advertisement


Old vinyl vs today's technology

H

hughmc2

pfm Member
I have no real preference between vinyl or cd. My Cd's are clean & convenient and my vinyl is music full of memories.

At the weekend I bought an LP from a charity shop ~ Frank Sinatra & the Count Basie Orchestra ( on Valiant label VS144 ). The missus loves the big band sound. Cost me £1

What came out of the speakers when I got it home just blew me away :eek:

Not the performance. The production !!! What did they know in 1963 that modern producers have forgotten ?

The drummer was almost "visible", the piano was, I kid you not, about 5 feet to the left of the left speaker. Nothing I have heard has ever portrayed a soundstage that wide. Sinatra was just right of centre and you could follow him as he moved across to the piano on one track. He was standing next to my turntable ! Everything was in it's own space.

I have over 300 CD's. Lots of different genres. Diana Krall, Melody Gardot, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Anna Netrebko, Sparks, Yael Naim etc.

None of them can hold a candle to the production and imagery on a 50 year old bit of vinyl. What happened ?
 
I have come across a few notable errors, such as Alice in Chains MTV unplugged, where Jerry Cantrell's voice is mastered into the centre along with Layne Staley's (and the harmonisation of their voices was key to the Alice in Chains sound). However, he was sat on the right (from the audience point of view) and his guitar is mastered there, with a clear 6-8ft between voice and guitar. It becomes a real problem when you watch the DVD.
 
In the 50s and 60s serious music recording, production, and cutting vinyl simply did not suffer fools. Likewise it almost demanded serious musicianship as a bum note would mean to redo it all.

Nowadays everyone with a laptop can record and produce music, even play it, as everything can be stitched together from individual notes.
 
Quite a lot happened over the years, but a few things were really important IMO.

I'd suggest that more care and attention was taken at the initial recording session to get things right, because the ability to correct and manipulate things later was a far cry from what we have today.

Secondly, tastes were different. I'd say that producers and labels had more of a house sound than is common today. You can often spot which label and which engineer was behind those early recordings because they carry a distinct signature.

Thirdly, with early stereo recording there was a degree of experimentation to exploit what was a new phenomenon. Lots of recordings from the 60s sound big, bold, wide and deep.

Fourth, there was virtually no personal listening, ie very few people used headphones and music tended to get played on the hi-fi, family stereo or record player. Production will no doubt have accounted for this in a way quite different to today.
 
Robert said:
Quite a lot happened over the years, but a few things were really important IMO.

I'd suggest that more care and attention was taken at the initial recording session to get things right, because the ability to correct and manipulate things later was a far cry from what we have today.

Secondly, tastes were different. I'd say that producers and labels had more of a house sound than is common today. You can often spot which label and which engineer was behind those early recordings because they carry a distinct signature.

Thirdly, with early stereo recording there was a degree of experimentation to exploit what was a new phenomenon. Lots of recordings from the 60s sound big, bold, wide and deep.

Fourth, there was virtually no personal listening, ie very few people used headphones and music tended to get played on the hi-fi, family stereo or record player. Production will no doubt have accounted for this in a way quite different to today.
Click to expand...

Excuse my ignorance on this but if I bought a CD of this album would that very wide & deep soundstage be carried over from the original to the new format ? Not saying I want to, just curious regarding the process.
 
hughmc2 said:
I have no real preference between vinyl or cd. My Cd's are clean & convenient and my vinyl is music full of memories.

At the weekend I bought an LP from a charity shop ~ Frank Sinatra & the Count Basie Orchestra ( on Valiant label VS144 ). The missus loves the big band sound. Cost me £1

What came out of the speakers when I got it home just blew me away :eek:

Not the performance. The production !!! What did they know in 1963 that modern producers have forgotten ?

The drummer was almost "visible", the piano was, I kid you not, about 5 feet to the left of the left speaker. Nothing I have heard has ever portrayed a soundstage that wide. Sinatra was just right of centre and you could follow him as he moved across to the piano on one track. He was standing next to my turntable ! Everything was in it's own space.

I have over 300 CD's. Lots of different genres. Diana Krall, Melody Gardot, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Anna Netrebko, Sparks, Yael Naim etc.

None of them can hold a candle to the production and imagery on a 50 year old bit of vinyl. What happened ?
Click to expand...



Hugh, you are correct, things have gone down hill. In fact, this hobby is just a shadow of its formal self in so many ways. It is most apparent when you listen to those old records.

Louballoo
 
Add analogue recording and mastering to the above great points.

And a shorter signal path, newer recordings go through a bigger mixing desk and lots of times.
 
hughmc2 said:
Excuse my ignorance on this but if I bought a CD of this album would that very wide & deep soundstage be carried over from the original to the new format ? Not saying I want to, just curious regarding the process.
Click to expand...

It's certainly possible but it depends on how the transfer to CD has been handled.
However, there are certain characteristics common to vinyl - largely euphonic additions and losses - which are also responsible for a different sound, even where every effort has been made to ensure the transfer is faithful. This is why trying to make one medium sound the same as another is pointless. You can narrow the gap on the replay hardware side but never close it.
 
hughmc2 said:
What did they know in 1963 that modern producers have forgotten ?
Click to expand...

Largely, microphone technique.

They used relatively few of them, positioned the band and singer in the studio to work well with that style of mic-ing. Everybody could hear everybody they needed to - the rhythm section would be closest to the piano and singer, the loud blowers furthest away. The unit was inherently self-balancing; no electric instruments to mess it up - or at least, if there were (say, electric guitar) the amplifier volume would be sent to blend correctly into the mix.

Musicians would stand and play louder for solos, thus bringing them out in the audio picture just enough to work; there are many examples from this era of this technique being over cooked - many Stan Getz records exhibit this type of problem.

The studios had a sound that lent itself to the style of music; not too dead, not too live - just nice. Some studios were considered so special they wouldn't even risk painting the walls for fear of messing up the sound. Fundamentally, everyone was there to capture a musical performance.

The difference today is nothing to do with technology; back then, record producers were like photographers. Today they have become more akin to sculptors.
 
Its digital vs analogue I am afraid. As soon as they started mastering using digital, quality went out of the window. You can listen to RVG mastered vinyl from the 50,s and 60's (when vinyl was made using an analogue process) and later from the 70's (when digital mastering was used) and there is no contest - the analogue process sounds better.
 
positive_energy said:
Its digital vs analogue I am afraid. As soon as they started mastering using digital, quality went out of the window. You can listen to RVG mastered vinyl from the 50,s and 60's (when vinyl was made using an analogue process) and later from the 70's (when digital mastering was used) and there is no contest - the analogue process sounds better.
Click to expand...

IME the difference between DMM Blue Notes and those of an earlier era (or indeed the Music Matters editions) is considerably less than the forward comparison between DMM and 'RVG' editions. It's not simply reducible to the technology, but more to do with the (bad) decisions of the mastering engineer.
 
It does indeed seem that much has been lost in the art of sound recording. Many late 50's and early 60's jazz recordings sound stunning!
I'm sure the reasons are many and most have been covered by previous posters...
I have myself made recording of live music with an identical signal going to a pro reel to reel recorder and also to a 2496 digital set up. On replaying it I was amazed just how large was the superiority of the analogue sound from the R to R. I think there is more to it than just this though!
 
If I record my turntable digitally the replay sounds exactly like the TT - to the point where they cannot be separated. I seriously doubt that if I took the output from a CD player and used to to produce a vinyl record, the replay would sound identical to the CD.

But that's a side issue and its the decisions made by those making the recording and mastering that overwhelm.
 
Robert said:
If I record my turntable digitally the replay sounds exactly like the TT - to the point where they cannot be separated. I seriously doubt that if I took the output from a CD player and used to to produce a vinyl record, the replay would sound identical to the CD.

But that's a side issue and its the decisions made by those making the recording and mastering that overwhelm.
Click to expand...

If I do the same the digital copy of the vinyl is very obviously inferior!
 
what label was it? edit sorry valiant - was this Sinatra's label?

most of the better lp's I have are the older RCA

Give the engineers their due & name them
 
Arkless Repairs said:
If I do the same the digital copy of the vinyl is very obviously inferior!
Click to expand...

Then you need to upgrade your processor ;)

We do this as a party trick at Hi-FI shows to demonstrate the transparency of digital ........ nobody can tell direct from digitally processed!
 
Trouble is its probably exactly the same sort of pro 96/24 recorder that was used to A/D a lot of the original CD masters.

Digital technology has moved on in leaps and bounds since the 1980's and now you can easily and cheaply own a digital setup which would trounce the best studio kit of that era.

There's another thread on the go about original vs remastered CD's and its all tied up with the same issues. If its AAD its all down to the quality of the mastering and the equipment used. A lot of remasters post about 1997 seem to leave the vinyl version for dead, whereas a lot of earlier ones don't.

You also get issues with degradation of analogue masters between when they were first A/D'd on crappy 80's kit and now when we have better kit.

The result is that its all a bit hit and miss from the consumer's point of view though an increasingly large proportion of material now sounds better on CD.

Ironic that the CD format has come good just as it's about to become as obsolete as its vinyl predecessor!
 
sounds a little bit like we have more than enough technology to repeat what was done in '63 but not the craft or insight. ( reminds me of X-factor :D )

I have Melody Gardot's One & Only Thrill and whilst the "live from paris" disc is very, very good it never escapes the confines of the area between the speakers. So no matter how well recorded, it is not as convincing as the Sinatra LP.

Pretty sure its not my CDP that is to blame because I have great sounding LPs from more contemporary artists like Sting, Everything But The Girl, Chris Issak that are the same. Crystal clear and a joy to listen to but stuck in that 3m gap. Deep but not wide.

Same turntable, same stylus, same speakers. but now shown to be a sadly incomplete portayal of the performance.

My God, how good would my Diana Krall sound if it was on the Valiant label !
 
I find that most people here are already dumping all their CD collection's for the sake of their beloved 128 mp3! :|
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top