LPs of new release music

[amirm]

This is a question I have been meaning to ask from you all LP experts .

I often see people go and buy LPs of new music releases. I have to believe these are recorded and mixed down in digital. And therefor the LP is an analog conversion of digital. If these assumptions are correct, what is the appeal of the LP as opposed to getting the same bit stream in digital domain?

Is it that the high-res conversion to analog is preferred to down-sampled & down-res'ed CD version? What if the music was available without the reduced resolution? The preference remains?

[Mike Lavigne]

Amir,

many (i don't know the percentage) modern recordings are mastered in analog....although many are not. so it's a crap shoot on which will sound lots better than the CD. then there is the care with which the Lp gets mastered regardless of source.

i have a few friends who do buy quite a bit of new vinyl from modern recordings and i rely on them to steer me to the 'good stuff'.

these days many artists have an analog sensitivity and like to present their music on Lps to people who care about the sound. just like any 'first pressings' small runs of 'cared for' vinyl sometimes sounds remarkably good.

again; come on over sometime and i'll play you a number of great sounding modern recordings on vinyl. unfortunately it's many times difficult to determine what the source is.

the hi-rez question is all over the board; sometimes the Lp does sound much better. i particularly find that DSD sourced Lps are not much better than the SACD's. i find hi-rez PCM mastered recordings more uniformily better than CD versions. but those are generalizations and reflect my perspective on SACD compared to redbook.

i think my hirez PCM-Lp conversion perspective is because the Lp mastering process adds a bit of space and body that PCM inherently misses in the original mastering process, where SACD does not nearly have that to the same degree.

there are plenty of cases where the CD sounds better as you surmise.

[RBFC]

I had an interesting experience with Telarc LPs and CDs. Of course, I'm talking about the earliest years of digital. I found that the LPs often sounded considerably better than the CDs, which (as Amir posited) makes little sense. Combining the distortions and limitations of both approaches doesn't seem like it would produce a better result than a single "distortion". There are two possible reasons for this outcome, as I see it.

1. The "distortions" in the early digital recording chain are masked/negated by the analog "distortions", producing a null result in some instances.

2. Early digital reproduction devices (transports, DACs, analog output stages {in digital devices} which weren't given much attention) did a very poor job of playing back native digital recordings.

In either case, I found the early digital LPs to sound superior. The famous Frederick Fennell conducts Holst Band Suites is an example:

http://www.amazon.com/Holst-Suite-Ha...0622179&sr=1-1 CD

http://www.amazon.com/Frederick-Fenn...0622222&sr=1-4 LP


Lee

[Ron Party]

what is the appeal of the LP as opposed to getting the same bit stream in digital domain?

Well that is the question, isn't it? For us mortal consumers, we cannot get the same bit stream. Instead we get highly compressed music.

[Mike Lavigne]

I had an interesting experience with Telarc LPs and CDs. Of course, I'm talking about the earliest years of digital. I found that the LPs often sounded considerably better than the CDs, which (as Amir posited) makes little sense. Combining the distortions and limitations of both approaches doesn't seem like it would produce a better result than a single "distortion". There are two possible reasons for this outcome, as I see it.

1. The "distortions" in the early digital recording chain are masked/negated by the analog "distortions", producing a null result in some instances.

2. Early digital reproduction devices (transports, DACs, analog output stages {in digital devices} which weren't given much attention) did a very poor job of playing back native digital recordings.

In either case, I found the early digital LPs to sound superior. The famous Frederick Fennell conducts Holst Band Suites is an example:

http://www.amazon.com/Holst-Suite-Ha...0622179&sr=1-1 CD

http://www.amazon.com/Frederick-Fenn...0622222&sr=1-4 LP


Lee

i agree about the Telarc's, but there were a few reasons for that. they were mastered at 48k, not 44k like redbook....so they should sound better. and the vinyl was very very nicely done. even Telarc SACD's mastered from those 48k files are quite good.

there are a number of DG Classical digital recordings from the late 70's and early 80's which sound wonderful on Lp. some of them are quite expensive to acquire too.

[amirm]

many (i don't know the percentage) modern recordings are mastered in analog....although many are not.

Oh, I didn't realize that was still going on.

And thanks again for the invitation. This "arctic freeze" we are having this week in Seattle really screwed up my plans. Spent the entire day yesterday troubleshooting and repairing why our brand new furnace was shutting down as the repair guy couldn't make it to our house!

[flez007]

Amirm - you posted an interesting question here, I had experienced not that great results with modern recordings on vinyl - but compared to digital they are still a tad better sounding than CDs. After many trials I decided to better focus and grow my library with "old" Jazz/Blues/Classical in vinyl and get CD for "new" Alternative/Pop/Rock titles.

Forgot to mention that I even have a third alternative thru my Digital Server, I download as much as I can from ITunes (mostly tracks) and if they worth the time I get either the CD or the LP.

[Mike Lavigne]

Oh, I didn't realize that was still going on.

And thanks again for the invitation. This "arctic freeze" we are having this week in Seattle really screwed up my plans. Spent the entire day yesterday troubleshooting and repairing why our brand new furnace was shutting down as the repair guy couldn't make it to our house!

i had 12" of snow Monday night at my house; so at 5am Tuesday morning i had to use my Honda snow blower tractor to clear my driveway so my wife could get out and do Thanksgiving grocery shopping.

last night it was 11 degrees.

i cannot believe the November weather!

come on over when it works out.

[DWR]

No snow here yet but it was 21 degrees lat night, just put the carb back on the snow blower yesterday after soaking it in parts cleaner to get it cleaned out after it gummed up on the fuel intake side because some moron left gas in it all summer without the stabil in the gas. As for the question at hand though, I really think it comes down to how much effort is put into the mastering be it analog or digital. Some of the most raved about pieces of vinyl are digitally mastered and sound great like The Cowboy Junkies- The Trinity Session and The Caution Horses are both from digital masters. I also own a couple of Chick Corea albums, Elektric Band and Akoustic Band that are both digitally mastered and sound great, I also have digitally mastered vinyl like Diane Schuur, Schuur Thing that is digitally mastered and it sounds like hell. The latest album I picked up the other day King Crimson ITCOKG was remastered in analog and sounds fabulous, now myself I am not locked down to either digital or analog playback, I listen to both and there is good and bad from both.

Dan

Dan

[DWR]

Kind of a follow up here after re-reading Amir's original post. The examples I used in my post, the King Crimson and The Cowboy Junkies, I have both on CD and Vinyl and on those two I still prefer the vinyl, to my ear it just sounds better. Now this maybe a difference in my playback equipment too, but whatever the reason the vinyl sounds better to me.

Dan