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A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

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Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#341

Post by nikau »

Shorel wrote: post #305
Night_Thastus wrote: post #248

"In the world of audiophiles — where provenance is everything and the quest is to get as close to the sound of an album’s original recording as possible — digital is considered almost unholy." Out of context of the rest of the article, this is total nonsense. While some in the audiophile scene like going analog, none of them debate against the truth that objectively , vinyl is far lower quality. Vinyl doesn't have ne…

> But with good recordings and mastering That's the issue here. The loudness war made any CD mastering a race to make the most compressed track, just to sound louder than the competition. Technically, digital should sound better. The technology is better. Sound engineers are making sure this is not the case.

Exactly - the easiest way to prove this is you can record Vinyl to a CD, do a double blind test between the Vinyl and the CD copy, and you can't tell the difference.

Vinyl forced better mastering.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#342

Post by nikau »

adrian_b wrote: post #290
dmitriid wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While some in the audiophile scene like going analog, none of them debate against the truth that objectively, vinyl is far lower quality. You conveniently forget history. Audiophiles embracing digital media is a relatively recent thing. It was vinyl and everything analog until about 10-15 years ago when it became

Many decades ago, before the appearance of any digital audio, most audiophiles agreed that vinyl sucks badly, because the records are degraded after each listening (by mechanical abrasion). When the audio CD's appeared, their main claimed advantage was not that they offer a superior sound over vinyl (early units had actually modest characteristics, with 14-bit DACs, modest low-pass filters, and possibly also low accu…

Worth noting that the "tape recorder" was reel to reel not mainstream compact cassette.

Reel to reel usually ran the tape almost 4 times faster with over 3x wider tape vs mainstream compact cassette, so it was very high quality.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#343

Post by kevinmchugh »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #254
boring_twenties wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully the night ended with a screening of the third Naked Gun movie? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110622/

Damn, we didn't think of that.

You're better off for it

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#344

Post by nikau »

bayindirh wrote: post #274
Tsiklon wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metallica's Death Magnetic was another truly dreadful example of the loudness war - Thankfully a better mastered release came out in 2015. I've just got my hands on this release and comparing it against my original copy it is a night and day improvement - especially on "All Nightmare Long".

Yeah, the first release was pure clipping, no music. I remember listening to it and saying? “Did all we wait for this? C’mon”.

Hah I had the same experience, I thought some idiot had recorded it via their soundcard line in or something.

Eventually got the better mastered version which was leaked from guitar hero or something.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#345

Post by nikau »

dopylitty wrote: post #213

Honestly the thing that surprised me most was how real everyone in the story was. The record store owner is a real dude. The record company has a bunch of real engineers who care about the product. Even the executives seem somewhat human. It’s such a refreshing change from faceless stores with ever changing all caps names on faceless enormous e-commerce sites selling mass produced garbage. And fleecing audiophiles is…

> And fleecing audiophiles is just good clean fun anyway

My dad ran a small manufacturing business in the 80s, one guy he did a lot of work for wanted a small batch run of spikes with a top thread made from titanium.

My dad did the quotes and asked what's its for, they were spikes for putting under speakers.

Of course my dad mentioned it would make more sense and be much cheaper to make from stainless steel, to which the guy just responded "I'm selling to idiots with more money than brains who want a talking point, that's why its titanium."

He also machined a bunch of titanium inserts for wooden volume knobs that supposedly clarified the sound or some rubbish like that.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#346

Post by notRobot »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #314
notRobot wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely really curious, what kinds of recordings remain inaccessible in digital formats? How do you find out about them? And where do you procure them from? Do you mind sharing a couple examples?

Biggest one was country. Lots of impossible to find stuff from the 50s thru the 70s. I'd learn about it by digging at the record shop near where I went to college. There's not much of an audience for it anymore, so the labels have no incentive to dig through their catalogs. Here's a country album I've never find a proper digital version of, only bad vinyl rips: https://www.discogs.com/master/402577-Mike-Auldridge-Dob…

Thank you so much for your response! This is fascinating to me, and makes me really sad that there's only a tiny overpriced market for vinyl where I live, really no place where I can go and 'dig through bins' to find gems :(

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#347

Post by notRobot »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #314
notRobot wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely really curious, what kinds of recordings remain inaccessible in digital formats? How do you find out about them? And where do you procure them from? Do you mind sharing a couple examples?

Biggest one was country. Lots of impossible to find stuff from the 50s thru the 70s. I'd learn about it by digging at the record shop near where I went to college. There's not much of an audience for it anymore, so the labels have no incentive to dig through their catalogs. Here's a country album I've never find a proper digital version of, only bad vinyl rips: https://www.discogs.com/master/402577-Mike-Auldridge-Dob…

Thank you so much for your response! This is fascinating to me (I'm really into stuff like city pop and dance music), and makes me really sad that there's only a tiny overpriced market for vinyl where I live, really no place where I can go and 'dig through bins' to find gems :(

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#349

Post by iggldiggl »

nikau wrote: post #342
adrian_b wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many decades ago, before the appearance of any digital audio, most audiophiles agreed that vinyl sucks badly, because the records are degraded after each listening (by mechanical abrasion). When the audio CD's appeared, their main claimed advantage was not that they offer a superior sound over vinyl (early units had actually modest characteristics, with 14-bit DACs, modest low-pass filters, and possibly also low accu…

Worth noting that the "tape recorder" was reel to reel not mainstream compact cassette. Reel to reel usually ran the tape almost 4 times faster with over 3x wider tape vs mainstream compact cassette, so it was very high quality.

And eventually even that kind of tape will wear out, too. Though I suppose it might be more of a concern in commercial usage than at home…

One interesting fact I've come across is that e.g. when Bob Dylan's "electric trilogy" first came out on CD, they apparently had to do new remixes of Bringing It All Back Home and Blonde On Blonde not because they just felt like it, like they so often seem to do these days for artistic and/or sales-tactical reasons, but simply because by that time the original master tapes (including the safety copy) had worn out somewhat through continuous re-pressings of the original vinyl albums.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#350

Post by dusted »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #340
dusted wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, now we just need mathematically pure materials... Like.. Wires without resistance, capacitance and inductance. Resistors without capacitance and inductance. Capacitors without resistance and inductance. Inductors without capacitance or resistance. While we're at it, semiconductors with perfect linearity and so on and so on.. I'm not going to argue that audiophiles generally achieve much of these, or even that it…

But, perfectly recording and reproducing anything is still not possible, not in audio, not in video. Which is an argument in favor of getting the signal into the digital domain as early as possible and maintaining it there for as long as possible. The audiophile's stereotypical myth of analog supremacy is the assumption that the opposite is somehow true. Weird, but everybody needs a hobby.

I agree. I was not arguing against digital storage. Only against the sentiment that "just do digital and all problems are solved".. well, the storage, transport and editing is solved.. The analog problems are not solved, nor solvable, only optimizeable to a degree where further optimization becomes irrelevant, microphones/ADCs/DACs/Amplifiers/Speakers still have analog components that are inherently imperfect.
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