Yeah, listening is a skill that you can develop and improve, and people forget that lol. Just because you have high end gear doesn’t mean you are a good listener
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I was referring to the mastering when I said different pressings can be dramatically different. I should have been more clear. The mastering if a recording involves creative decisions that affect the final sound of a recording. I don’t know how often people search out particular releases of a FLAC file based on who mastered the recording, or if it is even possible to track down that information. I definitely have looked for different releases of certain CD titles to get a mastering I was looking for, but I don’t think most people bother.
With vinyl, it is very common to look for a title that has been mastered by a particular engineer, since the sound quality can be so different. There are more creative decisions that go into the mastering process for vinyl than for digital mediums. Cutting the lacquer is an art form by itself and there are a handful of engineers in the World who are better than all the rest. If the recording is mastered at 1/2 speed, there are even fewer engineers who are good at it. People don’t spend big bucks on Mobile Fidelity, or Analogue Productions pressings for no reason. They sound quite different. They hire the best engineers to cut the records and use companies like RTI to press the vinyl, because their quality control and substrate quality is much better than average.
A classic example is the original mastering of Led Zeppelin II done by Bob Ludwig. It was a “hot” master, meaning the dynamics of the recording had a high amplitude and on some lower quality turntables could cause the needle to jump out of the groove. As it happened, the record company owner’s daughter had a mediocre record player and the first pressing caused her record to skip. The record company’s owner made them scrap the original mastering and reduce the dynamics, creating a flatter sound with reduced bass and lighter transients (a.k.a.boring). The original master only had a few thousand records pressed and they are now sought after as a holy grail for many record collectors since the sound is so much better.
I do that for different releases for some cd’s where the different releases have different mastering lol, but with modern releases it’s somewhat pointless.
A long time ago, I used the software nwavguy suggested to AB test myself.
What I found is that 128kbps and lower is easy for me to notice, 150 is VERY hard, but I might tell if I try really hard and 200+ is impossible. Keep in mind, this was encoded from a wav, so as far as the lossy went, it was the best quality it could be getting at each bitrate. My hearing is average (tops at 16-17k), but my brain tends to pay more attention than normal to details meaning for songs that I know VERY well (which I did tried to AB on them), I tend to remember more information than average.
The point I am trying to make is that it’s insanely hard to tell if not impossible. I still take no chances and listen to flac/alac if readily available (or I make mine from wav), but if the only thing I had was a 320 kbps mp3 converted from the source wav, then it’s fine and I won’t complain (in fact, I frequently was surprised at the bitrate of several VGM I heard because when I learned the bitrate and it was lower than ideal, I would have never guessed).
One other thing too is that I have very sensitive hearing and also am still young.
I remember I went to a hearing testing center when I was young, and the lady testing me put me in a room with headphones on. She said to press a button when I heard something. The beeps got progressively lower and lower. I was still able to hear though. Then she came through on the headphones telling me to only press the button if I could hear it. This happened several times. I could definitely hear it though. She actually put on the test me not hearing those extremely faint sounds though, because she thought I was joking and being silly.
So yeah. Sensitive. It has positives and negatives honestly lol.
How does somebody know if a digital download is the best mastering? I don’t know how to tell if I buy and download Miles Davis, “Kind of Blue,” if the FLAC file was mastered from the oriiginal source tapes (it should be for the price!) or a CD, or an MP3 or if it was even remastered for FLAC. They probably use the master created for the CD release I would guess. I feel like the source material for digital downloads and streaming is often opaque to the listener. I wish there was more info available.
People go and listen to the differences. Steve hoffman form is a good way to find info on that stuff (and other sites too)
Typically it depends on where you buy a track for what you are getting, with cd’s its easier to track the mastering, where a digital download site it can get fairly sketchy.
Also do you own any DCC Gold disks (just curious)? Or audio fidelity gold? I have a few of both and they are pretty sweet, along with SACD’s and some hd dvd or bluray remasters
I also jumped on a chance to buy a CD of the complete soundtrack masterings of some of my favorite animated movies. I can tell a difference especially in the remaster of Circle Of Life from the Lion King Soundtrack when comparing the original release to the Walt Disney Legacy Collection release. The original, the vocals are way more forward, and the instruments are dialed back. In the remaster, it sounds more blanced, with the instruments being easier to pick up, and also the wind instruments, especially flutes, are way more forward.
I think many can relate to preferring one recording of a song over another. Sometimes I even prefer live recordings of my favorite band over the studio recordings. They sometimes sound more alive and vivid.
For sure there is often mastering information on CD liner notes.
I dont have any DCC titles, or Audio Fidelity but I have several Mobile Fidelity gold discs. I find them to be good, but not amazing. I have quite a few HDCD titles and they sound really good. Blue by Joni Mitchell is great. I only have one SACD, but my SACD playback is not working properly and I am only getting the CD quality. That said, the CD quality layer sounds fantastic.
Ah yeah MFSL remasters are pretty good too
Sure, but I don’t think that’s Vinyl specific at all.
CD’s get remastered to, and unfortunately not always for the better.
I’ll use you’re Led Zeppelin II example, since I own at least 4 copies of every LedZeppelin track, the original CD masters was a direct pull off the master tapes and like many early CD masters was terrible because of it. Full of annoying tape hiss in the audible range. It sounded notably worse than a decent vinyl copy on a decent turntable, even on very expensive CD players at the time, (I had access to though didn’t own a Cambridge CD1 which was considered the best CD player made at the time).
All the tracks were later remastered for the Led Zeppelin box set, they sounded a lot better, but a lot of compression was used dramatically decreasing the dynamic range, so now a different listening experience to the original.
Those remastered tracks were then re-released on remastered albums.
And they’ve all been remastered since then.
I don’t even have an opinion on the most recent remasters, I don’t really remember what the original Vinyl sounded like, so I don’t feel qualified to compare them.
I get snobbish about some recordings, the Digital Machine Head by Deep Purple remaster really lost something on some of the tracks. But for the most part if a master isn’t just plain bad, I can get past it and enjoy the music.
It is interesting that we don’t really discus the quality of remasters relative to each other on Digital.
Exactly. CD masterings have equally different sound, but I don’t think many people bother to listen to more than one version. A lot of CDs have compressed the dynamic range as well, with brickwalled sound designed to be louder. Ironically, many vinyl albums have a larger dynamic range than their CD version even though vinyl has an inherently narrower dynamic range. DCC as mentioned by MON, mostly used the analog masters to create their CDs and When Hoffman went to Audio Fidelity, they began mastering specifically for CD, ending up with a darker background and less tape hiss, etc… These days, most music is mastered for digital first. You probably wont hear a remaster of a recent artist’s title for a few years, unless maybe they do a vinyl release.
Yes, I think I’ve mentioned before.
The big change in CD masters was mastering to the formats strengths instead of mastering the same way as had been done for Vinyl, for decades prior.
And I agree I think the biggest loss going from Vinyl to CD is the reduction in Dynamic range, even though the format ought yo have inherently more.
I think talking about the past here is informational but it doesn’t really speak to the present. The present, even if vinyl is being used as your medium, it’s all recorded digitally.
Can someone address my original question about vinyl wear and tear from being played a lot? Has that improved? Is there new material used that’s more resistant to damage, dust etc?
I’m curious if technology advancements of the last 30 years have actually been implemented on the medium itself?
All else being equal, I’ve got to think that a well recorded, well mastered high bit rate digital recording today is better than anything there’s been before. Phoned is schlock is always going to be present so I’m talking purely apples to apples. The best analogue verses the best digital. My expectation would be there should be zero advantage to vinyl or that’s what I’m trying to find. Is there something I’m missing?
Unlike tape, there is minimal degradation from playing a record IF your turntable is setup properly, (tone arm properly balanced and cartridge properly aligned).
It requires you care for them.
Digital Mastering is certainly better than mastering on tape, I doubt there is much debate there, it’s really what pushed the transition to CD.
Vinyl sounds different for a whole host of reasons, there are physical restrictions on what can be represented in a bumpy groove.
There is however no doubt in my mind that at least with some older material Vinyl has the superior representation. As I said above Lazy from Machine Head is a totally different track (in a good way) on Vinyl than it is on any of the digital remasters, I think a lot of it had to do with the inherent noise in the system, allowing the people mastering to ignore a degree of noise from the mastering process, resulting in generally better dynamic range in the masters.
The short version is Vinyl sounds different to any digital playback, the best word I can use to describe a great Vinyl system is refined. It wasn’t until I heard SACD, that I heard digital systems that were comparable.
You need to hear a Good Vinyl system to really understand the difference. But chasing a perfect Vinyl system is a bottomless money pit, every part mechanically impacts how the sound is picked up, so subtle improvements are very audible, and eventually you will convince yourself that $2000 cartridge or $5000 tonearm is worth the price. You can of course get Good for “reasonable” dollars.
Now I currently own no Vinyl and I’m not interested in picking any up, a part of my would like a turntable, but they are a lot of very expensive inconvenience for the value.
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Quantitatively, digital has a leg up on analogue recording. If you go by the numbers, digital looks better. Qualitatively, I still give the advantage to analogue. I don’t have the best audio playback system in the world, but it’s better than average and I am consistently more engaged with analogue music. I just have more emotional response to it. For the very BEST recordings of both analog and digital, I think the differences are not so far apart as people like to argue they are.