Mastering engineer says the LP is the most accessible high-resolution music format

[Sonus]

Following this post
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-5...most-accessible-high-resolution-music-format/

I was wondering for a long time why a mastering engineer would say that LP is better than digital but then i saw this:
http://dr.loudness-war.info/index.php?search_artist&search_album=Hail+to+the+King

Of course after you see that the LP version is much better then the HDTracks one you start to wonder, maybe he has a point?
So I posted a question in a different more "mastering" related forum and I got this answer:

'You can't go by the DR database to compare vinyl vs any digital format. The vinyl has already gone through a digital to analog converter so the waveforms will look different and in turn give different (more dynamic) results. Most vinyl and digital use the same master now a days.
If you were to record that HDtracks file after going through a DAC and ADC you would get very close to the same DR rating. Try it yourself you will see what I mean. Those clipped/limited peaks get restored through a DAC.'

Is this true?
If not, why do we see new recordings which the LP version is better, what's going on?

I'm confused

 

[Bruce B]

You can not use a digital file that has been clipped and squashed to cut vinyl. When I do a master that is going to both download and LP, I have to do 2 separate files, or even go to tape.

The other thing I see incorrect is that "more people are buying LP's than hi-rez files"?

 

[puroagave]

Is this true?
If not, why do we see new recordings which the LP version is better, what's going on?

I'm confused

Prof KOJ will tell you vinyl has a DR potential of 130 db...at one of the shows, Jan Mancuso of Reference Recordings was pushing Doug MacLoed's 45 rpm LP over the digital file (native 176/24) as they all said the LP sounded significantly better, I have to agree.

 

[zztop7]

Observer.

zz.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Following this post
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-5...most-accessible-high-resolution-music-format/

I was wondering for a long time why a mastering engineer would say that LP is better than digital but then i saw this:
http://dr.loudness-war.info/index.php?search_artist&search_album=Hail+to+the+King

Of course after you see that the LP version is much better then the HDTracks one you start to wonder, maybe he has a point?
So I posted a question in a different more "mastering" related forum and I got this answer:

'You can't go by the DR database to compare vinyl vs any digital format. The vinyl has already gone through a digital to analog converter so the waveforms will look different and in turn give different (more dynamic) results. Most vinyl and digital use the same master now a days.
If you were to record that HDtracks file after going through a DAC and ADC you would get very close to the same DR rating. Try it yourself you will see what I mean. Those clipped/limited peaks get restored through a DAC.'

Is this true?
If not, why do we see new recordings which the LP version is better, what's going on?

I'm confused

What are you seeing that tells you the LP version is better?

Tim

 

[Sonus]

Better DR value.

 

[j_j]

Given the known SNR of a vinyl disc, this can't be unweighted Dynamic Range you're talking about.

I will note that you can not cut, usefully, a hypercompressed signal into vinyl. I have already observed recordings that were better because they weren't hypercompressed, and that's my suspicion here.

Certainly CD has a lower random noise floor, and absolutely zero granularity, despite the various lies bandied about.

 

[Alan Sircom]

also, the dr test is fooled by the huge spikes and added harmonics produced by folks cartridges on playback. Be certain of this, in no specification that is measurable, is a 33 cut vinyl disk for commercial playback more superior to redbook cd. Its the things done in mastering, as alluded by Bruce...to fit the "characteristics" of the vinyl medium, that are the difference in sound, and yes, these "reductions" are more pleasant to many people, and me too very often....but accuracy to the source....no.


And, in fact due to the way we hear, redbook dynamics can reach a potential of more than 110B.

The operative word here is 'potential'. The dynamic range bottleneck in digital audio is not digital audio, it's a culture of thinking 0dBFS is a goal rather than a limit.

Vinyl's great weakness is its main strength here - it's almost impossible to cut a groove at peak loudness without it taking up a lot of vinyl real-estate and running the risk of the groove collapsing almost as its pulled from the stamper. As such, there needs to be some pulling back from the brink, and the resultant album has to preserve some of the dynamics of the original recording as a result, even when mastered 'hot'.

By way of contrast, digital audio's greatest strength turns out to be its greatest weakness - it's so free from potential problems, it lays itself open to abuse. And brick-wall mastering is the result. This makes it possible to have a recording played with the peaks at 0dB (or even beyond, and into digital clipping) and compressed so dramatically it has maybe 3dB-5dB of dynamic range. BTW, I'm not laying this solely at the door of the mastering suite, it's a cultural issue endemic to whole sections of the music business. The mastering engineer often gets the blame for having to follow policy directions issued from on high.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

The operative word here is 'potential'. The dynamic range bottleneck in digital audio is not digital audio, it's a culture of thinking 0dBFS is a goal rather than a limit.

Vinyl's great weakness is its main strength here - it's almost impossible to cut a groove at peak loudness without it taking up a lot of vinyl real-estate and running the risk of the groove collapsing almost as its pulled from the stamper. As such, there needs to be some pulling back from the brink, and the resultant album has to preserve some of the dynamics of the original recording as a result, even when mastered 'hot'.

By way of contrast, digital audio's greatest strength turns out to be its greatest weakness - it's so free from potential problems, it lays itself open to abuse. And brick-wall mastering is the result. This makes it possible to have a recording played with the peaks at 0dB (or even beyond, and into digital clipping) and compressed so dramatically it has maybe 3dB-5dB of dynamic range. BTW, I'm not laying this solely at the door of the mastering suite, it's a cultural issue endemic to whole sections of the music business. The mastering engineer often gets the blame for having to follow policy directions issued from on high.

Abuse is not the weakness of the tool, it is the weakness of the workman. And this particular form of abuse pe-dates digital by many decades; go listen to the vinyl of Born to Run, to 45s of Phil Spector's recordings from the early 60s. You'll find exactly the same abuse (though we called it an artistic choice then). Can the abuse go farther with digital? Of course. The abuse of power has greater potential with greater power. None of this, however, is an argument for the superiority of vinyl. It is actually an argument against it. In any case, while I have dozens of recordings, old and new, that are compressed, only a handful come close to the levels you're talking about.

Tim

 

[MylesBAstor]

Abuse is not the weakness of the tool, it is the weakness of the workman. And this particular form of abuse pe-dates digital by many decades; go listen to the vinyl of Born to Run, to 45s of Phil Spector's recordings from the early 60s. You'll find exactly the same abuse (though we called it an artistic choice then). Can the abuse go farther with digital? Of course. The abuse of power has greater potential with greater power. None of this, however, is an argument for the superiority of vinyl. It is actually an argument against it. In any case, while I have dozens of recordings, old and new, that are compressed, only a handful come close to the levels you're talking about.

Tim

Everything has to be cut to the LCD. The same for example was true of the internet but a decade or so ago. Yes, we had the technology to do much, much more with websites but site designers had to cater to those that had very, very slow connections.(perhaps again, those at that time with ultra-fast connections were but a few of the total.)

Then there's the music industry. Years ago, records were cut to be played on the worst turntable. To wit, the famous 1S RCA Pines of Rome with Reiner that couldn't be played by any table of the day and was immediately taken off the shelves. Move forward a couple of years and engineers cut everything to sound good on a boom box. Enter the digital era and the vast majority of recordings are made with MP3 in mind. No unfortunately high-end is an aberration in the recording industry's minds and if a new recording sounds good, generally it's a mistake rather than being preplanned.

 

[Alan Sircom]

Abuse is not the weakness of the tool, it is the weakness of the workman. And this particular form of abuse pe-dates digital by many decades; go listen to the vinyl of Born to Run, to 45s of Phil Spector's recordings from the early 60s. You'll find exactly the same abuse (though we called it an artistic choice then). Can the abuse go farther with digital? Of course. The abuse of power has greater potential with greater power. None of this, however, is an argument for the superiority of vinyl. It is actually an argument against it. In any case, while I have dozens of recordings, old and new, that are compressed, only a handful come close to the levels you're talking about.

Tim

The distinction is duly noted. However, if the end result is the workman is asked to do a worse job with a better tool because it's a better tool, it's still a worse job.

Yes, the seeds of this current trend began long before digital. But there were limits to how far you could go, thanks ultimately to the restrictions imposed by tape and groove. This is why Born to Run is cut loud on vinyl, but subsequent remasters have made that pressing sound like it was some gently massaged audiophile dinner jazz. And it's why albums like (What's The Story) Morning Glory? were cut so impossibly loud.

I disagree vehemently about the small number of recordings plagued by this issue. We're hopefully seeing the start of something close to a truce in the loudness war (hot masters today are beginning to return to just chart material), but there's a lot of good music being badly mastered out there now. This isn't just some snooty audiophile grumblings; band like Arcade Fire and Muse are outstanding, but their albums are mixed too hot for earbuds and computer speakers. The good ones are the exceptions rather than the norm.

 

[JackD201]

God bless the children!

The popularity of Internet Radio, PMPs, IEMs and Circum-aurals have negated a lot of need for "loud". What many have been saying is killing good sound just might save it.

 

[Sonus]

While I mentioned one reason the DR value of LP can be higher, the corollary to your reply is if the DR value of a CD is higher, then it will be a better version!?

DR value is all we have to remotely evaluate a recording. (correct me if i am wrong)
I know CD and high rez are better than LP, tech speaking alone there is no doubt, but the end result is what you do with that technology.
If a mastering engineer produces better sound via LP compared to digital on the same release then why would I buy the digital version?

You did mention DR values can't be used to compare analog and digital recordings, I still don't understand why.

 

[Bruce B]

CD, sounds same each time you play it.

Except when you demagnetize it, blow it with a tourmline hair dryer, buff it with Armor All and use the Green marker!

 

[MylesBAstor]

" The thing we do is, we make great stuff in the studio and then we kiss its ass goodbye, because nobody's ever going to hear it. That's unfortunate, and it didn't use to be that way. That's something that happened to us – that's an injury we sustained, and it deeply hurt us. So the time has come for us to recover and to bring music back to the people in a way that they can recognize it – through the window of their souls, their ears. So they can feel and vibrate and so that they can get goosebumps. We cherish those ******* goosebumps. We really need those."--Neil Young accepting the President's Merit Award from the Producers & Engineers Wing last night.

 

[Sonus]

'You can't go by the DR database to compare vinyl vs any digital format. The vinyl has already gone through a digital to analog converter so the waveforms will look different and in turn give different (more dynamic) results. Most vinyl and digital use the same master now a days.
If you were to record that HDtracks file after going through a DAC and ADC you would get very close to the same DR rating. Try it yourself you will see what I mean. Those clipped/limited peaks get restored through a DAC.'

I just tested with a help of a friend his theory and he is wrong. Using a DAC and then ADC again to calculate the DR didn't change anything.

 

[Sonus]

Look around the web, LOL

The internet is filled with crap/lies, i don't understand people sometimes.
You can't trust anything you read online anymore, i prefer to understand and try things myself (if I can).

"It does all come down to mastering" - i am starting to think you are correct.

 

[Atmasphere]

Vinyl's great weakness is its main strength here - it's almost impossible to cut a groove at peak loudness without it taking up a lot of vinyl real-estate and running the risk of the groove collapsing almost as its pulled from the stamper.

Sorry- this is incorrect. The upper limit of vinyl has nothing to do with the record side- it has to do with playback. You can easily impose grooves that will survive the stamper that no cartridge can track due to the dynamic range.

Given the known SNR of a vinyl disc, this can't be unweighted Dynamic Range you're talking about.

I will note that you can not cut, usefully, a hypercompressed signal into vinyl. I have already observed recordings that were better because they weren't hypercompressed, and that's my suspicion here.

Certainly CD has a lower random noise floor, and absolutely zero granularity, despite the various lies bandied about.

Direct Lathe cuts have a noise floor that must be very close to that of Redbook. When we cut them, the limit is always the noise of the reproducer, even if we use a high output cartridge with SUTs. IOW nearly dead silent. Recently QRP has improved their pressing machines to the point that you really can't hear any noise coming from them either. So whatever 'known SNR' you are referring to is likely not a real number describing the state of things.

DR value is all we have to remotely evaluate a recording. (correct me if i am wrong)
I know CD and high rez are better than LP, tech speaking alone there is no doubt, but the end result is what you do with that technology.
If a mastering engineer produces better sound via LP compared to digital on the same release then why would I buy the digital version?

You did mention DR values can't be used to compare analog and digital recordings, I still don't understand why.

I find that an LP can be cut *more successfully* with full dynamic range. The issue here has to do with what happens when you have low levels and digital, which don't mix well. That is why compression is used so much- to take advantage of nearly all 16 bits of the CD. This is why normalizing a CD is an essential part of the CD mastering process. In the case of the LP, its a matter of getting it all to fit with the groove spacing and groove depth. If you plan it right and do enough test cuts, usually you don't have to apply any compression at all. Do you see the distinction?

"It does all come down to mastering" - i am starting to think you are correct.

That is certainly true, whether digital or analog. If you just want to bang out lacquers as fast as you can by all means, apply the compression. But it does not take that much more time to do it right, where you don't have to apply any post processing at all. IMO that works a lot better.

I have to point out two other things here. Phelonious Ponk is correct in saying its a problem with the workman, not the tool. Its rare that I agree with him but this is one where its in spades. The LP has the most usable dynamic range of any format so far (given how silent modern pressings can now be), and apparently the best bandwidth too- we have no problems putting 30KHz on a lacquer and that is with a stock cutterhead that is 50 years old!

Just so we are clear on the dynamic range: an LP mastering system has lots of nuances, but I'll just walk you through just the cutting system for a little bit:

Most cutter amps have about 10X the power needed to completely destroy the cutterhead. To do the work of cutting any groove, the amps are **loafing**!! Our cutterhead will get melted down (with an attendant melt down at the bank) with about 10-12 watts (Westerex 3D) yet the cutteramps are rated at 125 watts (using the stock 1700-series electronics). But if you put 5 watts into the cutterhead, somewhere in that range anyway, the groove it is cutting will likely be beyond the capacity of any arm/cartridge combination! IOW you cannot overload the system; you can't even come close- it is simply impossible. The limitation is in playback, not record (both dynamic range and bandwidth). It is the mark of a good mastering engineer to understand the limitations of the playback, and cut accordingly.

I've read a lot of crap over the years about saturation in record and other nonsense- it simply does not happen that way, not with the LP (tape in another matter entirely).

Keep that in mind with future posts, please?

 

[Sonus]

Interesting, thank you for taking the time to comment.

 

[Atmasphere]

i think i should summarize here a bit: plain old stereo, ie two channels of audio is found no where in nature, its unnatural. perfecting an unnatural system does not necessarily make it "sound" better. its a wonderful accident that tape and vinyl affects tend to couteract the un natural ness of two channel playback. a not so wonderful accident is that the tube came before the trsnsistor, if it was the other way round, we would have had the stuff we have now when i was a kid

^^ this and the storage of vinyl are its big shortcomings IMO. We keep finding ways to put more resolution in the grooves though. That is the area where the LP still outclasses all digital formats.

To this effect, please refer to my prior post about amplifier power. The problem here is while you can't overload it, the area that the cutterhead is actually operating is at a point in almost any amplifier's power curve where the distortion is probably lowest at the full output that the cutterhead will see- and *increasing* at powers below that. We solved that problem by using one of our production M-60s that was then modified to work with the mastering electronics. The M-60 has a distortion character that linearly decreases to zero as power is decreased- no increase in distortion below a certain power level (which is typical of most push-pull amplifiers). In this way we increased resolution in the grooves as distortion blocks detail due to the ear's masking characteristic.