Examples of early digital recordings?

[mep]

Yeah, I was just fooling around. What's truly amusing and has been revisited in this thread, is the fact that "Brothers in Arms," an audiophile touchstone for many, was an early DDD. You can like or dislike Brothers in Arms; it's a bit lush for my tastes. But all the things early digital gets accused of on audiophile forums - harsh, edgy, fatigueing, brittle, analytical, yadayada: It is none of those. Not even close. Warm, expansive, rich...lush...I think I already said that. Of course it had Knopfler and Neil Dorfsman, and on its way to a 24-track digital Sony, Brother in Arms went through a Neve 8078. That certainly didn't hurt. As memory serves, it even sounded good on vinyl.

The point is that it wasn't early digital recording and reproduction technology that sucked. It was early digital recording and reproduction executionthat sucked. If anything demonstrates that it is B i A. Though there are many jazz, classical and new age recordings that demonstrate it as well.

Tim

I have owned the Brothers in Arms LP since it was first released many, many years ago. Of all the adjectives I could think of to describe this LP, lush wouldn't be one of them. It doesn't find its way on to my table very often, certainly nothing like the frequency I play their first LP that my dog Clyde (god rest his soul) took a chomp out of the corner of the cover. Another early digital LP that sounded pretty damn good was Donald Fagan Nightfly. My favorite cut is Ruby Ruby. The more resolving your system is, the more you can hear the digital roots of the recording. Kind of like looking at a pretty *blonde* until you notice she's not really a blonde after all. She is still real pretty, it's just her roots are showing.

 

[mep]

No, it was very much a straw man argument. If you don't understand that, I don't know what else to tell you.

--Ethan

You love to argue for arguments sake and you have a need to always be right. Anyone who goes back and reads my original statement that you said was a straw man argument would know your comment is nonsense. What I said was merely an observation of how music is being recorded today (compressed) and most music being released today is digital. Again, the music being released isn't compressed because it is digital, it's compressed because it was done intentionally. It wouldn't have mattered if it was released on analog, it would still be compressed. I never stated that digital is the cause of compressed recordings. You can take your straw man back with you to the land of Oz.

 

[Bill Hart]

Somewhere on my shelves i have a copy of Karen Gibbs Window Panes on vinyl. I think this was a pretty early digital recording, haven't played it in decades.

Postscript: A little intra-web research suggests that the record mentioned was only digitally mastered, but it was an early one. Here's an interesting article: http://arpjournal.com/2140/soundstr...rcial-digital-recording-in-the-united-states/

 

[NorthStar]

Early Digital | With Pre-Emphasis (Emphasis)

You have probably heard of, and might even have some of those early "digital" CDs with Pre-Emphasis encoding (Flag).

My older Denon CD player DCD-1500MKII (circa 1987-88) has a De-Emphasis restorer/processor/filter, able to read the flag of those CDs,
with a De-Emphasis light that comes up when playing back those. ...A filter for higher SNR (Signal-to-Noise-Ratio).

Here are some of those early CDs from my music collection with that Pre-Emphasis flag (recorded or mastered in such; by Nimbus for example):

* Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms | 9 25264-2 (1985)
* Vangelis - Opera Sauvage | 829 663-2 Y-1 (1986)
* The Beatles - Abbey Road | CP35-3016
* XTC - Oranges and Lemons | CDV 2581
* Barbra Streisand - Greatest Hits Volume 2 | 35DP 161
* Ultravox - Vienna | CCD 1296
* Tangerine Dream - Exit | CDV 2212
* Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells | CDV 2001
* Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town | 32DP 351

...And I have few more of those early digital recording/masterings.

=> http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Pre-emphasis

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I have owned the Brothers in Arms LP since it was first released many, many years ago. Of all the adjectives I could think of to describe this LP, lush wouldn't be one of them. It doesn't find its way on to my table very often, certainly nothing like the frequency I play their first LP that my dog Clyde (god rest his soul) took a chomp out of the corner of the cover. Another early digital LP that sounded pretty damn good was Donald Fagan Nightfly. My favorite cut is Ruby Ruby. The more resolving your system is, the more you can hear the digital roots of the recording. Kind of like looking at a pretty *blonde* until you notice she's not really a blonde after all. She is still real pretty, it's just her roots are showing.

I actually listened to it after this morning's conversation. I'd still call it lush, warm and spacious. I'd add that it has a deeply quiet background, that really helps a very delicate, dynamic mix reveal itself. And what is revealed looks like a natural blonde to me. With that said, I listen to the first album more myself. It's not half the recording (though it takes a very resolving system to know that ), but the material is great. My favorite, though, is Making Movies.

Tim

 

[andromedaaudio]

Another brother in arms fan, + 1

 

[Groucho]

Listening to a few of the 1970s Telarc recordings on SPotify Premium e.g. http://open.spotify.com/track/129xWbNhE2RHJfWbT2GtsD and they sound pretty good!

This article is interesting: http://arpjournal.com/2140/soundstr...rcial-digital-recording-in-the-united-states/

In this case, the Soundstream recorder was tested as a backup solution with the opportunity to make comparisons with the analogue master recordings after the fact. In many cases, the Soundstream recordings eventually became the primary masters used for release either because of their fidelity, or in some cases, because of their durability.

...the Soundstream system was inherently compatible with the recording of classical music for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was portable and reliable on location at concert halls around the world. Secondly, Soundstream’s analogue circuitry was transformerless, permitting a low noise floor and wide dynamic range, ideal for both delicate musical passages and thunderous crescendos.29 Thirdly, an orchestral ensemble is balanced or ‘mixed’ by the conductor using the dynamics of the live performance, the acoustics of the auditorium and by the recording engineer who positions the microphones. Consequently, a pair of stereo tracks was often all that was required to achieve the ideal reproduction.

While the advantages of digital recording may have been obvious for those seeking to produce orchestral recordings for a classical music audience, Soundstream had not predicted the reactions of users who might wish to preserve their analogue sound for aesthetic reasons. Simon Frith (1996, 25) has stated that during the introduction of the compact disc, its detractors argued that ‘digital sound storage was actually “unfaithful” to those musical forms (like rock n’roll) which were essentially “impure”’. If we agree that, in a practical sense, sound only exists in a recorded form, then as Frith says, ‘the distinction between the noise that is necessary and the noise that is unneccesary…is an aesthetic as well as a technical judgement’ (1996, 235). Indeed, it was not only musicians who demonstrated their commitment to these kinds of aesthetic decisions, but also recording engineers (Sax and Archibald: 1983). The most vocal opponent of these advances at the time was Doug Sax of Sheffield Lab, a highly respected mastering engineer and an expert in direct-to-disk vinyl recordings. Greg Milner devotes a few pages to this period in his book Perfecting Sound Forever (2009, 206), noting that Sax helped form a group known as M.A.D (Musicians Against Digital). Sax was extremely critical of what he perceived to be weaknesses in digital audio, especially the sound of early compact discs in the early 1980s.

 

[MylesBAstor]

I have owned the Brothers in Arms LP since it was first released many, many years ago. Of all the adjectives I could think of to describe this LP, lush wouldn't be one of them. It doesn't find its way on to my table very often, certainly nothing like the frequency I play their first LP that my dog Clyde (god rest his soul) took a chomp out of the corner of the cover. Another early digital LP that sounded pretty damn good was Donald Fagan Nightfly. My favorite cut is Ruby Ruby. The more resolving your system is, the more you can hear the digital roots of the recording. Kind of like looking at a pretty *blonde* until you notice she's not really a blonde after all. She is still real pretty, it's just her roots are showing.

I agree with you Mark. If BIA is lush, I'd hate to see thin. While the music is great, it's one of the worst sounding Dire Strait albums. In fact, lush is hardly a quality that one associates with rock recordings.

 

[mep]

I agree with you Mark. If BIA is lush, I'd hate to see thin. While the music is great, it's one of the worst sounding Dire Strait albums. In fact, lush is hardly a quality that one associates with rock recordings.

Maybe Tim's system is romantic sounding and thus the lushness? If we want to call Steely Dan rock music, than I think a lot of Steely Dan recordings are lush sounding. BIA-not so much. I do think it has a digital edge to it just like Nightfly does.

 

[Ethan Winer]

You love to argue for arguments sake and you have a need to always be right.

But I am right, this time anyway. Here is exactly what you wrote:

if people did buy music being made today based on measurements, they certainly wouldn't want to buy today's digital recordings that have been compressed so badly there is no dynamic range.

One straw man is claiming a relation between a recording medium that measures well yet sounds poor. Another straw man is the implication that all digital recordings are overly compressed. Have you heard every digital recording? I didn't think so. I have some amazing sounding classical music concerts (and Blu-rays and DVDs) that are DDD. I also have lots of pop music that sounds excellent and is not overly compressed.

--Ethan

 

[mep]

Ethan-Another myth debunked by you. There is no problem with much of today's music being overly compressed. It's all a silly myth. If you carefully read the words that I wrote above, you will clearly see that I didn't state all digital recordings were compressed. You can try and twist my words around to fit your argument which you clearly have, but it's time for the Tin Man to take the Scarecrow back to Oz.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I agree with you Mark. If BIA is lush, I'd hate to see thin. While the music is great, it's one of the worst sounding Dire Strait albums. In fact, lush is hardly a quality that one associates with rock recordings.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Brothers in Arms one of the worst-sounding Dire Straits albums? You 're going to have to disagree with a lot of people on that one, Myles. Tim

 

[NorthStar]

'Love Over Gold' ?

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Here you go. You can start the long list of people who will probably think that statement is absurd here.

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/search.php?searchid=1583226

Tim

 

[NorthStar]

Ethan-Another myth debunked by you. There is no problem with much of today's music being overly compressed. It's all a silly myth. If you carefully read the words that I wrote above, you will clearly see that I didn't state all digital recordings were compressed. You can try and twist my words around to fit your argument which you clearly have, but it's time for the Tin Man to take the Scarecrow back to Oz.

I saw, not long ago on 3D Blu-ray, the prequel to 'The Wizard of Oz', and it was as magical than it was compressed/decompressed (the film) at the same time.

* Good stuff in it, picture & sound wise. ...Blu-ray is not compressed as much as early digital CDs. Twenty years from now, yes it will.

 

[NorthStar]

Here you go. You can start the long list of people who will probably think that statement is absurd here.

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/search.php?searchid=1583226

Tim

Link has "no matches" Tim.

 

[microstrip]

(...) I have some amazing sounding classical music concerts (and Blu-rays and DVDs) that are DDD. (...)

Nice occasion to ask again for a list of those amazing sounding classical music concerts in CD format that are DDD that you referred more than once and never revealed ...

IMHO this debate has no answer - we had great DDD classical recordings from the early 80s from Decca for example, but many DDD recordings of this period of other labels were poor - I remember some Deutsche Grammophon sounding miserable. How can you separate if it was due to deficiency of the encoders used in the recording or bad sound engineering?

 

[Groucho]

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

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.

 

[mep]

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.

Yowza!

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Link has "no matches" Tim.

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

Tim