Insights on vinyl

Oliver,

I wouldn't touch audiophile equipment with a barge pole it all seems to be made of fairy dust. I can understand the reasons behind keeping each part separate as it makes it easier to figure out which bit is faulty and you don't have to replace everything at once but spending over £500 on a hi-fi seems pointless to me.

I wonder how audiophiles feel about the equipment musicians use to make music?

Take electric guitars for example: the wire inside them is copper, the jack socket is usually nickel, most of the effects used are digital, and the amps are mostly very low-tech and transistor based (bar the top of the line valve amps) often with built in digital effects.

oliverstoned wrote: However, these overbumped releases goes well with Mr everybody mediocre system. They are done for it.

I sure hope so ... I'd loose my interest in music as soon as I need ultra expensive gear to listen to it. And I pity those who think that you can only enjoy music on audiophile equipment - you're free to pursue that course, I steer clear.

^  I certainly won't use formulas to prove any point that is about subjective listening experience. I would only challenge some specific statements like "you can't hear the bass" - I can hear it on CDs, so while I know what you mean I would carefully speculate that you have a tendency to exaggerate.

I think that for these vinyl reissues the engineers give the audiophiles exactly what they want to hear ... the odd thing is that this would change the original signal, something which audiophiles don't (or at least: should not) want. I thought that mastering should be about recording the original signal with as little changes as possible, not to make it sound warmer (read: add harmonic distortion).

The best reasons for me to buy vinyl remain: nostalgia + cover art/vinyl art (picture discs, colored/transparent vinyls).


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - October 25 2006 at 09:26

Being the scientist that I am I still don't think that these audiophile pressings really *contain* substantially more of the original signal than a properly mastered CD would. Heavyfreight posted a very interesting article about the quantising effect of vinyls ... makes much sense to me.

But at the same time I do own some vinyls which - to my ears - sound better than the CD version. My opinion: I simply prefer the mix on the vinyl, or in other words: I don't like the mix of the CD version.

Certif1ed wrote: Here's one experience that CD can never beat: The first Faust album was released on clear vinyl that was specially cut so that it would appear to rotate a quarter of a turn, slow down, then rotate backwards. Another great area of vinyl that CD is trying oh-so-hard to mimic with the 24k Gold CDs, is audiophile pressings. I picked up an audiophile "Hotel California" for the relatvely bargain price of £10 at the weekend. The difference in sound is amazing - but that's because the engineers responsible for the pressing had access to the master tapes, and cut a new master disk after re-engineering the sound using technologies that are as close as possible to the originals, ie tube amps and small monitors. I say amazing, because it's so noticeable, dynamic and clear - but it's possible that I've been conditioned by the original, as I still prefer the warmer sound. There was a series of half-speed remasters released by Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs in the late 1970s-early 1980s which I'm still trying to get examples of - these are supposed to blow standard vinyl pressings out of the water - even pukka Beatles albums.

    

Another example showing vynil's superiority!

Here's one experience that CD can never beat:

The first Faust album was released on clear vinyl that was specially cut so that it would appear to rotate a quarter of a turn, slow down, then rotate backwards.


Another great area of vinyl that CD is trying oh-so-hard to mimic with the 24k Gold CDs, is audiophile pressings.

I picked up an audiophile "Hotel California" for the relatvely bargain price of £10 at the weekend. The difference in sound is amazing - but that's because the engineers responsible for the pressing had access to the master tapes, and cut a new master disk after re-engineering the sound using technologies that are as close as possible to the originals, ie tube amps and small monitors.

I say amazing, because it's so noticeable, dynamic and clear - but it's possible that I've been conditioned by the original, as I still prefer the warmer sound.


There was a series of half-speed remasters released by Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs in the late 1970s-early 1980s which I'm still trying to get examples of - these are supposed to blow standard vinyl pressings out of the water - even pukka Beatles albums.

^ Sorry, but even if it may be hard to reproduce most people will say that it still sounds like a trumpet (and not a distorted one). So while the instrument may be a good "benchmark" for detecting digital sampling artefacts, listening tests will (and have) been inconclusive.

And isn't a trumpet by definition a harsh instrument? It has a harsh signal (sawtooth)!

^ no objection, but also consider this example:

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

Most (old) people who are really used to listening to the vinyl version don't like the remastered CD at all - they say it feels unnatural. As it turns out the original pressings were flawed - the tapes were running a bit too slow and as a result the songs are slower and off-key (nearly one half tone).

I think the example simply shows that the adaptability of the human brain sometimes works for us, but sometimes also against us.