Re: [ARSCLIST] "All hail the analogue revolution..."

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Don:

You obviously misunderstood what I was saying. Of course a reissue CD from the master tape will 
generally sound better than one made from an LP. I'm talking about my own home-brew CD's made from 
my LPs. In a lot of cases, the material never made it to CD. In other cases, the reissue CD sounds 
like garbage due to bad remastering.

Why would that Jo Stafford CD be made from vinyl? Is it a bootleg or was the original tape lost?

I agree that in many cases on commercial CD's where they've had to go to someone's collection and 
play a record -- especially a 45 single or 78 -- the sound quality is awful compared to surviving 
tapes of the same time or session. And like I said, I just don't mess with lousy LPs (originally-bad 
surfaces, originally-bad manufacturing, originally-distorted cutting). I like vinyl and all but I am 
the first to say that a digital transfer of the original tape SHOULD sound much, much better. When 
it doesn't, it's not because vinyl is some mythical wonderful thing, it's because the remastering 
was lousy.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2006 1:09 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] "All hail the analogue revolution..."


> On 20/09/06, Tom Fine wrote:
>
> > Final vinyl word. I find the sound most pleasing of tunes I've
> > transferred from LP and then ripped to MP3. It might be that in many
> > cases the original vinyl mastering engineer made better choices than
> > the CD remaster engineer did, but the iPod puts out some pleasing
> > grooves for my ears. And no, I don't like ticks and pops and yes I
> > remove the bad ones and don't bother with badly damaged records.
>
> I find the opposite. Reissue CDs that have been made fom vinyl sound
> "cheap" to me, compared to those made from the original studio master
> tapes.
>
> They include the distortions and resonances of the disc cutter (which
> could be pretty bad in the 1950s), the groove damage from being played over
> the years, and the distortion and resonances of the pickup.
>
> Better than nothing, but I prefer to get closer to the original evidence of how
> the air vibrated in that studio.
>
> I was listening to a CD of Jo Stafford yesterday, made from 1955 vinyl.
> The voice is OK, but the backing orchestra is almost unbearably bad in
> sound. I don't believe the master tape can have been like that. Even the
> most cloth-eared producer would not have passed it.
>
> Regards
> --
> Don Cox
> doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx