Negative trends in the medium of recorded music

Quote:

Back when MP3s were invented in the late 90s, they made the decision to keep the file size down by cutting out the highest and lowest frequencies from the recordings. Thus MP3s lack the richness of other recording formats.

Years ago -- like, 25 of them -- I and a couple friends fancied ourselves audiophiles, since we owned stereo systems that didn't have a handle on the top, and we were accustomed to spending too much money to get too little (e.g. chunky, oxygen-free copper speaker cables and the like).

One day one of my friends was gearing up to drop about $500 on a somewhat esoteric CD player, and my other friend and I accompanied him to our favourite stereo boutique, to witness this historic purchase.  When my friend announced his intention to the salesman, he asked to audition the CD player, and the salesman agreed to set this up, on the condition that he could set up something else as well, and he asked us to go grab a coffee and give him a half hour to set things up in the audition room.

When we returned, the salesman had set up the CD player that my friend was intending to buy, hooked up to a decent amp and speakers, but had also hooked up a turntable -- Revolver, as I recall -- that sold for about the same price as the CD player.  He produced a CD -- Aerosmith?  Supertramp?  something like that -- and also a vinyl recording of the same album.

First he played the CD.  Good and crisp, punchy, bass-heavy and bangin'.  We liked.  And we were ready to humour him.

Then the vinyl, through the same amp and speakers, and the difference was incredible.  Not quite as crisp, perhaps, and not quite as driving, but the overall richness and (for lack of a better word) thickness of the vinyl recording wiped the smug right off of our faces.  Hands down, the vinyl was the better listening experience, and we were humbled.

Not so humbled that my friend didn't buy the $500 CD player though. 

fyi - The Vinyl Engine had, last time I checked, an enormous library of manuals, a discussion board, and some friendly denizens.

The Vinyl Engine - the home of the turntable

I recall reading, years ago (and not bookmarking) an interesting account of how Sony and Philips were in such a hurry to bring CDs to market that they basically didn't even try to future-proof them (e.g. through support for higher bitrates, higher sample rates, larger capacity discs, etc.).  Basically, CDs are digital technology from a time when monochrome monitors and 5.25" floppy drives were state-of-the-art.

And then MP3's came along, at a time when downloading a large file on the new interweb was still an onerous chore, and so their 5:1 compression ratio seemed like a great thing.  So who's going to go re-download their entire library as FLAC files now?

I'm too old to care now.  My idea of "music" is whatever's on the radio.

One downside of analog -- vinyl or cassette -- is that technically, the fidelity and quality of the recording degrades with each use.  I've actually heard tell of audiophiles who'll buy a new vinyl recording, play it to rip it to cassette, then listen to that cassette when they just want to hear (say) the White Album, and save the actual vinyl for either another cassette, or that day when they really want to get into the music.

That said, reel-to-reel.  Higher tape transit speed.  Discrete heads.  Discuss. 

Quote:

You're right.Cassette tapes always ended up chewed,tangled or just dull.

Well, it was surely a shitty-ass feeling when your deck or your walkman ended up pulling off yards of tape and bunging them up against the drive pin and you had to untie that Gordian knot and use a pencil to re-reel that tape that was always neatly folded like an accordion.  Them's the breaks!

As far as "mono vs. stereo" goes, I kind of have to agree that stereo wins.

Ever use a 4-track?  Cassette media, but you could only use the one side.  Well, you could use the other side too, but it played backward.  Sort of like a reel-to-reel, in that it had discrete heads and could record multiple tracks without erasing, but minus the hassle of reels.  I never owned one, but I rented one once and it was fun.

Quote:

Remember chrome and metal cassette tapes.  They degrade just like the cheap memorex tapes did.

I remember them fondly.  25 or so years ago, when I was living in Hamilton, I'd occasionally get the opportunity to come to Toronto for the afternoon or whatever, and I would always make sure I got to swing by one of those sketchy electronics stores on Yonge to pick up a box of Maxell chrome 90 minute blanks -- usually ten for ten bucks.  They were the "chrome" standard for mixed tapes back then.

LEFT TURN:

As a recording Engineer and someone who's played music for 20+ years i'll take a crack at this

LOCKS:

i think we all agree these are total bullshit...And also, they don't work.  If you can listen to it, you can copy it, so really the lock is just a myth.  Just get an RCA to mini adapter plug it into your computer and rerecord it.  it's digital so you won't lose much if any quality.

CARDBOARD CASES:

Honestly don't mind these as they're more enviro friendly, and as a musician they were always cheaper to make.   Sort of irrelevant now though because who still buys CD's??

REMASTERS:

Here's the thing.  Remaster is technically just a fine tuning of EQ and compression levels on the overall stereo mix, not individual instruments.  It's the reason all the cd's sounded like shit in the beginning, because they were mastering them the same way as they did for vinyl.  Thing is, different mediums need a different master--if only so they sound the same on different formats.  So for example if you wanted to release an album that has not been in mp3 yet, you would have to master it again so it works  and sounds good given the limitations of mp3.

remixing is what you're thinking and yes, it is total bullshit and really an affront to the artist if they're not in on the process (and often even if they are).  The Led Zeppelin 2 remix makes me want to freak out they sound so bad.  The problem here is engineers get a chance to use all the new toys on records that were made in a different era on different equipment and it usually ruins/drastically changes the original sound of the record.

But in all honesty "remixed" or "remastered" is just a way to sell the same record over and over again to record nerds who will want to own every version of a release.

MP3:

Amongst musicians, the big problem with MP3 isn't quality but longevity. 

You can take a record recorded 60-70 years ago and the master tapes still are fine, and work with any tape machine of any make and model(tons of these still around and will work for ages--built like tanks) no worry of "compatibility"

Digital however changes so rapidly and becomes obsolete so fast, it will be impossible to get a session from ten years ago to work let alone 70.  This means the aformentioned "remasters" will simply be impossible for all modern music.  So 10 years from now when a new medium comes out there will be no way to release all the older music on it, unless it was recorded on tape.

I worked with Steve Albini and we had great discussions on this.  He mentioned that the Nirvana record COULD be remastered while other records of the same era recorded on the new digital mediums were essentially "lost" unless you could find a still working computer with the right software versions of the same era (pretty much impossible,,, if he can't find it no one can!)