SQ of old LPs.....

[SONDEKNZ]

“…The only comparatively new (1994) piece of vinyl I own that is really excellent is Shellac's "At Action Park". All the other reissues (Slits, Wire, Bowie, etc) are middling at best. Some of them are really pretty bad…”

Interesting…

We have this original English first pressing of BOWIE, HUNKY DORY on RCA Victor and despite a few crackles and pops - no real serious flaws - it does sound truly awesome.

That said, our mint 2016 PARLOPHONE EU reissue of the same album sounds extremely good - and is utterly silent. I was preparing to be disappointed, but was most impressed.

The original pressing still takes the prize, but I don't think anyone buying the reissue would find much to complain about. It's still better than the streaming versions knocking around.

 

[Hazelberry]

The only comparatively new (1994) piece of vinyl I own that is really excellent is Shellac's "At Action Park".

Shellacs record quality is superb. The band must subsidise them as I imagine they are/were very expensive to have made to Albinis satisfaction.

 

[retseldrib]

The 1980-84 Beatles reissues are exceptional - straight from the master tapes. The 1976/ 77 Elvis Indianapolis re-issues are excellent too.

 

[paulfromcamden]

Shellacs record quality is superb.

I suspect having a genius recording engineer and a superb mastering engineer in the band helped immensely.

Tony has often made the point that mastering has a bigger impact on sound than format. I wonder how often mastering engineers are left trying to do the best they can with a mix that's already overcooked and squashed with no headroom.

 

[Tony L]

I wonder how often mastering engineers are left trying to do the best they can with a mix that's already overcooked and squashed with no headroom.

Very often, especially if the record is compiled from different sessions. An example would the The Smiths Meat Is Murder; the stuff recorded at Amazon in Liverpool sounds totally different to the stuff recorded in whatever the other studio was, yet the mastering engineer has to get it all to work as a whole. In that case they managed, it is a great album and sounds decent too. This obviously gets exponentially worse with multi-artist compilation albums where the best recorded tracks inevitably have to be squashed down to match the worst. I really dislike compilation albums!

 

[foxwelljsly]

Yes. For me it's early MFSL's pressed on 'super vinyl' in Japan (can by now be sorted under 'old'). Don't think the super vinyl has that much to do with, just the general quality of everything(?) done in Japan.

Now, someone will pop up and argue that the half speed masters sound bad. I'm ready!

I'm a bit of an analogue purist when it comes to vinyl and fail to see the point of a record that's not full AAA.

 

[foxwelljsly]

Personally - i think that accepted record grading system that most sellers go by is absolute sh!*t.

I purchased a led zep 4 plum red one Christmas, from eBay, alcohol involved I admit; and although it passed at the visual tests, and described as whatever, the disc has a slight low-level crackle all through.

The only test I'll take is play tested / but even then, you rely on the honesty and judgement of the seller...

Handlng a disc in person is really the best way to take a chance, I feel...

I have no problems with recpords being accurately visually graded if that is made clear in the description. But sellers doing this should not flinch when buyers insist on a P & P paid return if it play grades a lot lower.

What really grinds my gears is woefullly over optimistic visual grading. Anyone doing that, even if they give me a full refund and let me keep the item, is a complete time waster and is never going to get positive feedback.

 

[RJohan]

I'm a bit of an analogue purist when it comes to vinyl and fail to see the point of a record that's not full AAA.

Well, the EARLY mfsl from the late 1970's - early 1980's where most probably 'full AAA' as nothing else hardly existed. The ones they are doing today is much worse when it comes to pressing quality and, IMHO, hardly worth the money (ADA or not). The Americans invented the Long Playing record 75 years ago, but has so far not come to grasp of simple things like where to put the center hole...

 

[flatpopely]

I'm a bit of an analogue purist when it comes to vinyl and fail to see the point of a record that's not full AAA.

Try a first pressing of ‘Solitude Standing’.

 

[Tony L]

…or Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly!

PS Or anything by say ZTT Records, ‘80s Kate Bush etc which was knocked up on an 8 or 12 bit Fairlight!

 

[hockman]

Agree fully.

I was similarly skeptical about early (e.g. 1980s) digital recordings. I've changed my view. For example ECM was already using digital recording then. Many sound remarkably good. Unlike consumer standard digital of that era, digital recording was already sophisticated and the recordings stand up very well.

 

[SONDEKNZ]

Back in the early 1980s, the word DIGITAL was a marketeers dream buzz-word. Everything DIGITAL was better... right?

From what I have been able to understand, the early SONY "DIGITAL" recorders - SONY PCM1610, PCM1630 etc. - were based upon VHS Video recorders of the day... which of course, were really ANALOG devices. You can still hear the tape hiss on all of these "DIGITAL" outings.

IMHO therefore, the earliest "DIGITAL" recordings were some of the best ANALOG recordings ever made! My ears support this view when I hear the mountain of sublime recordings made on such devices throughout the 1980s and beyond. Even well into the 2000s, these early SONY machines were being used for such excellent recordings as:

Meanwhile, the "REAL DIGITAL" recordings began popping-up in the 1990s, and they were truly dreadful. Here is a sad example:

Again, IMHO the earliest "DIGITAL" recordings were some of the best ANALOG recordings ever made. Here's a few more:

This also explains why DIGITAL recordings started out great - got a whole lot worse - then eventually matured into an acceptable listening format that is good enough to truly compete with ANALOG recording processes.

By 2010 - or thereabouts - we started hearing all that real digital recording is capable of. This incredible recording, for example:
(I'm 99% sure this is a REAL DIGITAL recording...)

See if you can find this last track on a hi-res streaming platform and prepare to be bowled over!

 

[RJohan]

Back in the early 1980s, the word DIGITAL was a marketeers dream buzz-word. Everything DIGITAL was better... right?

From what I have been able to understand, the early SONY "DIGITAL" recorders - SONY PCM1610, PCM1630 etc. - were based upon VHS Video recorders of the day... which of course, were really ANALOG devices. You can still hear the tape hiss on all of these "DIGITAL" outings.

?????????????????????????????

 

[flatpopely]

Sony used umatic recorders, not vhs.
I don’t know where to start with tape hiss!

 

[SONDEKNZ]

Sony used umatic recorders, not vhs.
I don’t know where to start with tape hiss!

Well, maybe I got the VHS bit wrong... I will need to research this new word: "umatic" and find out what its all about - and why SONY subsequently moved-on to newer and IMHO less enjoyable digital recording processes.

In any event, my ears still tell me that these early DIGITAL recordings are some of the best ever!

 

[paulfromcamden]

Back in the early 1980s, the word DIGITAL was a marketeers dream buzz-word. Everything DIGITAL was better... right?

From what I have been able to understand, the early SONY "DIGITAL" recorders - SONY PCM1610, PCM1630 etc. - were based upon VHS Video recorders of the day... which of course, were really ANALOG devices. You can still hear the tape hiss on all of these "DIGITAL" outings.

A hard disk is a magnetic medium. It doesn't make it analog.

 

[SONDEKNZ]

Sony used umatic recorders, not vhs.
I don’t know where to start with tape hiss!

WIKI SAYS...

"U-matic or 3⁄4-inch Type E Helical Scan[1][2] or SMPTE E[3] is an analogue recording videocassette format first shown by Sony in prototype in October 1969, and introduced to the market in September 1971. It was among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette, as opposed to the various reel-to-reel or open-reel formats of the time. The videotape is 3⁄4 in (19 mm) wide, so the format is often known as "three-quarter-inch" or simply "three-quarter", compared to open reel videotape formats in use, such as 1 in (25 mm) type C videotape and 2 in (51 mm) quadruplex videotape..."


Interesting.

 

[paulfromcamden]

WIKI SAYS...

"U-matic or 3⁄4-inch Type E Helical Scan[1][2] or SMPTE E[3] is an analogue recording videocassette format first shown by Sony in prototype in October 1969, and introduced to the market in September 1971. It was among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette, as opposed to the various reel-to-reel or open-reel formats of the time. The videotape is 3⁄4 in (19 mm) wide, so the format is often known as "three-quarter-inch" or simply "three-quarter", compared to open reel videotape formats in use, such as 1 in (25 mm) type C videotape and 2 in (51 mm) quadruplex videotape..."


Interesting.

Scroll down go the section titled 'Digital audio'.

 

[hp1]

I think one of the biggest variations of sound quality on like for like vinyl is the number of units pressed on the stamper.

 

[SONDEKNZ]

Scroll down go the section titled 'Digital audio'.

Yep...

"U-matic was also used for the storage of digital audio data. Most digital audio recordings from the 1980s were recorded on U-matic tape via a Sony PCM-1600, -1610, or -1630 PCM adaptor. These devices accepted stereo analogue audio, digitized it, and generated "pseudo video" from the bits, storing 96 bits—three stereo pairs of 16-bit samples—as bright and dark regions along each scan line. (On a monitor the "video" looked like vibrating checkerboard patterns.) This could be recorded on a U-matic recorder. This was the first system used for mastering audio compact discs in the early 1980s. The famous compact disc 44.1 kHz sampling rate was based on a best-fit calculation for PAL and monochrome NTSC video's horizontal line period and rate and U-matic's luminance bandwidth. On playback, the PCM adapter converted the light and dark regions back into bits. Glass masters for audio CDs were made via laser from the PCM-1600's digital output to a photoresist- or dye-polymer-coated disc. This method was common until the mid-1990s..."