Posted on 09/08/2009 9:19:12 AM PDT by La Lydia
In the late '60s, with a little prodding from his sons, my father finally gave in and replaced his monaural Garrard turntable with a stereo one. Suddenly, Sgt. Pepper's band sounded so much bigger. And clearer. I could hear two distinct guitars playing, not just a generic guitar sound. Two decades later, in 1988, I finally broke down and bought a CD player and the first of many Beatles CDs -- now, that was a jump from what I'd been hearing on vinyl for years. There were so many more instruments I'd never noticed. And notes I'd never heard.
On Wednesday, things are about to change once again, as the sound of the Beatles' music takes another giant leap forward. Twenty-two years after the original release of the Fab Four's British catalogue on CD, the group's music will finally be reissued, the release bearing the fruits of a 4 1/2 -year project by engineers at EMI's Abbey Road Studios to remaster the entire catalogue...
So what's different from those CDs you already have? As any surviving Beatle will tell you -- and both are known to say it -- the Beatles were "a great little band" -- a rock band. What comes through on the new masters is the power and quality of the original recordings of that rock band -- the quality the Beatles themselves would have heard and intended when those recordings were created.
That means you can now hear John Lennon's raucous vocal in all its powerfully shredded glory...George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" reveals the presence of a Ringo Starr kick drum that was integral to rock's greatest rhythm section, alongside Paul McCartney's bass -- a beat that drives the song with a robust heartbeat not heard before....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
LOLOLOLOL!
That's a hoot!
Since vinyl has only ~80dB of dynamic range available, a regular ol' CD can easily cover all its highs and lows with a dynamic range of 96-98 dB. (16-18 dB of headroom is a lot)
The clipped highs and lows present in many modern digital recordings is due to intentional engineering and recording decisions to create a compressed recording. Music with a more consistent volume (loudness) get more ears.
In other words, high dynamic range doesn't sell as well as lower dynamic range music with high loudness.
But the digital recording technology itself isn't what clips the highs and lows.
ping
ping
“The clipped highs and lows present in many modern digital recordings is due to intentional engineering and recording decisions to create a compressed recording”
Agreed. I didn’t mean to portend that the the compression seen in digital music is a result of a failure of the media to capture the full dynaminc range. Obviously it is the intentional “mastering” of the incoming signal to fit within a specified digital container.
Better?
I spent months copying vinyl to CDs. They sounded identical to me listening to them in the car, hiss, clicks pops and all.
I then tried playing them on my home system. For the first few minutes, again, it sounded identical to the vinyl. But after that the sound started to agitate me. I changed discs again it sounded the same but I just couldn’t get through more than a few songs.
I don’t know what digitizing vinyl at home does to the sound but with good speakers, there is an unpleasant difference.
“The clipped highs and lows present in many modern digital recordings is due to intentional engineering and recording decisions to create a compressed recording. Music with a more consistent volume (loudness) get more ears.”
Nailed it. Also, modern music tends to be mastered to suit how folks listen to tunes nowadays. It is very rare to have a home hi-fi that is regularly used to listen to music. Most folks listen while they are doing something else like driving or jogging or surfing the web. And most folks listen on crappy gear like ear buds or whatever you call them and computer speakers. So stuff gets mastered so there isn’t highs and lows but all highs all the time, to get noticed.
Bottom line is a crappy master will make anything sound crappy, vinyl or CD.
Freegards
If you haven’t heard the Love CD you should add to your list for tomorrow’s big CD buying spree :)
The remastering is superb, and the inventiveness takes license but under the supervision and approval of Geo Martin, and Paul, Ringo, and George.
It’s certainly nothing that John wouldn’t have done himself, just as he did in Number Nine.
I wonder how many of those were produced?
“For the record, there are three surviving Beatles, not two....
####
Four actually.
George Martin’s production was crucially important to the Beatles sound, innovation and creativity.
The “fifth Beatle”, in, I believe, the lads’ own words.
bmkm
Flat wrong. No, really, that is absolutely wrong. Go read up on the Nyquist Theorem, to wit: every frequency up to X Hz can be perfectly reproduced by sampling at 2X Hz. CDs sample at 44kHz. Human hearing maxes out around 20kHz (most adults are lower than that). Filter out everything over 20kHz, sample at 44kHz, and the data representation of that sound is complete (any subsequent limitations are due to analog microphone & speakers).
I’ll probably do that.
What I’m looking forward to the most is “Abbey Road” and “Revolver”. I think Abbey Road (especially side B) is by far the best work the Beatles ever did, followed by Revolver. “Sgt. Pepper’s” is a fantastic album, but I think it is highly overrated.
No, it has nothing to do with the "container".
The compressed mastering is purely a marketing decision, not a technical one.
A full-dynamic range (or, nearly so) recording from 20 years ago will frequently be remastered with higher compression to improve the "loudness" (average volume) of the recording. (See Loudness Wars)
All of the recordings have the same technical boundaries, but they are re-engineered with greater compression because those recordings sell better.
The digital "container" of a compact disc is larger than the vinyl analog one. The CD has greater dynamic range, frequency range and signal-to-noise ratio than any analog medium. Any analog recording on a commercial medium (vinyl, reel-to-reel, compact cassette, 8-track) will easily fit within the "container" of a compact disc with no clipping.
This kind of misunderstanding is similar to the one where listeners insist that a vacuum tube amplifier sounds superior to one using transistors. The real, demonstrable difference between them is that the tubes generate more distortion and noise.
A solid-state amplifier can be made to sound like a tube amplifier by adding noise and distortion.
Similarly, a digital recording can be made to sound like an analog recording by compressing the dynamic range, compressing the frequency range, adding noise and adding distortion. ...but I don't call that "better", personally.
That graph is deeply misleading. The pink line is more than enough to perfectly reconstruct the black line, which is exactly what a D/A converter with a proper filter does.
Plug an oscilloscope into your CD player output and look for yourself - I guarantee you’ll see a sinewave indistinguishable from the input, not this alleged stairstep garbage.
Everything sounded better done by the Beatles when compared to my 4 and 8 track recordings. I had an entire collection of 4 and 8 track recordings by the Beatles. 4/8 track tapes really sucked.
There's no other way to combat file-sharing. I don't see how they can possibly not release them on iTunes, and soon.
“Totally agree, but it’s difficult getting the needle to stay on the record in the car. ;)”
You have to lower the car.
Or, the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band.
Agreed. Abbey Road, Revolver.... and Rubber Soul.
And I have a thang for the White Album.
You are correct. Vinyl sounds alive and breathes unlike CD’s that sound too sterile.
I’ve got a great turntable and still collect vinyl. In fact, of my entire system, the newest part is the turntable from maybe 1979 and the latest cartridge though. The amps and preamps are from the 50’s. Long live tubes and vinyl.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.