Forgive me if this is "old news" but there is a fascinating video on "you tube" in which Mike Fremer (the vociferously vituperative vinylista) and several music producers, recording and mastering engineers hold forth on the importance of audio quality. Great stuff - highly recommended.
Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY5hI98HEi0
The commentary from the music industry types is fascinating. Now this thing is 2.5 hours long - but do go to the 1.0 hour mark where some producer/recording engineer is describing some work he did with an artist (now deceased). Evidently the artist had to have peaceful surroundings to bring forth his ability (which in my opinion is excellent - a blues style guitarist/singer). So the producer drove this artist to a cabin in the Maine woods and using nothing more than two condenser mikes recorded this fellow to tape. No mixing board was used (apparently this was a minimalist recording effort).
What is particularly fascinating is that they play both the CD of the recording (quite good) AND Mike Fremer, turntable in front of him, plays the vinyl. The vinyl recording simply destroys - in every way imaginable - the digital recording. I was taken aback by the quality difference.
But here is the hook - when you listen to this - and the difference is very clear between the two formats - you are listening over streaming digital feed So how is such possible? Is the commercial CD process that bad? If digital is in fact the root cause of "bad" sound how is it that over youtube and a lousy digital stream that I can hear how much richer and more lifelike the vinyl is?
Something is not making a lot of sense here.
One more thing - near the end of this "round table" discussion a recording engineer plays a CD made from an fifth generation tape (Mr. Tambourine Man by Robert Zimmerman) and another from a first generation tape - again the difference is easily discernible. Something to consider when we discuss the sonic merits of digital and analog.
Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY5hI98HEi0
The commentary from the music industry types is fascinating. Now this thing is 2.5 hours long - but do go to the 1.0 hour mark where some producer/recording engineer is describing some work he did with an artist (now deceased). Evidently the artist had to have peaceful surroundings to bring forth his ability (which in my opinion is excellent - a blues style guitarist/singer). So the producer drove this artist to a cabin in the Maine woods and using nothing more than two condenser mikes recorded this fellow to tape. No mixing board was used (apparently this was a minimalist recording effort).
What is particularly fascinating is that they play both the CD of the recording (quite good) AND Mike Fremer, turntable in front of him, plays the vinyl. The vinyl recording simply destroys - in every way imaginable - the digital recording. I was taken aback by the quality difference.
But here is the hook - when you listen to this - and the difference is very clear between the two formats - you are listening over streaming digital feed So how is such possible? Is the commercial CD process that bad? If digital is in fact the root cause of "bad" sound how is it that over youtube and a lousy digital stream that I can hear how much richer and more lifelike the vinyl is?
Something is not making a lot of sense here.
One more thing - near the end of this "round table" discussion a recording engineer plays a CD made from an fifth generation tape (Mr. Tambourine Man by Robert Zimmerman) and another from a first generation tape - again the difference is easily discernible. Something to consider when we discuss the sonic merits of digital and analog.
