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Vinyl is not as bad as I expected.

levimax

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Earlier mastering guys had to have it translate over 5 inch or 6x9 car speakers with maybe 2 wpc, or little mono earphones on pocket transistor radios. Or alarm clock tabletop radios or other small audio devices. So no big difference vs now.

I also doubt many of them were hoping to reach some people with superior gear. Most wanted it to sound cool on cars and pocket radios or juke boxes so they had a hit on their resume. Too much revisionist history going on in the mind of many audiophiles.

Bottom line is the LP medium is more colored than RTR, FM radio, digital, and probably even cassette tape. Why the reverence of one of the worst though popular mediums I don't understand. It isn't as bad as you might expect, and it can sound enjoyable. More than anything back in the day it was the cheapest most convenient way to distribute music. RTR was too expensive and far too inconvenient for mass market. I've considered the LP to be the MP3 of its day. It succeeded on price and convenience in spite of its problems, not because of them.
I remember the history of Hi-Fi and LP's a little differently. In the late fifties and early sixties Hi-Fi was "the cool new thing" and there was a lot of engineering and money and enthusiasm and even idealism in the hobby. Similar to today's EV's or smart phones. While many people listened to various types of radios there were plenty of people (way more than today) that were into the cool new Hi-Fi thing. The recording and mastering engineers were also excited about this cool new technology and they produced and mastered music to sound as good as possible (at the time the ideal was to sound live). They let the radio stations do the heavy compression for cars and clock radios. A lot of the music recorded and distributed on LP's during this time still sounds good today.... many times better than the over compressed current mastering style. Some of the Verve and Blue note recordings I have from this period are among the best recordings I own whether on LP or CD.
 
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Holmz

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I think Sagan developed the quote in 1977,
“I’ll just drop the mic here…”


1266b622eec1b52c0eadd36723cb297a.jpg
 

Tom C

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LP’s had to be cheap, if kids were to afford them. And kids were a significant percentage of the market. The LP’s sounded waaayyy better than AM radio, and AM is what you heard most music on most of the time: kitchen counter radio, car radio, overhead in the grocery store, etc. I never even heard of FM until, like 1972 or maybe ‘74. And then it wasn’t The Beatles and pop, it was jazz, classical, and a kind of rock that was over my young head. Nothing I’d care to listen to at the time. It was aimed at big kids and grown ups.
I had forgotten about those little mono earphones that came with the transistor radios. Some of them were kind of bulky.
 

Holmz

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LP’s had to be cheap, if kids were to afford them. And kids were a significant percentage of the market. The LP’s sounded waaayyy better than AM radio, and AM is what you heard most music on most of the time: kitchen counter radio, car radio, overhead in the grocery store, etc. I never even heard of FM until, like 1972 or maybe ‘74. And then it wasn’t The Beatles and pop, it was jazz, classical, and a kind of rock that was over my young head. Nothing I’d care to listen to at the time. It was aimed at big kids and grown ups.
I had forgotten about those little mono earphones that came with the transistor radios. Some of them were kind of bulky.

There was a pop/rock station in SoCal (maybe Irvine or Saddleback) in ’72.
- Which was also when I got a clock radio from Zodies department store.

And KLOS and KMET were the bigger SoCal rock stations in at least later in the 70’s… (actually 69, and 68 respectively)
 

beefkabob

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There's nothing wrong with vinyl. It's just that digital can be so much better.
 

Galliardist

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I remember the history of Hi-Fi and LP's a little differently. In the late fifties and early sixties Hi-Fi was "the cool new thing" and there was a lot of engineering and money and enthusiasm and even idealism in the hobby. Similar to today's EV's or smart phones. While many people listened to various types of radios there were plenty of people (way more than today) that were into the cool new Hi-Fi thing. The recording and mastering engineers were also excited about this cool new technology and they produced and mastered music to sound as good as possible (at the time the ideal was to sound live). They let the radio stations do the heavy compression for cars and clock radios. A lot of the music recorded and distributed on LP's during this time still sounds good today.... many times better than the over compressed current mastering style. Some of the Verve and Blue note recordings I have from this period are among the best recordings I own whether on LP or CD.
In the UK, at least, most records were played on mono portable record players, or cheapish radiograms, with ceramic cartridges and speakers that make modern smart speakers sound like paragons of virtue, well into the 1970s.The majority of records were mastered accordingly.

There was no golden era when vinyl wasn’t compromised.
 

Mart68

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Returning to the issue of dynamic compression - I was listening yesterday to Gwen Stefani 'Love Angel Music Baby'. Now it was clearly 'louder' than the CD that preceded it (a 1980s issue of ZZ Top 'Eliminator') and I did have to reduce volume but it still sounded superb. Clean and with fantastic bass. I just looked it up on the DR database and average DR is only 5 (max of 9 min of 4).

So is this really such an issue as it's made out to be? I can imagine it being so on a system where the gain staging is all wrong but I use a zero gain buffer as a pre-amp and never have that problem where you can't get the volume off '1' without blowing out the windows.

I also have the Zep compliation 'Mothership' which I seem to read everywhere is mastered 'too loud'. DR is only 6. This also sounds fine to me.

Is this actually more about a lack of attention being paid to gain-staging and the use of integrated amplifiers where all the gain is in the first stage of the volume control? The old 'Volume pot was only on '3' and it was too loud so the amp must have massive amounts of power' fallacy?
 

Blumlein 88

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Returning to the issue of dynamic compression - I was listening yesterday to Gwen Stefani 'Love Angel Music Baby'. Now it was clearly 'louder' than the CD that preceded it (a 1980s issue of ZZ Top 'Eliminator') and I did have to reduce volume but it still sounded superb. Clean and with fantastic bass. I just looked it up on the DR database and average DR is only 5 (max of 9 min of 4).

So is this really such an issue as it's made out to be? I can imagine it being so on a system where the gain staging is all wrong but I use a zero gain buffer as a pre-amp and never have that problem where you can't get the volume off '1' without blowing out the windows.

I also have the Zep compliation 'Mothership' which I seem to read everywhere is mastered 'too loud'. DR is only 6. This also sounds fine to me.

Is this actually more about a lack of attention being paid to gain-staging and the use of integrated amplifiers where all the gain is in the first stage of the volume control? The old 'Volume pot was only on '3' and it was too loud so the amp must have massive amounts of power' fallacy?
No I don't think so. The remastered CD issues are less dynamic. Even earlier CD releases had better DR numbers. Maybe you've optimized your system for that kind of sound.
 

Dackel

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What makes you think I haven't?

Regardless, what makes you think the DR database number (which is a crude and fallible measure at best) is the be-all and end all of good mastering?
not a measure of good mastering for sure... but a very good indication of bad masterning
 

Mart68

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No I don't think so. The remastered CD issues are less dynamic. Even earlier CD releases had better DR numbers. Maybe you've optimized your system for that kind of sound.
I usually buy the original release for that reason but since the Gwen Stefani album is from 2004 there isn't an earlier version with higher DR.

If I have optimised the system for such recordings then it was pretty much by accident :)
 

Dackel

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I usually buy the original release for that reason but since the Gwen Stefani album is from 2004 there isn't an earlier version with higher DR.

If I have optimised the system for such recordings then it was pretty much by accident :)
I just checked that album against the database and the original has an average dr value of only 06 with the lowest 04. The 1980s ZZ Top album has average 14. Quite a difference. I would say that the vinyl version of that Gwen Stefani album sounds better than the Cd version. Not sure how you can optimize a system to remove massive dynamic compression though.
 

Holmz

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There was no golden era when vinyl wasn’t compromised.

That Voyager space craft with the ”Golden LP” (in post #264) might be considered “The Golden Era”?

There were no CDs until another 5 years had elapsed from Holland and Japan, and Vinyl systems were pretty much nearing their top form.
 

Mart68

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I just checked that album against the database and the original has an average dr value of only 06 with the lowest 04. The 1980s ZZ Top album has average 14. Quite a difference. I would say that the vinyl version of that Gwen Stefani album sounds better than the Cd version. Not sure how you can optimize a system to remove massive dynamic compression though.
me neither but then I joined this forum to learn not to teach.

yes there's a big difference in volume between those two CDs, but I turn it down for the Stefani album and it sounds excellent. So I'm just suggesting this isn't as much as a problem as claimed. However as with much pop music there aren't really any big dynamic swings (soft to loud) in the programme so maybe that's why it matters less in this case?
 

Galliardist

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No I don't think so. The remastered CD issues are less dynamic. Even earlier CD releases had better DR numbers. Maybe you've optimized your system for that kind of sound.
So, do we know the DR of tbe original studio master, or that intended at the time of recording?
There’s an implicit assumption here that the higher DR product is closer to the original intention, and in the case of the LP, which is compromised, that may be completely wrong.

Restoring the original bass is enough to reduce DR markedly yet objectively is an improvement.

Referring to optimising systems, I would say that it is more likely for a system to be optimised toeards LP reproduction, and unable to maintain performance with the restored bass, in this kind of scenario.
 

JJB70

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I wasn't a fan of vinyl because of all the tweaking and inconvenience that went with it. I know some love playing with turntable set-up and all the stuff that goes with it but I just wanted to listen to music. And the vinyl format never really suited classical music, I am a Bruckner fan and some of his symphonies were terrible for fitting onto vinyl. However, when all that is said I had no real issue with vinyl sound quality. CD was better but vinyl was more than good enough to facilitate pleasurable listening.
 

PeteL

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In the UK, at least, most records were played on mono portable record players, or cheapish radiograms, with ceramic cartridges and speakers that make modern smart speakers sound like paragons of virtue, well into the 1970s.The majority of records were mastered accordingly.

There was no golden era when vinyl wasn’t compromised.
Most music listening in any era is being happening on crappy systems, we can get that out of the way. I am too young to comment on the sixties, but I can tell you that stereo recording was alive and well in the 70s. Now, sure it always have been compromised, but that was the format and "majority of records where mastered accordingly" is blanket statement based on what? Nobody listen to most records. Someone will always be able to answer to that "many albums were mastered superbly". Now as I said, I won't comment on the sixties, but in the late seventies and the 80s, well sorry but most people that cared about fidelity had a turntable. close to nobody had R2R, and maybe the tape cassette, or the 8 tracks tape cassettes could sound good, those where not for the hifi enthousiaths of the time, they where for convenience. Anyway we want to look at it, many audiophiles where listening to vinyls, that is just a fact. I am not talking about most people i am talking about audiophiles. This is also a fact that starting in the nineties records started being released with extremely compress dynamic, that is also a fact, the loudness war is not theoretical, it's documented. The format don't have to do with it, but this is what it is, the trend was for extremely loud masters, and also extremely compressed remasters of original analog recordings. This is what it is there are very good vinyls recordings out there, and it is totally possible to have a audiophile experience with a proper analog reproduction chain. Can you do better with digital, yes, no doubt. But Can 33 rpm records can sound good, yes no doubts.
 

Newman

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Most music listening in any era is being happening on crappy systems, we can get that out of the way
Hang on, it was you who just finished saying that most vinyl was heard on good hifi systems of the day. Now you are saying we have to admit the opposite?
 
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