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Bop Till You Drop

davidsrsb

davidsrsb

pfm Member
I got Ry Cooders Bop Till You Drop on vinyl when it first came out and I could hear some of the notorious digital nasties of one of the first digitally produced albums.
I just bought an iTunes download and it does not sound at all bad, with a very high dynamic range, so I don't think it has been messed about with.
There are a few places with digital clipping, but many notes are 20db below full scale, very low for those very early 16 bit ADCs

Interesting that AAC sounds better than analog
 
Love the album on LP and CD
Quality sounds great to me. Being the first digital LP that is very surprising
 
The "digital" sound on the vinyl is funnily enough part of its attraction to me - it has a unique sound.

I think given Ry Cooder's other more "recent work" such as 'A Meeting By The River' with engineering and equipment from valve guru Tim de Paravicini, it is an interesting contrast
 
Working my way through favourite albums, alpha of course !
:)
Mr. Cooder will be up soon with all of his
Be good to compare recordings on the system which has had quite a few upgrades since he was here
 
Always sounded kinda "zippy" to me. I bet people who like the sound of this album also like "Stop Making Sense".
 
I remember back at the time that Ry was not pleased with the LP sound. Those early ADCs were not very good and the engineers were learning to get input levels right
 
Just about any other Ry Cooder album sounds better.
But it has some great tracks on it. And the slightly weird zippy sound is part of its sonic signature. About my favourite Cooder album. Live on Air is really good too and not well known.
 
I bought it when originally released and thought something was add about the treble. A great album musically though.
 
Quite agree about the "digitism" on Bop till you Drop. Always found it hard work to listen to on vinyl. Way too Harsh.

Into the Purple Valley and Chicken Skin Music sound wonderful though as does Jazz.
 
I remember when Bop came out Ry was interviewed and slagged off his own 'Jazz' LP of the previous year - one of the nicest analogue recordings around and used by Russ Andrews as a demo LP (after I played it for him in the early 80s!).
Ry then criticised his own digital recordings, reverting to analogue midway through recording The Slide Area, which is one of the reasons that LP sounds strange. Personally I like all of it (and Borderline). Brilliant playing from David Lindley (as usual).
 
I ran some of the iTunes tracks through Audacity and some of them have an unexpected narrow peak around 18kHz. This is way beyond my hearing now, but would cause tracking problems and intermodulation on vinyl, especially with MM cartridges
 
Donald Fagen's The Nightfly was recorded using the same 3M system (which fudged 16bits but had a 50kHz limit if I recall) - funny how Bop has this bad vibe associated with its 'digital nature' yet Nightfly is regarded as one of the best recordings period - could be the engineering and not the system.
 
I have the original US mastered Bop and a UK mastered Borderline. The former sounds good to me and nothing like some of the descriptions here - it sounds pretty smooth to my ears while Borderline sound horrid - weird tonality and what sounds like distortion. Perhaps thats where the differences lie.
 
Nightfly is generally mastered much louder than Bop, only the last track Walk Between Raindrops shows some 18 kHz
The entire Nightfly shows a dip around 4 kHz and peak around 6 kHz - It could easily have sounded sibilant

An interesting comparison, pointing at the recording engineer messing up on Bop
 
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