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January 31, 2008 - 6:48pm
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Differing Methods of Mastering for differnet media
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Do you think the format determined the engineer or simply a time difference between issues that allowed for a remastering job? Why would one production engineer or studio be deemed better at CD than vinyl?
Good question. In this case the LP and CD were released at the same time. This is why it points more towards a format appraoch and not just time lag.
please give us your thoughts after you have listened as to the quality of the music and the quality of the production. thanks.
tom
Paul Gold is in Brooklyn (Salt Mastering). He is very good. Great guy with an excellent sense of humor.
He responds to emails. Why not look up his site and ask?
OK- I have not had an opportunity to hear the CD so...this just my opinion of the record, not a comparison.
Great album for Joe Jackson fans as it's a real return to form and takes his recent live album approach of stripping the band down to a trio. Top rate lyrics remind me of his best early albums and music is also like them in that it takes on more of a jazz band sound than rock in many respects. Sonically it's OK- nothing to put on you demo list but not bad either. I feel like sometimes you can really hear when they overdubbed sections and you lose that "3 guys in a room feel" which is too bad. Recent Elvis Costello efforts show you absolutely can record the old way and play a song all the way through all in one room. Honestly I'd prefer to hear some mistakes to preserve the integrity of performance.
Anyway- 5 stars for music and lyrics, 3 stars for sonics. Go get it- it's WAY better than most rock offerings out there. The LP version is one disc and nicely packaged BTW.
Mastering for CD requires a completely different set of parameters than for vinyl. CD sounds "more detailed and richer" when you keep the bits closer to 16 bits (its maximum rate of information---located just under the clipping point!). Which requires that you keep it loud (compressed) and just under clipping.
If you let the volume fall off too far you lose a ton of resolution and you will hear it gets pretty grainy at 8 bits and below. But turn it up too loud and when you go too far with digital loudness and it clips...holy crap does it ever sound awful. There is nothing pleasant about it. It spits!
And then just to add to your grief potential... the treble response is pretty dull as you have to use extreme upper treble filtering to avoid Nyquist aliasing and weird artifacts. Your ear doesn't hear these frequencies above 20K but they wreak havoc on the signal by causing oscillations...
So you listen to your monitors and try to put all the clarity in that you can...without clipping...and you keep it as compressed as you can without making it sound totally phony and "lifeless." And now you know what the quality problems look like from THE RECORDING END.
Before you even play the stuff back there have been massive headaches just getting it all on a "mastered disc." And now we will look at vinyl which has its own set of problems.
Basically you can only get a needle to stay in the groove if you keep large wiggles (bass) from getting too extreme. If John Q public tries to play a tremendously loud bass passage this can result in the tonearm hopping right out of the groove. Nothing like watching your tonearm skidding across the record as your needle makes a rrrriiiiiping sound. Yikes.
Granted the guy cutting the stamping disc plates can take your finished master "tape" and vary how wide the space is around some particularly loud sections to allow for BIG excursions. But in general it is not wise to deliver a finished product to the cutter and have ridiculously powerful bass passages on there.
Sooooo. CD can have really LOUD bass (check out "Spyboy" by Emmylou Harris or Gaia on James Taylor's "Hourglass). Real woofer breakers! But the treble usually sounds pretty dull.
Vinyl can have wonderful natural bass but is not so hot on the really loud bass stuff. But it sure is sweet, and natural sounding in the treble end of the range.
OK now I know there are people out there who know a LOT more than I do. This is just my two cents worth of what I seem to recall from hanging around this industry for 50 years. Anybody that finds a huge mistake with how I explained it all---be my guest. We are ALL here to learn.
But perhaps some of you will find my rudimentary explanation illuminating if you have never heard any of this stuff before.