So over the holidays I purchased a copy of "Abbey Road" on vinyl. Not a special reissue on fancy 180-gram vinyl. Just an ordinary original copy from Capitol, but in mint condition, never opened. Fired it up on the Linn-Naim rig at home and oh my God. It's like discovering the Beatles all over again. No wonder we all loved music back in the Sixties and Seventies. First of all, the music was just so friggin good. And what is it about vinyl? It friggin breathes, and I don't know how or why. I've brought all my iPod engineers in here to listen and try to figure it out. We've got "Golden Slumbers" on right now and Paul's voice is making the hair on my neck stand up. It's like he's standing here in the room with us. This is on my old office rig, which is a nothing-fancy Rega turntable with Quad electronics and a pair of old Quad speakers, from my Quad phase. It's stunning. I'm sick. We're doing A-B tests with the iPod HiFi and it's humiliating. Friends, I promise you we will not rest until we can match or exceed the sound quality of vinyl in a digital system.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
Yeah, Fakesteve, digital will sound as good as analog the same day that Bill does a "Switch" commercial for you. The customers? Fuck 'em. They can't tell the difference, anyway, and today's music sounds like shit whether you play it on a maxed-out system or a $49 iPod knockoff from Malaysia. Putting this crap on a top-end analog system is like serving Popeye's Lard Nuggets on fine china. You've got the right idea: buy vinyl. Play it, preferably, through an all-tube system. But that don't sell no Apple stuff, do it?
FSJ, sure it's not the format, that compression's a killer
FSJ, you sure it's not the format, compression's a killer
You can't fool us, FS. This is just a teaser for the new iPod/Tube Version. Matched pair of EL84s driving the earbuds (vintage NOS Mullard preferably - none of this Russian or Chinese crap).
I like itunes,
feds all my Proac, Primaluna, Benchmark DAcs and Coustom EL34 Mullards XF2 amps I have. Go Steve. Just give us Lossless Musicc and fugedaboudit.
When they make an iPod large enough to hold my entire vinyl collection, maybe i'll consider getting one. Until then, i am quite happy to listen to the 12,000 plates I have on my full analog system.
Here's hoping Leopard/iTunes has native FLAC support!
What FSJ needs is The Beatle Box!
Ah, the ambience of vinyl, so true....
Now that enough time has passed, it can be revealed that the "VyFi" filter was why Audion sounded so much better than SoundJam.
You shoulda waited for Audion, Steve-O.
"And what is it about vinyl?"
I'm sure you know the answer to this question. As digital simply can not sound as good as analog to human ears as human ears are (for all intents and purposes)analog.
The 'breathing' you mentioned is due to the complexity of the signal being lost in the 'stair stepping' that is a sample rate.
Simply put digital is inaccurate in capturing and too accurate in reproduction (of a lesser signal).
Your best bet however is in increasing the bit rate, to 128 when recording, and boosting the mids, in the vocal range 300 - 1000hz (consonant sounds are up to 3000hz) and dropping the highs in playback.
Without the higher quality recording you will not be able to get your playback to sound as good.
Imagine painting your car beige and expecting that when you look at it at the proper angle it will be candy apple red.
So too you will not be able to record an aliased 32 bit digital audio file and play it back as a smooth analog wave.
If it's on Capitol it wasn't original. Fakesteve is really losing points fast. Why don't you do something truly extraordinary like fly to the East End and find a REAL copy? Capitol is for sissies
Goddammit. I paid a thousand quid for that friggin record. Guy swore it was original. Dumb, Steve, dumb! Thanks for the tip, Essex Man.
Hey FakeSteve, what did you do with all the Wilson Audio Speakers you have purchased?
It should also be mentioned that the digital remastering on the original CD versions of the Beatles catalog SSSSSUUUUUUUCKED!!!!!!!!
you should develop an i-turntables so the wimpy generation listening to rap and crap "music" maybe will start understand what really means the meanings of the word MUSIC.
Post a Comment