Examples of early digital recordings?

[MylesBAstor]

you know on this website, the folks who claim to hear differences between all kinds of stuff NEVER involve themselves in any "tests" we have had over the years. Those here who are more "objectivists" have involved themselves and done pretty well on these "tests". Let it all hang out man. The obvious plain truth is a superior headphone driven almost directly from the source will resolve more actual "detail" than a speaker rig. The other obious truth is most folks on this forum are by statistical certainty not hearing everything in the recording and are most 10 db or more away from the "average" hearing as charted by those graphs of hearing vs age etc.

Fact 1: reviewers such as Atkinson and Fremer have passed DBT.
Fact 2: you still continue to stick your head in the sand and ignore every basic biological finding about hearing and testing. The story never changes: it's like a broken record.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Though would it be reasonable to say that if there are at least one or two albums of early digital that do sound fine (they probably didn't have dither(?), and they didn't have oversampling ADCs), then it suggests, in principle, that modern digital must be pretty darn spectacular?

It's interesting that the classical recording people in the 70s listened to the early digital backups vs. analogue and were so impressed that they were happy to make the transition to digital. Yet these days it is taken to be an undisputed fact that early CD was some sort of sonic disaster, even though it was based on similar technology. Was the problem merely one of the consumer-level CD players not being up to scratch, or that the early CD mastering was botched in many cases? Or was it just 'expectation bias' again? Whatever, it suggests that much of CD's poor reputation was/is not really deserved.

I got my first CD player in about '88 (Sony with "8x oversampling DAC") and I still have it. In a A/B test switching between it and a modern M Audio sound card playing the same CD I can't hear any difference between the two.

I think it's actually a pretty small club, of analog-centric audiophiles, who believe that. Most of the world has embraced he advancements of the 20th century and moved on.

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Fact 1: reviewers such as Atkinson and Fremer have passed DBT.
Fact 2: you still continue to stick your head in the sand and ignore every basic biological finding about hearing and testing. The story never changes: it's like a broken record.

They've passed DBT of what?

Tim

 

[NorthStar]

No biggie, Bob. It's just a form search of brothers in Arms. Easy enough to repeat.

Tim

"Nothing matters anymore when you're in love." - Bob

"Everything feels so right, so good. ...Eternal woman. ...You live in the light." - Van Morrison - Hymns to the Silence ['Take me Back']

 

[Groucho]

There's something rather thrilling about the very idea of early digital recording: it's a 'time capsule', a snapshot of the relatively distant past preserved perfectly without any degradation. I wonder if there are any digital recordings surviving from the developers' early experiements, prior to commercial launch. Say 1960s?

 

[Ethan Winer]

How can you separate if it was due to deficiency of the encoders used in the recording or bad sound engineering?

Without being able to hear the original live source in the control room, you can't. But the fact that many "early" digital recordings sound excellent exonerates the hardware.

BTW, one reason I haven't listed my favorite digital classical recordings is laziness. Another is even if I listed a bunch, it seems unlikely many others will have the same CDs. Yet another reason is what sounds "good" is subjective. What I think sounds wonderful might sound terrible to you. Witness posts 48 and 52 above.

--Ethan

 

[Groucho]

A reference here to Donald Fagin's fully digital album 'The Nightfly' in a review of the Meridian 7200:

...you're greeted with a stark spry sound with masses of detail. With great recordings like Donald Fagin's Nightfly, the system is majestic; massively powerful and propulsive and yet insighful and subtle too. But it doesn't forgive poor recordings...

http://www.meridian-audio.info/public/dsp_7200[589].pdf

So it still sounds great on some of the best speakers on the planet. Not bad for a 1982 digital recording.

 

[mep]

A reference here to Donald Fagin's fully digital album 'The Nightfly' in a review of the Meridian 7200:

http://www.meridian-audio.info/public/dsp_7200[589].pdf

So it still sounds great on some of the best speakers on the planet. Not bad for a 1982 digital recording.

Nightfly is a good sounding recording. You can tell it is digital though.

 

[NorthStar]

I totally forgot about that one (in my CD music collection as well).

=> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nightfly

 

[mep]

Without being able to hear the original live source in the control room, you can't. But the fact that many "early" digital recordings sound excellent exonerates the hardware.

BTW, one reason I haven't listed my favorite digital classical recordings is laziness. Another is even if I listed a bunch, it seems unlikely many others will have the same CDs. Yet another reason is what sounds "good" is subjective. What I think sounds wonderful might sound terrible to you. Witness posts 48 and 52 above.

--Ethan

And I remember a time on this very forum where you made a statement to the effect that you had 'improved' your stereo to the point that you only had a couple of CDs that sounded good. You later tried to backpedal away from that statement when the obvious was brought to your attention. I wish someone here was more motivated than me and would go back and dig that jewel up and quote it here again. It was pretty funny.

 

[Don Hills]

Nightfly is a good sounding recording. You can tell it is digital though.

Compared to what? Vinyl? Cassette? Master tape?

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Compared to what? Vinyl? Cassette? Master tape?

Welcome to the forum, Don.

Tim

 

[NorthStar]

Welcome to the forum, Don.

Tim

I wanted to say the same thing, but I feel shy. ...Anyway, Welcome Don! :b

 

[NorthStar]

you are a funny guy Bob!

Not really Tom...

 

[Don Hills]

Thank you for the welcomes. I originally came here because a Google search found some high-quality discussions in the archives. I see the place has gone downhill a bit since then...

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Bear with us. The quality of the discussion here modulates, like mysterious noises that can't be measured but ride upon our musical signals, robbing us of detail.



Tim

 

[NorthStar]

'Modulation', Tim got the term wright! ...That's the key ward indeed. ...It can only go uphill from down here. :b

* "High-quality discussions" from Google's search archives. ...I luv it!

 

[mep]

Compared to what? Vinyl? Cassette? Master tape?

Don-I hate to be dense, but I'm not sure I understand your question when you say "Compared to what?" The version of Nightfly that I commented on is vinyl. I stand by my comment that Nightfly is a good sounding LP that maintains its digital roots on vinyl. What any cassette version of Nightfly sounds like, I would have no idea. Ditto for the digital master file.

 

[Groucho]

Nightfly is a good sounding recording. You can tell it is digital though.

The "though" at the end implies that there is something wrong with digital. (Try it without the "though" and maybe a semicolon between "recording" and "you" and it could mean the opposite )

I'm keen to know what it is that you are hearing that makes it stand out as digital and which survives the transfer to vinyl. In the world of cinema photography, film used to have a wider dynamic range than video and a handy S-shaped contrast curve that acted as a dynamic range compressor. By default, video responds linearly to light level but didn't used to have a very wide dynamic range. Without doubt, in the past a recording made on video and then transferred to film would still show its video origins very clearly, and vice versa. Something similar going on here? That the linearity of the digital recording still carries through to the vinyl, and that the (audiophile-preferred) dynamic range compression that you'd get from the onset of soft clipping of the tape is missing?

 

[mep]

I am not trying to debate whether a digital recording that is transferred to vinyl is right or wrong. I do think that RB digital has a 'sound' that carries through when it is used as a source for vinyl records. For me, that 'sound' has a little brightness and edge to it-specially early RB digital. Those that love digital and hate analog will say something to the effect that you did. It must be that digital doesn't have the natural compression of analog and those that love analog object to the truth being told. All I'm saying is that I can tell that Nightfly is a digital recording. It has that characteristic sound of early digital recordings. Vinyl is still good enough to tell you the truth about the source.

Anybody old enough to remember when Fleetwood Mac came out with the Tusk LP? It was touted as a superior digital recording on vinyl that was going to make everyone's socks roll up and down. It didn't make my socks roll up and down. Thankfully my dog Clyde destroyed that LP many years ago and I wasn't even mad at him.