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Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

Somehow, I think when rush for firing on all cylinders From 2112 to Hemispheres at least and probably several albums afterwards, Getty Lee was making it work.
He was somehow managing to sing those awkward lyrics and fit them in a fairly musical way. Also at that time I think rush with simply writing better songs.
Since there's a discussion on Rush albums, does anyone else kind of like their first album? It had a rawer, rock and roll, Led Zepplin like sound. I liked some of their other later albums. Fly By Night, Moving Pictures, but some of their later stuff I found it being too mystical and not down to earth. But that's just me :D.
For me the quintet of albums starting with 2112 and ending with Moving Pictures is the core of RUSH. I do like Fly By Night, Caress of Steel and Presto. But those and all the others were not the standouts like those 5 although each had notable songs.
 
My guess is that it's the same file as used for the CD, but that's a guess. I've got occasional dropouts because I'm running Tidal through my laptop, but otherwise it sounds the same as the CDs of the same in those cases where I've got the CDs. There are a lot of remastered titles on Tidal, many are improved though some historical titles suffer from excessive filtering or other indications that the transfer was not performed to the highest standards.

I know a number of people claim that they are more likely to sit down and listen all the way through an album when playing a vinyl record as opposed to listening to a stream. But I listen to works that usually require listening all the way through - symphonies, sonatas, chamber works. CDs made that process easier, streaming too. I never use playlists.

I looked in Discogs and the specific LP I have does not exist. It also contains Capriccio Italian op. 45. My pressing is from Vanguard (mid-line) and not the original Opus. So there is really no good way of compare this one to the digital one, CD (1994? issue) or Tidal, without knowing what has been done during the process (EQ, mastering).
 
It's all cool to me. And by that I mean both the different periods with the band and peoples opinions on them. That's the way music works: it's different things to different people.

I don't know if Freddie Mercury and Brian May actually said the phrase from the Movie "Bohemian Rhapsody", but it's certainly applicable: "True poetry is for the Listener. (followed by Brian May) It ruins the mystery if everything's explained"

Rush started out as a hard rock band and developed into a "progressive" rock band fairly early on. If you like Geddy "raw", give the "ABC" bootleg album a listen. that's two weeks after Peart joined the band and Geddy is as raw as he's ever been. It's a boot leg rip, so there's the infrequent artifact like a feedback squeal you get in concert settings, but it's about as raw and unprocessed RUSH as you'll ever hear. It's been called a broadcast rip, but it sounds more like a soundboard rip to me. There's two songs on that recording that RUSH has never played again. That tour only, not even on the studio album. Well, they did sort of do "the garden road" on Clockwork Angels, but I think that was because they knew Neil was "done" and were book-ending their career together as RUSH.

Sometimes they hit gold, other times......not so much.

Geddy has said in a couple interviews Peart's lyrics were often challenging. But what's life without challenge? To be challenged lets you grow, it all things. Geddy enjoyed the it and achieving the precision required to meet the bar. It wasn't as much as "making it work" as it was meeting the challenge. Ged always seemed to rise to it, so well done.

Personally, I like it when bands step outside their comfort zone. It gives them "staying power". Some fans will stay with them, some fans move on and new fans are picked up. I feel it's like that in everything with life: challenge yourself. Without challenge, we stagnate. Whether that's in my previous field (SAR) or in music.

Geddy wanted to add the synth's/keyboards and they did. LIfeson got to a point where he wanted guitar to take more center stage and drop the synths/keyboards. They discussed it and eventually dropped keyboards to go back to the more traditional "power trio" composition.

I appreciate the early years for the hard rockin' period it was, I appreciate the synths in the 80's as an experiment in growth (and some iconic RUSH songs resulted) and I appreciate the rebirth as a "power trio". Each period has it's own "uniqueness", yet all still from the same band. That's a rare thing in this world. Not many musicians can go through all that and still be "popular".

Then Peart's daughter died at 19 in a car crash on her way to her first day of university. Messed him up pretty bad. Then his wife died within the next year of cancer and he was emotionally ruined. Withdrew from everything, including the band. Ged and Alex thought it was over. Neil had just gotten on his bike one day and essentially disappeared for a couple years. Turned into a "Ghost Rider" and wrote a book with that title.

He came back (mostly because he didn't want life to force him to end RUSH that way) and then came "Vapor Trails", which was often commented on as being cathartic for him. Then "Snakes and Arrows", and lastly; "Clockwork Angels". You get a small flavor for his pain and "rebirth" in those three albums. Despite what the sound engineers did with them, the lyrics are all mighty.

Then Peart passed after a 3 year battle with glioblastoma and RUSH died with him. Ged and Lifeson have said as much. I'd wager it's a "respect thing" as much as anything else for thier friend and brother.

I appreciate all RUSH's periods of evolution and experimentation for just what they are: different.

I also can't do what they did, so I don't feel (personally) it's appropriate for me to critique the choices (and reasons for those choices) they made. I just try to appreciate it all as it's presented.

I also appreciate that doesn't appeal to some people and that certain periods may appeal to certain people, the same as other periods may appeal to other people.

The world would be a pretty boring place if we all liked the exact same things.


Vive le Difference!


;)
I do like the various Rush evolution and experimentation. I wouldn't say I have a preference for their first album's sound, but it just seemed to me hardly anyone gives the first album much favor. I just think Rush was at its lyrical best with songs like Spirit of Radio, Limelight, Tom Sayer and the like. And I really dig the album cover art on Permanent Waves :D .
 
I do like the various Rush evolution and experimentation. I wouldn't say I have a preference for their first album's sound, but it just seemed to me hardly anyone gives the first album much favor. I just think Rush was at its lyrical best with songs like Spirit of Radio, Limelight, Tom Sayer and the like. And I really dig the album cover art on Permanent Waves :D .
First album with original drummer Rutsey is good. It's a product of it's times though. Sound, engineering, lyrics, cover art, etc. Lots of people appreciate it for what it is. I certainly do. It's an early 70's hard rock album. Full stop. Some people like that, some don't. To each their own.

If you have the "Permanent Waves" album cover at hand, see if you can find the names in the background. That's also Hugh Syme (the artist) standing in the background with his arms raised (IE: waving). He also played on the "permanent waves" title as a pun. The crashing waves on the seawall is obvious. The models hair not so much. He wanted a 50's look with a "wave perm" hairstyle. The blowing newspaper is also part of the pun (IE: political waves). The band loved it all, although it took a little bit of time for them to come completely around to it. They could (reportedly) be quite the jokers at times.

Always a lot of hidden things going on with RUSH. Some of it obvious, some of it not. A lot of it is often "tongue in cheek", just for the humor of it. Music, lyrics, cover art, etc.....
 
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I'm a member of a couple of reddit audiophile threads where people post pictures of their rigs and most of the time they include turntables and every time I see one my mind is blown because I outgrew vinyl only a few years after buying my first CD player in the '80's. Back then I had a tape deck, a turntable and a CD player but once I heard digital I knew they was no going back yet people en mass are and I find it baffling given all the benefits of youtube. The first and most obvious benefit is, it's free. Secondly, youtube has an almost endless catalog of music, with the original music video, the karaoke versions of songs, live versions and videos that include the lyrics. Thirdly, the convenience of simply clicking my mouse a few times and opening up a world of music is pretty alluring. I always wondered about the sound quality though so I bought a CD a few years ago to compare youtube to CD and couldn't hear any difference. LP's on the other hand can only be played one at a time, require time, money and effort to obtain and play and also require money and effort to maintain and as your collection of LP's grows it obviously becomes more expensive and takes up space-something youtube doesn't yet most reddit audiophiles are flocking to them

Does the vinyl renaissance make sense to you because it sure doesn't to me
Because if you listen to music recorded in analog (AKA tape) vynil sounds better! Unfortunately, very few original analog recordings from the late 50' through the mid 80's were remastered to digital in 24/96 format. Even those that were were not done great. For those classics of the analog era, modern remasters on vynil sound better than publicly sold or streamed digital files! Lets be clear, the ones that do are usually 45 RPM "audiophile" releases that are expensive limited series. However, anyone that A/B them picks the vinyl one every time! Furthermore, there is the physicality of handling your music, the ritualistic aspects that are sorely lacking from just picking a song by touching a screen. Finally, though 24/96 recordings are technically superior you virtually never listen to digital tracks at that resolution, unless you download them from somewhere like HD tracks. Most of the digital music consumed is at best CD format 16/44 or, more commonly, an awful MP3. Thus, even in regular listening, vinyl is as good, if not better, than what you stream.
Here's a small sampling of vinyl releases that sound better than any digital file you can ever get of them.
BTW, just a little inside info that most people don't quite get. All these 45 RPM records are actually made from digital remasters from original tapes! But, those masters are not sold as digital files!
 

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Because if you listen to music recorded in analog (AKA tape) vynil sounds better!
Citation needed because

1 - You realise that a whole lot of vinyl was mastered from tape?

2 - Even where it is mastered from digital, pretty much the only tape it is going to sound better than is cassette tape, or perhaps low speed narrow reel to reel.
 
For those classics of the analog era, modern remasters on vynil sound better than publicly sold or streamed digital files!
Nonsense.

Finally, though 24/96 recordings are technically superior you virtually never listen to digital tracks at that resolution, unless you download them from somewhere like HD tracks. Most of the digital music consumed is at best CD format 16/44
16/44.1 is already orders of magnitude better than vinyl both in dynamic range, SNR, distortion, and flatness of the frequency respons within the audbible band. It is also not subject to speed variations (wow/flutter, off centre spindle hole or warpage) of vinyl. You can record any vinyl recording to 16/44.1 and you will never be able to tell the difference between the recording and the same played direct from the turntable, through the same amp and speakers/room.


There are plenty of reasons to like vinyl. I play it myself. However, objective sound quality potential of the medium is not one of those reasons.
 
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Someone correct me if I'm wrong here (and I may very well be, I'm just an "end consumer") but I thought before studios went digital, all masters were laid down as individual tracks on 1/4 tape and then combined on the main board to make the album, still on 1/4" tape.

Once that master was finished, it went out to be cut and finally, pressed into vinyl for retail sale.

If that's the way it really was, how can the vinyl be more dynamic than the tape? Best it seems you could hope for is to equal it. Assuming the master discs were cut perfectly off the tape that is.

I'm talking masters though to vinyl though. Not sure how the releases compared while they were still releasing RTR...
 
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Someone correct me if I'm wrong here (and I may very well be, I'm not a sound engineer) but I thought before digital all masters were laid down as individual tracks on 1/4 tape and then combined on the main board to make the album, still on 1/4" tape.

Once that master was finished, it went out to be cut and then pressed into vinyl.

If that's the way it really was, how can the vinyl be more dynamic than the tape? Best it seems you could hope for is to equal it.

I'm talking masters though, not sure how any of the releases were while they were still releasing RTR compared to the masters....
No - 1/2", 1" and 2" tape were other options, with the wider tapes in common use for pop/rock productions. However, it is true that LPs have more inherent self-noise than most (not all) master tapes. Older LPs of classical music (1950s in particular) often have clearly audible hiss. Funny, modern de-noised remasters of these recordings (like Bruno Walter's and Leonard Bernstein's for Columbia or George Szell for Epic) have noticeable less hiss than the LPs that were first issued.
This changed with Dolby A:

Dolby A-type noise reduction was the Dolby company's first noise reduction system, presented in 1965.[2][3] It was intended for use in professional recording studios, where it became commonplace, gaining widespread acceptance at the same time that multitrack recording became standard. The input signal is split into frequency bands by four filters with 12 dB per octave slopes, with cutoff frequencies (3 dB down points) as follows: low-pass at 80 Hz; band-pass from 80 Hz to 3 kHz; a high-pass from 3 kHz; and another high-pass at 9 kHz. (The stacking of contributions from the two high-pass bands allows greater noise reduction in the upper frequencies.) The compander circuit has a threshold of −40 dB, with a ratio of 2:1 for a compression/expansion of 10 dB. This provides about 10 dB of noise reduction increasing to a possible 15 dB at 15 kHz, according to articles written by Ray Dolby and published by the Audio Engineering Society (October 1967)[4][5] and Audio (June/July 1968).[6][7]


Tape recordings using Dolby A were uniformly lower in noise than the LPs produced from them.
 
Someone correct me if I'm wrong here (and I may very well be, I'm just an "end consumer") but I thought before studios went digital, all masters were laid down as individual tracks on 1/4 tape and then combined on the main board to make the album, still on 1/4" tape.
Just before all-digital workflows, up to 24 tracks were put onto 2" tape. This might still have required "bouncing" to have more than 24 tracks. The 24 tracks were then mixed down to stereo on 1/4" tape
 
No - 1/2", 1" and 2" tape were other options, with the wider tapes in common use for pop/rock productions. However, it is true that LPs have more inherent self-noise than most (not all) master tapes. Older LPs of classical music (1950s in particular) often have clearly audible hiss. Funny, modern de-noised remasters of these recordings (like Bruno Walter's and Leonard Bernstein's for Columbia or George Szell for Epic) have noticeable less hiss than the LPs that were first issued.
This changed with Dolby A:

Dolby A-type noise reduction was the Dolby company's first noise reduction system, presented in 1965.[2][3] It was intended for use in professional recording studios, where it became commonplace, gaining widespread acceptance at the same time that multitrack recording became standard. The input signal is split into frequency bands by four filters with 12 dB per octave slopes, with cutoff frequencies (3 dB down points) as follows: low-pass at 80 Hz; band-pass from 80 Hz to 3 kHz; a high-pass from 3 kHz; and another high-pass at 9 kHz. (The stacking of contributions from the two high-pass bands allows greater noise reduction in the upper frequencies.) The compander circuit has a threshold of −40 dB, with a ratio of 2:1 for a compression/expansion of 10 dB. This provides about 10 dB of noise reduction increasing to a possible 15 dB at 15 kHz, according to articles written by Ray Dolby and published by the Audio Engineering Society (October 1967)[4][5] and Audio (June/July 1968).[6][7]


Tape recordings using Dolby A were uniformly lower in noise than the LPs produced from them.
Would I be correct in saying then that the 1/4" tape was retail release type stuff and the wider formats were used for studio/commercial equipment?

Edit: looks like maswelleq answered it.....24 tracks on a 2" tape, kinda cool. I actually got the RTR size wrong. It should have been 1/2" for RTR, not 1/4". I've never had RTR so the size is not front of mind....then there's compact cassette at 1/8". Argh! So much tape!

;)
 
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Would I be correct in saying he 1/4" tape was retail release type stuff and the wider formats were studio/commercial equipment?
Yes, and the commercially available prerecorded 1/4" tapes were often copied at a higher speed than the normal playback speed, resulting in a reduction of high frequency content and increased background noise. The same applies for compact cassettes. Mind you there were plenty of professional recordings on 1/4" tape. DAT put paid to all that.
 
So specific tape sizes aside, it still seems to me the best you could hope for from vinyl was to match the tape. When tape was the norm in recording studios that is.....
 
Nonsense.


16/44.1 is already orders of magnitude ...

Let's not get carried away. 16 bit has a dynamic range, and therefore a maximum theoretical SNR of ~96dB after perfect D/A conversion. Vinyl is often quoted at about 65dB for SNR (which is a good rough proxy for dynamic range). A 31dB difference is about 36X the signal ratio. Orders of magnitude would be 100X (40dB) or more.

Noise isn't much of an issue in my world, and my speakers--and almost certainly your speakers too--add so much more distortion than a good vinyl playback rig that it's hard for me to get too worked up about absolute fidelity of the sources, let alone processing or amplification. It would be interesting to do an end-to-end THD comparison and see how much or little a lossless file through my DAC actually improves over a clean LP.

But to do that we'd have to verify that the vinyl master is the same as the digital master and there goes another ten pages of this thread ... o_O
 
Orders of magnitude would be 100X (40dB) or more.
OK - if you are going to be picky - "at least an order of magnitude"
Jeez.

Plus - you can get better than 110dB with 16 bit if noise shaped dither is used.

The main point is that the claims of vinyl sonic superiority I was replying to (at least as a medium) over even 16 bit digital, are bogus.
 
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Would I be correct in saying then that the 1/4" tape was retail release type stuff and the wider formats were used for studio/commercial equipment?
No, not just domestic - all stereo studios used 1/4" tape. If you were around in the 70s, 80s etc. all pre-recorded audio you heard broadcast on the radio was 1/4". Some talk and news studios I worked in had 4 or more, very large 1/4" professional tape machines used for editing and playing clips for broadcast use. It was the most common format in broadcasting.
 
OK - if you are going to be picky - "at least an order of magnitude"

Plus - you can get better than 110dB with 16 bit if noise shaped dither is used.

Jeez.

Great, so I won't hear any noise even when I set my system to peak at 140dB in my 30dB(A) listening room? Or 150dB(!) in a more typical but still rather quiet room? :)

And even 36X overstates things considering the rule of thumb that it takes a 10dB difference to create a perception of half or double the volume. 31dB only amounts to a 8X perceptual difference--not nothing, but when 10dB+ of that gets eaten up by processing and amplification the remainder is the difference between "utterly inaudible" and "inconsequential in reasonable domestic playback scenarios".

I think we should be less grandiose about the contrast.
 
Great, so I won't hear any noise even when I set my system to peak at 140dB in my 30dB(A) listening room? Or 150dB(!)
Probably not, because as likely as not you'll have shredded your ear drums. :p

Plus the topic was not absolute audibility of noise - (Again) it was audio quality relative to vinyl. Specifically pointing out the flaws in the statement of superiority of vinyl.

I'm frankly surprised Im having to point this out a second time. You seem to be struggling with following the thread of the conversation.
 
16/44.1 is already orders of magnitude better than vinly both in dynamic range, SNR ...

You made the factual claim, I did the math. I'm an engineer. It's what I do.

I am also making slightly absurd points to call out your exaggeration(s).

I made no reference to "quality" which has only a loose aesthetic connection with the pie-in-the-sky theoretical numbers you're tossing around. If you listen to your home stereo with an oscilloscope (you own one, right?) then I happily admit you have the right to enjoy your hobby however you like.

Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I'm not following the discussion. ;)
 
You made the factual claim, I did the math. I'm an engineer. It's what I do.

I am also making slightly absurd points to call out your exaggeration(s).

OK - seeing as you want to be pedantically precise with your math, perhaps we can be pedantically precise with the linguistics also.

I stated orders of magnitude. You stated it as "only" 31dB and that "orders" would have to be 40dB. However 31dB is more than one order of magnitude. Something like 1.55 orders of magnitude.

Or would you call it 1.55 order of magnitude? I think I'd be going with the former, so, where precisely is the exaggeration?

And do you really think that the "exaggeration" even if it had been such - needed to be "called out?" :rolleyes: The point was clear, whether it was 31dB or 40dB, or 1dB, it still demonstrates that claim of vinyl superiority is not supported by the facts. Even ignoring all the other areas of deficiency.
 
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