Drone/doom
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- Sep 13, 2019
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Anyones opinions on Grado's carts?.
Yes - my 2nd book after 50+yr an audio engineer & consultant, now in sharing mode. It has 5-star reviews in the US and Europe, but Amazon offers a free preview so you can decide for yourself whether you might need it. - Robin Miller (aka RCAguy)
Anyones opinions on Grado's carts?.
I stay away from them due to their hum tendencies.
I've heard the can be avoided since not all turntables suffer the issue.
I have to think that that’s because, if properly set up, it’s really hard to tell the difference between excellent vinyl playback vs. excellent digital playback. This is to be expected, if the ultimate studio source (i.e., master tape or master digital file) is the same for both, and little or no post processing is applied. If the reproduction system is robust, they should both be transparent to the original studio master.After 50 pages of this thread, the score is ~50\50 CD\digital v vinyl\analog. But these are mutually exclusive, as releases on one are not necessarily available on the other - most recorded history is only available in analog form, much of it wonderfully recorded. And while most digital technically is potentially cleaner and playing it is relatively trouble-free, the ultimate audio quality baked in an vinyl groove awaits your properly extracting it. By lowest distortion alignment, stylus choice, and anti-skating; by best frequency response (tone color, timbre) optimizing resonance, capacitive loading, and accurate RIAA preamplification; and by cancelling vertical artifacts by proper mono mixing; etc. Fun for many - and highly rewarding results - with my helpful Phonograph how-to reference book - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VBY71D
Yup, antiquarian pomp and ceremony with gold epaulets. Still, the experience is gratifying for those that are into it.For me, it's the ceremony and the sound. Ceremony predominates.
Yup, antiquarian pomp and ceremony with gold epaulets. Still, the experience is gratifying for those that are into it.
Where is the hum coming from? Stanton/Pickering made MI carts featuring a pull out metal strap on one of the leads. If you encountered hum you removed the strap. I have a Pickering XV15 (Stanton 681)--the body is metal and produced a hum in a metal headshell. The 'bag of parts' that came with the cartridge had some rubber grommets you could slide over the metal flange screw mounts and then secure the whole thing using plastic screws. That solved the hum problem.I stay away from them due to their hum tendencies.
This problem with digital has been around since CDs came out, and no -- I am not a digital nay-sayer, but just the opposite...
CDs, since they came out, are mastered differently than the vinyl equivalent. If you notice some compression in the HF on CD (or even high-res downloads), but not so much on vinyl -- there is a real technical ...
Couldn't agree more. My old albums often sound better than the CD version or various remasters on Tidal. A friend is repurchasing new vinyl of old standards, and we have compared them to pristine original pressings only to find, in my opinion, that the original sounds better.
Audiophile Style often compares various original CD's with various remasters and its fascinating how some engineers butcher the material. It would be great if the comparisons looked at the original vinyl.
My guess (and it's only a guess) is that when CDs were new, and in the rush to get out product to sell, AAD discs employed whatever master tapes were used to cut the original record. Because that was convenient and didn't require any extra work on the part of the record companies. I remember CDs where the mix sounded like the record.Couldn't agree more. My old albums often sound better than the CD version or various remasters on Tidal. A friend is repurchasing new vinyl of old standards, and we have compared them to pristine original pressings only to find, in my opinion, that the original sounds better.
The real downfall was in the timeframe where loudness wars came into play (about 1994-1995), because before 1994-1995, the CDs were pretty much pure DolbyA with the errsatz-EQ scheme. I coined a term 'FeralA', which is kind of a 'feral' DolbyA recording that got into consumer space.My guess (and it's only a guess) is that when CDs were new, and in the rush to get out product to sell, AAD discs employed whatever master tapes were used to cut the original record. Because that was convenient and didn't require any extra work on the part of the record companies. I remember CDs where the mix sounded like the record.
Then came 'remasters' and 're-remasters'. Someone in the booth started mucking with the mix, and a lot of stuff no longer sounded like it did when first released. It was all just a marketing gimmick in order to sell product. None of it was 'better'... just different. And a lot of it was ridiculous. Think of the 'hi-res' thing. I always say, does anyone think that Hank Williams' Hey, Good Lookin' is going to sound better in 24/192? Who could think that? But they're selling 'em that way.
I was reading an interview with Bob Ludwig (Gateway Mastering). Very interesting comments about the transition period from analog to digital. He talks about the shock of recording pianos digitally, as wow in the Ampex and Scully tape machines was audible. How some early CDs were made from LP equalized masters--for LP they would boost treble at the end of the lacquer to compensate for the loss, and how you could hear that same rising high end on the CDs but not on the records. How his remasters for ABKCO sent Mick Jagger for a loop, accusing them of mucking with the mix, when in fact the stuff was there all along but 'buried' in the record so it wasn't audible. But was when digitized. Mick forgot they'd put the stuff in like that.The real downfall was in the timeframe where ... the CDs were pretty much pure DolbyA with the errsatz-EQ scheme. ...high-res downloads, but a heck of a lot of CDs are the EQed DolbyA.
The real downfall was in the timeframe where loudness wars came into play (about 1994-1995), because before 1994-1995, the CDs were pretty much pure DolbyA with the errsatz-EQ scheme. I coined a term 'FeralA', which is kind of a 'feral' DolbyA recording that got into consumer space.
Even nowadays, some hi-res downloads are 'FeralA' -- I don't know how many, since I haven't purchased many high-res downloads, but a heck of a lot of CDs are the EQed DolbyA.
Interestingly, I have even found two CDs that just might be pure DolbyA in all of it's shrillness - that is 'I've got the music in me' from Sheffield Labs and Nena 99 Red Balloons. (Of course, when speaking of Sheffield Labs, I am speaking only of the CD... My old vinyl copy was beautiful.)
John
All I know is that when directly decoding the CD version, the results were *really good* when compared with the irritating sounding CD. I just did a retry with the latest version of my decoder -- it almost sounds live.I found the original Thelma Houston IGTMIM Sheffield Direct-To-Disc LP to be shrill enough to cause me to sell it. It was my first and last DTD LP.
Could you also post a clip of the "un-re-decoded" version?I just re-decoded the file, and created a snippet of the recording.
First -- I have a major mea culpa -- I made a mistake. I looked back at my records and recognized that I made a mistake decoding the material, plus looked at the logs and there was some clipping in the output...Could you also post a clip of the "un-re-decoded" version?