Perfecting Sound Forever

[Ducatista47]

I thought I would mention that Kim Ryrie, who posted on the board on the DEQX thread, gets some space in and was probably interviewed for Perfecting Sound Forever. His role in inventing the Fairlight CMI easily qualifies him as an audio pioneer. The tale told of the road to Pro Tools reveals how there were at least two near misses. It could have been Fairlight Tools or Synclavier Tools (New England Digital), or even Linn Tools, if the direction had been pursued. As it happened, the pair in the bay area that started E-MU, Dave Rossum and Scott Wedge, ended up connecting the dots. Almost. They were partnered with Digidesign, two guys named Brooks and Gotcher. E-MU decided to concentrate on something else and Digidesign doggedly pursued the idea and ended up with the brass ring. All of them spent time waiting for the price of digital memory to catch up with their advanced ideas.

I have not spent much time the last few years on the hardware sections of the forum and I am belatedly devastated by the news of Ken's and his dear companion's deaths. My heart goes out to the families and friends. Es tut mir leid, if World traveler Ken happened to know what the literal translation of that is. It is much more profound and deeply felt than I'm sorry.

Heather, I figured out another way to avoid Glee. A couple of years ago I quit watching TV. My daughter and my late wife used to be fans, but I never hung around when they were partaking.

[hjames]

Heather, I figured out another way to avoid Glee. A couple of years ago I quit watching TV.
My daughter and my late wife used to be fans, but I never hung around when they were partaking.

I have a TIVO tied to FIOS - we can program it to grab stuff for us and FFwd through the chaff.
I do enjoy some things on PBS and a few on the cable channels ( I don't do pays like HBO/Showtime etc) ...
But mostly our use of the TV is for movies and video storytelling ... and some concert videos

BTW - ordered a copy of the book from Amazon & eagerly awaiting its arrival.

[Ducatista47]

Far be it from me to call entertainment TV a brain sucking, mind tranquilizing destructive waste of time. I watched a ton of it and don't want to be hypocritical. It is a personal choice. I now watch one show on free Hulu. PBS offers a great deal of content online and Netflix does too. I won't get on a high horse about it but I highly encourage retirement age people to get rid of their cable, if not the TV set. The alternative is to die in front of it, prematurely.

I hope you like the book. Recording being the cornerstone of sound reproduction, I imagine almost everyone in this hobby (I prefer pursuit) will be interested in this.

[Wornears]

Fortunately, my evaluation of recorded and reproduced sound does not rotate on digital or analog sources. It's anchored in American Bandstand's exquisite Rate-A-Record theorem: "It's got a good beat and I can dance to it!" That seems to still hold up for me even as I just passed 60 years.

I do prefer vinyl records in some cases because the cover art of the jackets seduces me. I can say with assurance no CD case art has ever seduced me. Now, if someone could package a compact digital disc in a full-sized vinyl record jacket -- I'm there!

[hjames]

Far be it from me to call entertainment TV a brain sucking, mind tranquilizing destructive waste of time. I watched a ton of it and don't want to be hypocritical. It is a personal choice. I now watch one show on free Hulu. PBS offers a great deal of content online and Netflix does too. I won't get on a high horse about it but I highly encourage retirement age people to get rid of their cable, if not the TV set. The alternative is to die in front of it, prematurely.

I hope you like the book. Recording being the cornerstone of sound reproduction, I imagine almost everyone in this hobby (I prefer pursuit) will be interested in this.

That's fine - we each take different things from the tube ... its a personal choice.
I suspect I'll have a struggle getting the wife weaned off off cable ...
got other things to worry with in life!

[SEAWOLF97]

.

I do prefer vinyl records in some cases because the cover art of the jackets seduces me. I can say with assurance no CD case art has ever seduced me. Now, if someone could package a compact digital disc in a full-sized vinyl record jacket -- I'm there!

these sets get pretty close.

[Ducatista47]

Ditto. I recently purchased a Mescaleros CD with a 9.5 by 14 inch double sided glossy insert.

As I recall it went on American Bandstand : "It has a good beat, you can understand the lyrics and you can dance to it. I give it a Ninety-five." They said some version of that every time, I swear.

To further entice readers to this book, I will mention that it destroys the idea of the existence of Golden Ears in a manner having nothing to do with the usual measurements or speculation. In the exposition of this lesson a possible future is revealed. Yet, immediately after, it ends with its take on the development of recording being so close to where it started that it invites one to rethink - well, everything.

Add to that the book reading like a Simon Winchester title and it should be irresistible. Required reading has never been so much fun.

[Ducatista47]

With resolution and response like this and with no need for my equipment to generate spaces for me, why would I ever listen to speakers? For company, and that's about it.

Widget, let me give a little back to speakers. I have been evaluating a triode amplifier for a fellow member. Before and after extensive listening to the visiting amp, I listened to my own to establish a baseline and something well known known to me as a comparison.

The triode amp is excellent for its type and intentions, but my speaker/amplifier combo are specialists. Together they do things, the things I like, better than most rigs can do.

To cut to the chase, I had forgotten how kick ass this rig is and I will be sure to enjoy it from time to time. Yes, the imaging and soundstage are really, really good, but it is the sonics that thrill me the most. By comparing my stuff to a system that resembles what I used to consider ideal, I realize how close to my goal I am now. As far as I can tell, my equipment combination is unique; my intentions somewhat less so, supposedly popular or even dominant, but when the rubber meets the road most who claim realism as a goal really want their own version of euphonic bliss.

[hjames]

Just getting back to you about your Jan 2015 original post on this book. It sounded interesting, so when I found a copy on Amazon back when you first started talking about the book, I ordered it - and waited. Took forever - my copy was an ex-library book that came slow-mail from Glasgow - and I started reading about 3 weeks ago. Some of the early sections were interesting but the history of over-compression in Radio, then in CD releases has been fascinating (aka, the Loudness wars) Its a wealth of interesting information, and very well told.
... I'm not quite done yet, but its definitely an intriguing read - I just wanted to be sure I thanked you again for the book review.

That is the title of a book, published in 2009 or so, that I obtained recently on the used market. I heard about it from an old NPR interview with the author (Greg Milner) I uncovered online. I have posted this on a new thread as I believe this is not a technical reference per se. It is a fascinating history of music reproduction, emphasis on recording. It is exhaustively researched with a great deal of primary source work. It reinforces some episodes and corrects others. That and its thoroughness are why I find it so useful. Most importantly, it always gets the big picture. It is, IMO, a great read too.

One thing I heard in the radio program I wanted to share (with a quote from the book) is about the fidelity of vinyl disks. I have, to repeat myself from other posts, an audio rig of unusual accuracy and like it that way. When I have heard apples to apples comparisons of vinyl and digital sources (CDs, downloads and streaming in 16/44.1 or higher), I have consistently noticed that the vinyl is softer sounding. Less detailed. Rounded edges. Missing some information that has nothing to do with artifacts and all that. It is easily verifiable that engineering has shown vinyl to be 13 or 14 bit equivalent capable at the most, and having lower equivalent sampling rates than CDs, for instance.

I prefer the digital myself. Many prefer the vinyl source. All fine and nothing needs any defense or argument. What I am tired of is vinyl being touted as being more accurate. Pleasurable, sure. That's personal and unscientific. But more accurate? Here is the quote.

To give it a little context, Bob Woods and others at Telarc were about to become the first commercial Soundstream adopters. Woods researched vinyl extensively.

"We learned one very clear thing about LPs," Woods says. "All you gotta do is take the blank lacquer. have no signal coming down, cut a series of silent grooves, put it on to a turntable and what do you get? You get" - he makes a soft hissing sound - "a nice, soft, round pink noise. Everything you're listening to on an LP is being heard through that filter of pink noise. And so it has the tendency to feather the edges of things. It gives the record a sense of a little warmth. Violins sound like really special violins. But if you stand in front of a real violin, it's got some grit. It's got a little edge to it."

The author goes on to say that digital tends to sound like real life but record buyers like the sound of records. In the radio interview, the author revealed that he loves the sound of vinyl and usually prefers it, so this is all coming from a believer in vinyl, not a skeptic.

I am relieved to know that I am not imagining things when I notice how "soft" vinyl sounds. Anyway, good book, for history as well as facts.

[Radley]

I did sit in on a lot of vinyl mastering sessions. You loose a lot of little things going to vinyl. Reverb "tails" seem less pronounced. To get the right amount of reverb I wanted on the record I would put a little extra reverb on the mix to tape. It has something to do with phase. Vinyl mastering is very specific about phasing. Reverb by definition has both "in phase" and "out of phase" components. I am not a mastering engineer by any means. I worked some good ones and some mediocre ones.

Digital doesn't matter too much about phasing. You can put bass drum extreme left and bass guitar extreme right and the disc cutter doesn't freak out (there isn't one). I'm not smart enough to be able to explain about the complexities of mastering but I have two examples of things I learned. One was a live show with a live FM radio (mono) broadcast. The band had two electric guitars. First song the band is raging, the crowd going crazy so I pop on my headphones and listen to the radio. Big problem, there's only one guitar! I flip the "phase" switch on the second guitars' input channel and all is good, both guitars present.

The second was another live recording I did and the group asked if they could release it on a record? Of course, no problem. A couple of months later I listen to the record and there's no bass guitar. I ask the group what happened and they said they didn't like the live bass so they overdubbed a new bass in the studio. It was "out of phase" with the original thus canceling each other out.

The mastering engineers I thought were good did another thing. They would take the blank lacquer platter and inspect it very closely under a microscope (most of the vinyl lathes I've seen have an swivel arm with a microscope). They would check the raw lacquer for any imperfections. I have seen them throw away a finished master and do it again with a fresh lacquer because they didn't like how that particular blank sounded. This always got my attention because mastering was very expensive and blank lacquers were too (I think maybe $15 - $20 each) and I was far from wealthy. Also don't forget one needed to pay for two lacquers, side one and side two.

So with digital it is far more forgiving about the technical aspects of a recording. I think that the move to CD was driven by the classical music side of the business. You didn't have to turn the record over in the middle of a movement.

You know this is a good thread when someone mentions Skippy Spense. He was always hitting on my sister and she knew nothing good was going to come from it.

I think my wife would like to "auto-tune" me...

[Mr. Widget]

Very interesting.... I assume your comparisons above were all between analog tape and vinyl records. Have you made any similar comparisons between analog tape and 16 bit 44.1KHz digital audio?


Widget

[DavidF]

I did sit in on a lot of vinyl mastering sessions. You loose a lot of little things going to vinyl. Reverb "tails" seem less pronounced. To get the right amount of reverb I wanted on the record I would put a little extra reverb on the mix to tape. It has something to do with phase. Vinyl mastering is very specific about phasing. Reverb by definition has both "in phase" and "out of phase" components. I am not a mastering engineer by any means. I worked some good ones and some mediocre ones.

Digital doesn't matter too much about phasing. You can put bass drum extreme left and bass guitar extreme right and the disc cutter doesn't freak out (there isn't one). I'm not smart enough to be able to explain about the complexities of mastering but I have two examples of things I learned. One was a live show with a live FM radio (mono) broadcast. The band had two electric guitars. First song the band is raging, the crowd going crazy so I pop on my headphones and listen to the radio. Big problem, there's only one guitar! I flip the "phase" switch on the second guitars' input channel and all is good, both guitars present.

The second was another live recording I did and the group asked if they could release it on a record? Of course, no problem. A couple of months later I listen to the record and there's no bass guitar. I ask the group what happened and they said they didn't like the live bass so they overdubbed a new bass in the studio. It was "out of phase" with the original thus canceling each other out.

The mastering engineers I thought were good did another thing. They would take the blank lacquer platter and inspect it very closely under a microscope (most of the vinyl lathes I've seen have an swivel arm with a microscope). They would check the raw lacquer for any imperfections. I have seen them throw away a finished master and do it again with a fresh lacquer because they didn't like how that particular blank sounded. This always got my attention because mastering was very expensive and blank lacquers were too (I think maybe $15 - $20 each) and I was far from wealthy. Also don't forget one needed to pay for two lacquers, side one and side two.

So with digital it is far more forgiving about the technical aspects of a recording. I think that the move to CD was driven by the classical music side of the business. You didn't have to turn the record over in the middle of a movement.

You know this is a good thread when someone mentions Skippy Spense. He was always hitting on my sister and she knew nothing good was going to come from it.

I think my wife would like to "auto-tune" me...

There was always a lot of art and time consuming effort in the tangible process of vinyl record making that a lot in the industry wanted to get away from. I believe it was inevitable that the production companies said goodbye to analog and vainly ignored the deficiencies of early digital so to avoid this whole slice of production cost.

Skip Spence's name popped up on occasion around the San Jose and coast side areas. Never met him at all but it seems so easy to compare his life/career history with that of Syd Barrett.

[Ducatista47]

http://www.bitrebels.com/geek/making...ing-of-a-roar/

[BMWCCA]

I ordered my copy of the book off Amazon. It was a new hardback edition, came from England, took about two weeks, but even including shipping it was only about ten-bucks. I'm enjoying it. At first his admitted prejudice against digital had me expecting a biased presentation but, as Duc Man said, it wasn't the medium or the technology that caused issues with digital recording, it was the way the technology got mis-used and abused.

I'm a little over half-way through and I'm learning quite a bit about the history of recording, how digital works, and why some of my favorite recordings sound so good even on CD. I found the author's discussion of why vinyl sounds "warmer" interesting as he seems to imply that the base-level surface noise inherent in that medium "softens" the entire presentation somehow. It's not that vinyl is better, or more faithful to the original performance, but it does help to explain why some prefer it and why others think digital is more accurate and cleaner. Neither is "right" and none is "wrong". But I will agree that CDs are quite capable of capturing the performance with fidelity, and that they are improving as the technology matures and that the Redbook format is not the devil some have made it out to be.

Just my take!

Thanks for the recommendation!

[DavidF]

Far be it from me to call entertainment TV a brain sucking, mind tranquilizing destructive waste of time. I watched a ton of it and don't want to be hypocritical. It is a personal choice. I now watch one show on free Hulu. PBS offers a great deal of content online and Netflix does too. I won't get on a high horse about it but I highly encourage retirement age people to get rid of their cable, if not the TV set. The alternative is to die in front of it, prematurely.

I hope you like the book. Recording being the cornerstone of sound reproduction, I imagine almost everyone in this hobby (I prefer pursuit) will be interested in this.

Good video production is a lot like good audio production. Good material, good artists, and producers willing to spend a little more on the production process are in the minority. Hell, today's cable operators are like the record clubs of the olden days. You have buy a lot of oyster to get a little pearl.