sounds like a car horn."

All you have to do is air a copy of Glee -
I TIVOed an episode recently based on a suggestion from a friend (we usually avoid that show)
had to fast forward through it - the Autotune is so thick you can cut it with a knife on that show!

I firmly believe some people are more sensitive to it than others - but that kind of "Harmony"
sounds like a synthesizer to me ... beop beop beop!