From: chrisc@gold.gvg.tek.com (Chris Christensen)
Newsgroups: rec.audio
Subject: Re: Audiophile mastering of CD
Date: 26 Aug 92 17:03:19 GMT
Organization: Grass Valley Group, Grass Valley, CA

In article <27110030@hpspkla.spk.hp.com> borowski@hpspkla.spk.hp.com 
(Don T. Borowski) writes:
>In rec.audio, chrisc@gold.gvg.tek.com (Chris Christensen) writes:

>>I had an experience recently that has me quite concerned.  I listened
>>to a CD that a friend had loaned me.  It was a CD of orchestral music,
>>movie themes.  The music was recorded between 1954 and 1968 if I
>>remember correctly.  This is a side fact,  all of the selections of
>>music matched very closely,  a credit to the re-recording/mastering
>>engineer.  That's the good part.

>>The liner notes specifically noted that a particular brand of high-end
>>speaker system was used for all monitoring during that production
>>process.

>>The problem is that the CD lacked clarity in the high frequency
>>spectrum,  the low mids were flappy and the sound stage was mostly
>>left/right only with very little middle sound from the center part of
>>the orchestra......

>You may be hearing the limitations of the source material.  Unless you are
>using the very latest digital sound processing to restore the recordings,
>you are stuck with using equalizers.  Given the age of the material, there
>could be considerable amount of high frequency noise on the tapes.  So then
>the engineer needs to balance high frequency response and high frequency
>noise, and it seems that high frequencies were sacrificed to make the noise
>levels acceptable.

I don't believe it's the source material and I believe that the
project was done with the latest digital sound processing.

I just recently purchased a CD that has older as well as similar
material on it and it doesn't suffer from the problems I describe.

I am still convinced the problem is an artifact of mixing with
audiophile speakers.

Equalizers are the most common tool that a mastering engineer has.
Some of the most highly regarded recordings have used nothing but
equalization in the mastering process.

>The sound stage problem may be due to the recording techniques of the day,
>which seemed to emphasize seperation over natural sound stage at times.
>Some blending could be used to make the sound stage more natural, but then
>this would not reproduce the original recording.

I would have thought this also,  and it still may be the correct
reason but the recordings were over 14 year period, I would assume
that they were done in different locations, by different recording
engineers, different equipment.....I could be totally wrong but.

In another CD that I purchased I did not note this soundstage problem
and the recordings were from the same era.....And some were poorly
recorded and still didn't suffer from the same maladies.

>I don't know what you mean by "flappy" sound, so I can't comment.

Flabby, flappy, muddy.  I use the term flappy to describe a string
bass sound that is underdamped sounds like a bass drum with the head
really loose......
-- 
Chris Christensen                  The opinions I express are my own,
chrisc@gold.gvg.tek.com            and sometimes they are wrong!
916-478-3419 FAX 916-478-3887      After all, I *AM* only human.
Newsgroups: rec.audio