Examples of early digital recordings?

[Groucho]

I listened to some of Tusk with headphones the other day. Did it have a rather strange mix? Some sort of attempt at hyper-stereo with stark panning of instruments left and right? And strange mixtures of dry and reverb'ed?

 

[NorthStar]

I listened to some of Tusk with headphones the other day. Did it have a rather strange mix? Some sort of attempt at hyper-stereo with stark panning of instruments left and right? And strange mixtures of dry and reverb'ed?

'Tusk' is different; I give you that.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I listened to some of Tusk with headphones the other day. Did it have a rather strange mix? Some sort of attempt at hyper-stereo with stark panning of instruments left and right? And strange mixtures of dry and reverb'ed?

Tusk is Lindsey Buckingham creatively pushing building blocks around in the studio. It is odd. Whether or not that is a good thing is beyond the point, and so is the fact that it was digital. It would be odd if it had been recorded to analog. I liked it a lot in the day. I listened to it for the first time in years a couple of months ago, and I struggled with it a bit. But it's still way ahead of the predictable pop screeching of Ms. Nicks. Buckingham, in spite of his eccentricities, is the best part of that generation of Mac.

Tim

 

[garylkoh]

The first Soundstream recording was "The Mother of Us All with Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Stein" on New World Records in 1976. It was recorded on an early 37.5kHz version of the Soundstream recorder. At that time, the digital was supposed to be the backup to the analog, but after the big muckamucks at New World Records did an A/B comparison (Ethan, please don't ask if it was compared double blind) they decided to release the vinyl from the digital master.

In 1977, at the behest of Jack Renner of Telarc, Soundstream built a 50kHz 4-track recorder. The first session was Virgil Fox playing the 116-rank Ruffati organ in a church in California. The recordings were released as direct-to-disk by Crystal Clear records as The Fox Touch vols 1&2, and the digital was again backup. However, you can get vinyl from the digital back-up as the original direct-to-disk lacquers had deteriorated, and the albums re-issued from digital.

If you want to hear the difference, the "Limited Edition" version is sourced from digital. The original first pressing was direct-to-disk.

The first "audiophile" digital recording on Telarc was not Firebird. It was Frederick Fennell/Cleveland Symphonic Winds, Holst: Suite Nos. 1 and 2 / Handel: Music for Royal Fireworks/ Sousa: Stars: Marches, Fanfares and Others.

Jules Blumenthal and Bruce Rothaar who built the first Soundstream machines are Seattle-area folks, and they were kind enough to give a presentation on the early days of digital at the Pacific Northwest Audio Society.

See our newsletter for some pictures of the Soundstream recorder: http://www.audiosociety.org/audioletter/Audioletter May 2011.pdf

 

[RBFC]

Thanks, Gary. I had the Fennell LP as well, just couldn't remember which was earlier. Still had the big bass drum to test your turntable setup!

Lee

 

[Don Hills]

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.

I see. I misinterpreted what you said - I thought you were referring to the sound of the CD. In fact, you were referrring to the source from which the LP was mastered. Carry on...

I found this:
"We booked the Village Recorder in 1981 to cut tracks for Nightfly and decided to try the 3M digital machine. We ran a Studer A-80 24-track analog machine in parallel with the 3M for the test. After the band laid down a take we performed an a-b-c listening test. The analog and digital machines were played back in sync while the band played along live. We could compare the analog machine, the digital machine, and the live band. The closest sound to the live band was the 3M digital machine. We re-aligned the Studer and gave it one more chance. The 3M was the clear winner. We rolled the Studer out into the street, (just kidding) and did the rest of the recording on the 3M 32-track machine. When it came time to mix, we mixed to the 3M 4-track machine." - Roger Nichols, EQ Magazine, August 2001

Also see here:
http://granatino.com/sdresource/18crime.htm

So. Which version do you have?

 

[j_j]

When digital audio recording started out, some of the people were very much up on the demands of the technology, such as filtering, dithering, and waveform control in the DAC (see old 3-rivers papers for that).

Some people adamantly rejected dithering with a loud shout of "If you think I'm going to add noise to my audio, you are a (deleted deleted) idiot". Some people still seem to be unsure of why one must dither BEFORE quantization. One group I won't name didn't understand the difference between dithering before quantization and dithering after quantization (ouch!).

As far as filters, there were a variety used at the start, most of them high-order elliptics, which have some very interesting problems in their internal signal values (active filters, with large gains, etc, in the middle of the filter), and a few who used 2x oversampling (or 4x) with a digital filter that was frankly not sufficient at the time.

So initial digital audio recordings were all over the map, some were good, some were ok, some were kind of scary.

The irony is that all of the necessary technical understanding was present from 1960's and 1970's work in telephony, and the understanding applied to audio in its entirety, the only differences being bit depth and sampling rate (both of which raise the hardware difficulty substantially, of course).

Even today, the relationship between Delta-Sigma (dsd among other things), PCM, and noise shaping seem to be less well understood than one would expect, despite a couple of 1970's papers and a book that make the relationships quite clear. This is not to say that no engineering work was required, much engineering work was in fact required, along with massive improvements in digital processors, for good Delta-Sigma (Candy and Condon's paper for instance) to be converted to PCM with standard binary values, for instance.

 

[Groucho]

Also see here:
http://granatino.com/sdresource/18crime.htm

Very interesting...

"When digital first came in, there were many formats being kicked around," McKaie tells ICE. "One of them was these oversized Scotch reels, digitally encoded analogs. That's what Steely Dan chose. Realizing their analog masters were deteriorating, they went in and remastered all the albums on these oversized, heavy-duty reels. When it came time to do the CDs, they said 'Use those,' so on the first go-around, they (MCA employees) did. Unfortunately, the oversized reels was one of the formats that lost. So when they did the second go-around of CDs, the studio (engineers) didn't have access to those machines: there are only a couple of places that do. So, having the original analog tapes, they probably just did what they thought was right and used those. Unfortunately, those original analogs don't sound as good as the digital transfers that the group did on the oversized analogs don't sound as good as the digital transfers that the group did on the oversized Scotch reels, because Steely Dan had really worked on them to get them right."

"Hence, the second CDs don't sound as good as the first, albeit they don't sound bad, and I've never had any complaints.

But doesn't something strike you as odd? If you're re-issuing a CD, why go through the rigmarole of messing about with tapes etc. when you've already got the bit-identical digital version in your hands in the form of the original CD? Why not just rip it? It seems they were still very much in the analogue mindset.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Very interesting...



But doesn't something strike you as odd? If you're re-issuing a CD, why go through the rigmarole of messing about with tapes etc. when you've already got the bit-identical digital version in your hands in the form of the original CD? Why not just rip it? It seems they were still very much in the analogue mindset.

Many still are.

Tim

 

[garylkoh]

Also see here:
http://granatino.com/sdresource/18crime.htm

So. Which version do you have?

Thanks, Don. That was very interesting. The 3M machine ran at 50kHz and was extremely unreliable. So, I'm not surprised that it's a "lost format". Even if they put the perfect digital copies on those tapes, I wonder if there are any machines left that could read those tapes.

Otherwise, all re-issues since the article was written (or until the last 3M machine died) would be from the deteriorated analog masters.

 

[Don Hills]

'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!

I think you mis-spelled "Moderation".

 

[mep]

Many still are.

Tim

And that is not a bad place to be. Who thinks that you can take an analog master tape and flip it to digital and think that somehow the digital version of an analog recording will be better sounding?

 

[Groucho]

And that is not a bad place to be. Who thinks that you can take an analog master tape and flip it to digital and think that somehow the digital version of an analog recording will be better sounding?

Clearly not... however 5 years later (in reality 5 microseconds), the analogue tape will have deteriorated while the digital version won't. And the analogue playback may be on a $100,000 machine perfectly aligned, cleaned, de-magnetised and set up by experts. I will get an almost perfect copy of the tape and the machine, to play on my own system.

 

[Bruce B]

however 5 years later (in reality 5 microseconds), the analogue tape will have deteriorated while the digital version won't.

Not according to Bernie Grundman mastering...

 

[Groucho]

Not according to Bernie Grundman mastering...

Why what does he say about it?

 

[Bruce B]

Why what does he say about it?

"every time an audio digital file is copied, it loses ambience" Paul Grundman

 

[j_j]

"every time an audio digital file is copied, it loses ambience" Paul Grundman

That, of course, would indicate that there was a device malfunction, if actually true for direct digital copies. If a gain is applied, maybe. If processing is applied, maybe. If it's a direct bit for bit copy, no, never. Any such evidence shows that you didn't have a bit for bit copy, and there is something broken.

 

[j_j]

And that is not a bad place to be. Who thinks that you can take an analog master tape and flip it to digital and think that somehow the digital version of an analog recording will be better sounding?

The digital copy should not sound better. If you take something recorded in one medium, pass it through another, and then it sounds better, the second medium did something beyond a mere copy.

So your digital copy of an analog master should NOT sound any different, better or worse. Of course, good luck getting the analog tape to play exactly the same twice.

 

[Bruce B]

That, of course, would indicate that there was a device malfunction, if actually true for direct digital copies. If a gain is applied, maybe. If processing is applied, maybe. If it's a direct bit for bit copy, no, never. Any such evidence shows that you didn't have a bit for bit copy, and there is something broken.

nothing was done. he states that a bit for bit copy from say, a usb stick to a hard drive would render a different sound. sounds like Bernie Grundman mastering is inherently 'broken'.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

"every time an audio digital file is copied, it loses ambience" Paul Grundman

This says that either Mr. Grundman does not know what a bit perfect copy is, or he is as subject to bias as the rest of us. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and choose the latter. In any case, revered audio engineers who believe in audio myths are nothing new.

Tim