From: sss@castle.ed.ac.uk (S S Sturrock)
Newsgroups: rec.audio
Subject: Re: Digital critics - sampling argument is nonsense
Date: 27 Jan 93 10:01:59 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

>Another twist is that maybe the master tapes are too "bright" because
>they are mixed by people whos hearing has been burned out by too
>much high level sound, and in the past this has been corrected by
>the cutting Engineer. Now that master tapes go straight to CD, this
>bias shows up in the final recording.

Interesting this, one of my favourite examples of just how bad a CD can
sound is to compare my Blondie Parallel Lines CD with the MFSL LP I bought
second hand, the LP is quieter, cleaner and much more dynamic.  The CD
sounds like a poor pre-recorded tape.  Mind you, this is an old CD circa
1983.  Utterly dreadful.  The LP sounds fresh and lifelike.  Also, when I
compare my modern LPs with their CD counterparts I find that my LPs sound
brighter than the CDs so the above argument about not liking CD because
they sound too bright doesn't hold water.  This all depends on your
playback equipment of course.  LP has the ability (for me) to keep me
listening.  Vocals have size, the environment has scale, bass plays tunes
which are incredibly easy to follow and does not suffer from the lumpyness
of CDs.  By this I mean as the bass decreases in frequency it goes:

boom boom boom *BOOM* boom boom.

and whenever the music hits that frequency the bass blows up out of all
proportion.  With my LPs this doesn't happen (except oddly enough) with
modern popular music (Pet Shop Boys on LP sounds just like the CD).

Before all the flames start, I am just trying to categorise what I hear in
the sound that I like, this is personal opinion and specs may prove that I
am full of it but what is the point of sitting and listening to something
which I find dreadful but put up with because the specs say it's better?
Maybe I need to train my ears to listen to CD?

On the other hand, I have trained my ears throughout my lifetime to hear
the real world, I am rather good at it, years of practice so when an LP
sounds real to my ears then that is good enough for me, euphonic distortion
or not.  As Kerry pointed out stereo is a poor system for representing 3D
space, but it works with LP.  Maybe I am adding something that is not there
in the recording, no different to using DSP to produce a surround
environment.  You take you distortions and artifacts and pay your dues.

We each listen to different things in the sound, I find with many digital
proponents that they are not listening to the sound, they are listening to
the silence between sounds hense all the snide remarks about tape hiss and
adding crackles and pops to CD to apease the LP fans.  I get just as
annoyed at crackles and pops as anyone else, they bug me like hell in fact
but with my LPs they are rare, rumble is below hearing levels, I accept the
problems of LP because I like the sound of the music, the problems of LP
intrude on the silence, not the music and those problems can be minimised
with a little care.

There will be those who disagree with me, that is fine, I hope you have
read this far before you started to edit your reply, many people seem to
read the first few lines, decide what they want to say, say it and post
without paying the courtesy of reading the rest.  It is a free world for
most of us and while arguments are great fun it gets a little dull when the
same old stuff gets wheeled out each time there is a new influx of readers.
Not that what I am saying will even have any effect since the new readers
next time won't have read this and it will all start over again.

We return you to your usual flame fest.


-- 
Shane Sturrock, Biocomputing Research Unit, Darwin Building, Mayfield Road,
University of Edinburgh, Scotland, Commonwealth of Independent Kingdoms.  :-)

Civilisation is a Haggis Supper with salt and sauce and a bottle of Irn Bru.