Re: [ARSCLIST] discography of "direct-to-disk revival"?

[phillip holmes <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I had an interesting argument with a tape devotee about tape VS disk and 
one thing he never understood was how much is lost when you go from one 
medium to another.  The weakness of tape is the strength of vinyl and 
vice versa.  He felt that tape was always superior.  I agreed that a 
properly aligned deck with good tape stock, run at 15ips (or higher), 
with maximum numbers of tracks allowed at 1 track per 1/8th inch, could 
smoke most recording methods and should be better than "direct to 
disk".  But, with D2D, you skip a whole set of electronics, storage and 
degradation.  A record won't beat a 1st generation master tape on 
capability.  But, if you have the opportunity to skip that tape 
generation, you skip all the distortion introduced by the tape head 
amps, tape head, storage, playback head, playback electronics and the 
extra cables and connections.  In other words, it's apples VS oranges.  
If vinyl is your media of choice, direct to disk will maximize the 
potential because it eliminates distortions you don't have to have.
Phillip
FWIW, I think D2D is spectacular.  "The King James Version" is pretty 
close to being there.

Tom Fine wrote:
> Hi All:
>
> Was there ever published a discography or listing of all of the 
> direct-to-disk revival LPs? That was a short-lived fad but there were 
> some great-sounding records made. I have just a handful but I imagine 
> there were maybe a couple hundred made.
>
> I would argue that some of those recordings were as good as vinyl 
> could get. It was an interesting time in the recording business 
> because some of the great old-school engineers were still around in 
> top form and there were still jazz and classical artists who could 
> nail it live in the studio in one take, and the studios were past the 
> early and mid 70's "dead coffin" acoustics. Plus that generation of 
> mixing consoles sounded good again in most cases.
>
> Interesting -- in a couple of cases I later bought the CD, which was 
> obviously made from a tape run at the time. You can really tell how 
> Dolby A NR on the tape quashes the sound, even when a good CD 
> mastering job was done.
>
> -- Tom Fine