Post by CountryCrock on Apr 10, 2021 19:15:58 GMT
JUST A RANT...
There are very few people (for the sake of this discussion: those populating the Web-verse), whom, will ever debate the entire "analog vs. digital" dead horse WITHOUT; either, HAVING AN ECONOMIC INTEREST TIED-TO ONE SIDE OF IT....OR (one would seriously have to presume: based-upon how logic-defying so many of their opinions sound): WOULD MAKE YOU OUTRIGHT BELIEVE THEY MUST BE 'EFFING *DEAF*(?)!
First of all: the fact that two, completely DIFFERENT media domains (with radically opposite methods of data retrieval) are being compared SETS UP THE ARGUMENT IN AN INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST WAY TO BEGIN WITH. Secondly, the fact that the signal integrity of a digitally-converted COPY from a 50-60 year-old (analog) source is often what is being compared against: FUNDAMENTALLY CORRUPTS THE MEASURED OUTCOME to bias the comparison right from the start. The jackals selling $10k turntables and $4k cartridges KNOW THIS. Record brand new material simultaneously on a 48/192 board while a direct to (metal) disc lathe is cutting the same input. See which one sounds more like the original: to ONLY THEN have an honest discussion about it.
THE BEST OF ANALOG?: COMPARE APPLES TO APPLES...
From (approximately) 1950-1982, RECORDS & TAPE were THE ONLY games in town. THIS is what the debate SHOULD be based-upon. FOR MOST OF THAT TIME: RECORDS NUMBERED IN THE TENS-OF-MILLIONS AND WERE THE MOST MASS-MADE/MASS-MARKETED FORMAT OF COMMERCIALLY-RELEASED MUSIC AVAILABLE. Before CD, the price of a record album was always well-under $10 (USD). NOBODY was paying above that for "cover art" or believing(?), that, one day they would become collector items in the vein of collecting watches/cars/jewelry/etc. NOBODY was playing (now considered) Classic Rock records on (then, 50+ years'-ago, what were $200) Thorens' turntables. They were playing them (to death) on: "suitcase" compact record changers worth $59; having low-budget ceramic cartridges with synthetic sapphire-tipped styli requiring a heavy tracking force (even) a coin stuck on the headshell had to compensate for! THIS was (Western) Pop Culture in a far more unbridled, less-pretentious time and it was totally honest about what it was.
Now, for someone alive then that read all the audio-related magazines (and: the concept of home audio WAS the mid-20th-century version of what the impact of smartphones is now; there was no other personally-tailored form of home entertainment on such a large scale, pre-VCRs, than having a stereo system), one understood (and heard) all the technical shortcomings of $4.98 vinyl flagrantly revealed when presented with (by contrast): quarter-inch, 7 1/2 inches per second-playing-speed, stereo (as well as quadraphonic surround sound) OPEN REEL TAPE. The ONLY (analog) format the home consumer ever got descended directly from the recording studio itself (the record labels, pre-1972, had far more lax a concept regarding copyright protection laws; to the point, where: THEY ACTUALLY THOUGHT THE CONSUMER GETTING "MASTER SOUND" AUDIO QUALITY WAS A PROUD ACHIEVEMENT TO BE ENCOURAGED AND PROMOTED). Why wouldn't you want to start with the medium with the best/least-compromised software interface to reproduce (vintage) content(?): safety copy of a 1/4"-wide master tape (NO phase distortion, NO frequency processing, NO tracking error) then-sent to a duplicator back in the day (WHICH WAS NOT HANDLED THE SAME AS MASS-MADE CASSETTE OR 8-TRACK JUNK, LET-ALONE: RECORD STAMPERS WEARING OUT FROM USAGE IN THE TENS-OF-THOUSANDS....the difference with open reel production was: only 1000-1500 runs per title were made according to demand); where, 12-20 recorders were linked together copying the (unadulterated) safety of the master on a professional-grade machine all fed by tube amps (especially prior to 1967) for the buying public's pleasure. It all came at a cost, mind you: $400 minimum for a decent quality deck to play them on and, single-boxed reels of an album title ranged between $7-$18 (vs. a then-$4.98 stereo record).
THE FORMATS WHICH GET IT WRONG (digital AND analog):
SUB-320KBPS-mp3: always has a "gurgling" artifact distortion on any out-of-phase/reflected sounds between channels.
16/44 STANDARD "REDBOOK" CD: there most certainly is a peaky sound in the 9200hz-region which gives the treble an ear-fatiguing brittleness. IT IS NOT an offender (as much) on a disc mastered at 24/96-or-above or DSD or DVD-A or: if even a standard CD was prepared from vintage-era analog tape equipment close to what the recording would've originally been made on (I mean, for example, one of the reasons IMO the early-2000s reissues of certain Capitol and Abkco product IS superior to most of what Abbey Road does has to do with: pre-UMG Capitol and Abkco having played back their tapes on vintage tubed Ampex 351 machines while Abbey Road uses '80s Studers).
[P.S.-related: any digital distortion on streaming services claiming to be "high-res" IS OFTEN DUE TO A COPYRIGHT WATERMARK AND NOT BECAUSE OF DIGITAL ITSELF. This is why, also, FM radio today sounds like total canned crap being broadcast out of a telephone booth and is worse than YouTube quality.]
CASSETTE: an INSULT to analog tape and was meant as nothing more than a portable convenience cheaply produced; shoe-horned into "Hi-Fi" after being an office memo machine. Ultimately, won over 8-track cartridge because of the (then-relative) ease of searching for selections. HOWEVER: it will ALWAYS have a compressed, "mushy"-sounding bass response and the midrange will always sound "boxy". A $2000 Nakamichi won't get rid of that, either (because the problems are: THE PHYSICAL SIZE AND EQ LIMITS OF THE MEDIUM!).
VINYL: if your first listening experiences involved music played back on (another component); where, the dynamic range and volume were/are linear from beginning to end as well as there being full-blown bass response....YOU WOULD NEVER purposely "go backwards" and WANT to hear: the stereo image sounding like it's coming out of a phase-distorted fishbowl with 500hz bloat and the end-of-side tracks, whenever there are strings or horns, to sound like they're coming out of a funnel with a cloth covering it. NO ONE not trying to peddle megabuck record-playing gear can *ever* dispute those things. If they do, they're full of bullshit or they're deaf.
There are very few people (for the sake of this discussion: those populating the Web-verse), whom, will ever debate the entire "analog vs. digital" dead horse WITHOUT; either, HAVING AN ECONOMIC INTEREST TIED-TO ONE SIDE OF IT....OR (one would seriously have to presume: based-upon how logic-defying so many of their opinions sound): WOULD MAKE YOU OUTRIGHT BELIEVE THEY MUST BE 'EFFING *DEAF*(?)!
First of all: the fact that two, completely DIFFERENT media domains (with radically opposite methods of data retrieval) are being compared SETS UP THE ARGUMENT IN AN INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST WAY TO BEGIN WITH. Secondly, the fact that the signal integrity of a digitally-converted COPY from a 50-60 year-old (analog) source is often what is being compared against: FUNDAMENTALLY CORRUPTS THE MEASURED OUTCOME to bias the comparison right from the start. The jackals selling $10k turntables and $4k cartridges KNOW THIS. Record brand new material simultaneously on a 48/192 board while a direct to (metal) disc lathe is cutting the same input. See which one sounds more like the original: to ONLY THEN have an honest discussion about it.
THE BEST OF ANALOG?: COMPARE APPLES TO APPLES...
From (approximately) 1950-1982, RECORDS & TAPE were THE ONLY games in town. THIS is what the debate SHOULD be based-upon. FOR MOST OF THAT TIME: RECORDS NUMBERED IN THE TENS-OF-MILLIONS AND WERE THE MOST MASS-MADE/MASS-MARKETED FORMAT OF COMMERCIALLY-RELEASED MUSIC AVAILABLE. Before CD, the price of a record album was always well-under $10 (USD). NOBODY was paying above that for "cover art" or believing(?), that, one day they would become collector items in the vein of collecting watches/cars/jewelry/etc. NOBODY was playing (now considered) Classic Rock records on (then, 50+ years'-ago, what were $200) Thorens' turntables. They were playing them (to death) on: "suitcase" compact record changers worth $59; having low-budget ceramic cartridges with synthetic sapphire-tipped styli requiring a heavy tracking force (even) a coin stuck on the headshell had to compensate for! THIS was (Western) Pop Culture in a far more unbridled, less-pretentious time and it was totally honest about what it was.
Now, for someone alive then that read all the audio-related magazines (and: the concept of home audio WAS the mid-20th-century version of what the impact of smartphones is now; there was no other personally-tailored form of home entertainment on such a large scale, pre-VCRs, than having a stereo system), one understood (and heard) all the technical shortcomings of $4.98 vinyl flagrantly revealed when presented with (by contrast): quarter-inch, 7 1/2 inches per second-playing-speed, stereo (as well as quadraphonic surround sound) OPEN REEL TAPE. The ONLY (analog) format the home consumer ever got descended directly from the recording studio itself (the record labels, pre-1972, had far more lax a concept regarding copyright protection laws; to the point, where: THEY ACTUALLY THOUGHT THE CONSUMER GETTING "MASTER SOUND" AUDIO QUALITY WAS A PROUD ACHIEVEMENT TO BE ENCOURAGED AND PROMOTED). Why wouldn't you want to start with the medium with the best/least-compromised software interface to reproduce (vintage) content(?): safety copy of a 1/4"-wide master tape (NO phase distortion, NO frequency processing, NO tracking error) then-sent to a duplicator back in the day (WHICH WAS NOT HANDLED THE SAME AS MASS-MADE CASSETTE OR 8-TRACK JUNK, LET-ALONE: RECORD STAMPERS WEARING OUT FROM USAGE IN THE TENS-OF-THOUSANDS....the difference with open reel production was: only 1000-1500 runs per title were made according to demand); where, 12-20 recorders were linked together copying the (unadulterated) safety of the master on a professional-grade machine all fed by tube amps (especially prior to 1967) for the buying public's pleasure. It all came at a cost, mind you: $400 minimum for a decent quality deck to play them on and, single-boxed reels of an album title ranged between $7-$18 (vs. a then-$4.98 stereo record).
THE FORMATS WHICH GET IT WRONG (digital AND analog):
SUB-320KBPS-mp3: always has a "gurgling" artifact distortion on any out-of-phase/reflected sounds between channels.
16/44 STANDARD "REDBOOK" CD: there most certainly is a peaky sound in the 9200hz-region which gives the treble an ear-fatiguing brittleness. IT IS NOT an offender (as much) on a disc mastered at 24/96-or-above or DSD or DVD-A or: if even a standard CD was prepared from vintage-era analog tape equipment close to what the recording would've originally been made on (I mean, for example, one of the reasons IMO the early-2000s reissues of certain Capitol and Abkco product IS superior to most of what Abbey Road does has to do with: pre-UMG Capitol and Abkco having played back their tapes on vintage tubed Ampex 351 machines while Abbey Road uses '80s Studers).
[P.S.-related: any digital distortion on streaming services claiming to be "high-res" IS OFTEN DUE TO A COPYRIGHT WATERMARK AND NOT BECAUSE OF DIGITAL ITSELF. This is why, also, FM radio today sounds like total canned crap being broadcast out of a telephone booth and is worse than YouTube quality.]
CASSETTE: an INSULT to analog tape and was meant as nothing more than a portable convenience cheaply produced; shoe-horned into "Hi-Fi" after being an office memo machine. Ultimately, won over 8-track cartridge because of the (then-relative) ease of searching for selections. HOWEVER: it will ALWAYS have a compressed, "mushy"-sounding bass response and the midrange will always sound "boxy". A $2000 Nakamichi won't get rid of that, either (because the problems are: THE PHYSICAL SIZE AND EQ LIMITS OF THE MEDIUM!).
VINYL: if your first listening experiences involved music played back on (another component); where, the dynamic range and volume were/are linear from beginning to end as well as there being full-blown bass response....YOU WOULD NEVER purposely "go backwards" and WANT to hear: the stereo image sounding like it's coming out of a phase-distorted fishbowl with 500hz bloat and the end-of-side tracks, whenever there are strings or horns, to sound like they're coming out of a funnel with a cloth covering it. NO ONE not trying to peddle megabuck record-playing gear can *ever* dispute those things. If they do, they're full of bullshit or they're deaf.