High-res audio comparison: Linn Records Free High Res Samples

[Newman]

and all "contemporary" players (including PC ones) have de-emphasis for their output,

I guess that contradicts the Wikipedia article he quoted. "Playback of such discs in a computer ...typically does not take into account the pre-emphasis..."

 

[respice finem]

Not everything there must be automatically right, complete, or up to date Many issues have become non-issues later.
A software player on a PC doesn't need it, as the CD player already does the trick. Even my 10 years old LG does.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

Some CDs are mastered with pre-emphasis

My understanding is that pre-emphasis was pretty much DOA, and very few CDs were ever mastered with it. Early players even had an indicator light for when the pre-emphasis flag was asserted. I never saw it lit. Whilst a theoretical problem, in practice it shouldn't be.

 

[respice finem]

Similarly, IDK how many original analog master tapes are still around in reasonable condition. My cautious guess: not that many. The shelf life of those is limited, so what wasn't digitized soon enough, probably won't be "saved" 30 years later.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

I think he was asking about the digital mastering studio accessing an old tape on (clearly) a different deck to the one used for original recording.

I suppose the idea is that the studio has a high quality machine, and tuned to within an inch of its life.

P.S. the bias tone was often more like 50 kHz, but over 100 kHz was used, certainly

It is an interesting thought. I doubt it matters that the exact model is maintained. Head geometry might make a slight difference to the precise frequency response of the recovered audio, but that is about it. There is certainly interest in refurbed machines and an entire sub-culture of enthusiasts playing with machines that once would have cost more than their house.

Yeah, bias frequencies were all over the place. Lots of empirical tweaking.

 

[SimpleTheater]

Another issue nobody ever mentions is that air has a very brutal frequency dependant absorption of sound. Even at human frequencies this matters.

Finally someone brings up the air. It’s all about the air.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

Similarly, IDK how many original analog master tapes are still around in reasonable condition. My cautious guess: not that many. The shelf life of those is limited, so what wasn't digitized soon enough, probably won't be "saved" 30 years later.

Major record labels seemed to have kept archives of a lot. Even the tracking tapes for some. But it is very hit and miss. Care and feeding of these old tapes is an art in itself. Like very old movie negs, there is a significant problem with autocatalytic decomposition of the acetate backing of old tapes. That totally destroys the tape. Then you have shedding, adhesion to the back of the next layer of tape, and so on. Frighteningly the common answer is to cook the tape. That seems to get you a window of opportunity to get the information off. Tapes held in temperature controlled and dry storage seems to fare best. But indeed the clock is ticking, and time has no doubt run out for a lot.

 

[Jimbob54]

Major record labels seemed to have kept archives of a lot. Even the tracking tapes for some. But it is very hit and miss. Care and feeding of these old tapes is an art in itself. Like very old movie negs, there is a significant problem with autocatalytic decomposition of the acetate backing of old tapes. That totally destroys the tape. Then you have shedding, adhesion to the back of the next layer of tape, and so on. Frighteningly the common answer is to cook the tape. That seems to get you a window of opportunity to get the information off. Tapes held in temperature controlled and dry storage seems to fare best. But indeed the clock is ticking, and time has no doubt run out for a lot.

There was a major fire at one of the main storage sites at some point in the past couple of years that I think took quite a lot of the store of the major labels out.

EDIT- OK I may have been thinking of the 2008 UMG fire- so not " a couple" of years https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html

 

[simbloke]

From this page:
https://www.linnrecords.com/downloads

Linn obviously has no shame. They have a whole series of lies on this page. I'm not sure there is anything true on it actually. Even 8 track exceeded CD in sound quality. Utterly ridiculous.

Wow they really don't do they? I did have at least some respect for Linn but not anymore.

 

[DSJR]

What may happen, is master tapes encoded with Dolby A, later digitized without decoding Dolby A - they will be treblish, this was sometimes even applied as an "insider trick" to boost "spaciousness". https://www.audiothing.net/blog/the-dolby-a-trick/

I always wondered why an early CD compilation 'Jethro Tull, Original Masters' sounded almost sickly sweet. My mastering engineer pal identified it immediately as Dolby A not de-processed when the compilation was made. Maybe the vinyl version sounded better that way...

 

[simbloke]

I have at least one recording without some CRT interference; The Four Seasons by Anne Akiko Meyers. Violins certainly seem to make a lot noise for dogs!

Edit: It's 96/24, from HDTracks if I recall correctly.

 

[DSJR]

Wow they really don't do they? I did have at least some respect for Linn but not anymore.

The Universal fire apparently took out the 'session tracking tapes' and original 'studio' master mixes for so many artists, but I think the commercial masters from which we buy were stored elsewhere, so not totally lost. The chance of remixes and alternate takes though would have gone in the fire sadly. I wonder if some artists had all their multi-track tapes digitised and stored elsewhere (I believe basically *all* the Beatles' tapes were digitised at least once over the years, as much for the remasters in more recent times as anything else)?

Back in 1987, Linn knew full well how sh*t their turntable was at that time and their relationship with Castle Sound Studios, together with a purchase of the Sony PCM-F1 Betamax based recorder system (which I saw at the Linn factory) would have given them full knowledge of the benefits of digital (they even did a pro version originally of what became the 'Numerik dac' which was excellent and they had 'history' with their notorious at the time 'Analogue Digital' LP - consternation in Glasgow when 'we' all preferred the digital side). A shame the marketing played/plays so heavily to the still largely ignorant dealerbase and end user as this sh*t still comes across on various domestic audio forums sadly and peeps like me are shouted down very loudly as listening to the measurements rather than the music. I bet none of them have had their ears tested in their lives.

Back to the OP - I understand cymbal crashes have significant ultrasonic overtones, but am I right in saying the recording system as well as our ears, basically captures the in-band intermodulation effects of these ultrasonic tones, so we don't really need to have the original recorded? - Hope that makes sense

 

[milosz]

You gotta do this for VINYL PLAYBACK too....plus give some SINAD numbers for vinyl

 

[scooter]

You gotta do this for VINYL PLAYBACK too....plus give some SINAD numbers for vinyl

Great idea, but I'm afraid there will be many variables depending on what playback hardware is used.

 

[respice finem]

SINAD numbers for vinyl, some might get depressive seeing them

 

[AudioSceptic]

Actually, I'll modify my reply, as I wasn't really addressing the question properly earlier.
If you are going back to the master tape (and just exactly what constitutes a master tape is a whole other conversation) there is a very specific reason to capture at a very high sample rate. You need to be able to capture the bias signal. This is going to be of the order of 150 kHz odd, and depends on the machine and sometimes even choice of tape. The reason for capturing the bias is to allow you to correct for speed variations, and critically, scrape flutter. When the tape passes the heads it scrapes, and just like a finger rubbing the rim of a wineglass you can get very fast changing modulation of the speed of the tape past the head. This leads to a form of intermodulation distortion that is welded into the tape at the moment of recording. If you can see the bias signal you have what amounts to a local clock embedded in the tape that you can use to deconvolve the flutter. If you have the luxury of finding the original tracking tapes you can recover real audio that nobody has ever heard since the day the track was laid down. Even if you only have access to the master tapes, you still have a chance to remove the last generation of scrape flutter.

So this is another issue with these high res releases from old tapes. It would appear that most have not taken advantage of this possibility, and thus have actually lost a real opportunity to crete a better quality release, and have simply been lazy and depended upon woo to justify what they are doing. Proper forensic analysis of the tapes and modern processing would have yielded a conventional 16/48 result that exceeds the real musical information available in the silly lazy money grubbing stuff they are actually pedalling.

Good stuff. A few years ago I read about Plangent Processes, a company that specialises in this <https://audiophilereview.com/analog/plangent-a-better-way-to-transfer-analog-tape/>

 

[AudioSceptic]

This is the last video I had stashed form back in 2017 when I did these high-resolution audio comparisons against standard one using the same master:

After this, I will be producing new ones.

Well, that's a big disappointment. Linn make a big thing of having their own label so they have control of SQ right through the process. Have their engineers never properly looked at this stuff?

 

[scooter]

The funniest thing is that all samples with flaws are publicly available as test files, which logically should be perfect based on marketing principles

 

[charleski]

I'm actually a bit of a fan of the Linn Records label, but only because they release music that's actually worth listening to. John Butt's Dunedin Consort is superb and I only really understood the Mozart Requiem when I heard their version of it. It's one of the very few 'audiophile' labels that releases music that's not smooth jazz or some earnest amateurs showing off their violin skills. Their recording engineers seem quite competent in terms of micing and mixing, but clearly there are technical issues they need to address (the last piece by Schumann is a bit worrying).

The one take-home message from these videos seems to be that most recording studios haven't bothered shielding all their EM sources and have loads of stray radiation happening outside (or in some cases inside) the audible range. Since so many here are big fans of Paul McGovern and he's launched his own record label now I thought I'd take a look at one of the tracks he's produced.

This is DSD converted to 88.2kHz and it's actually not that bad. There's a small peak at 33kHz, though it is only discernible in an aggregate scan of the whole track, you can't really see it as the music plays. This is paino music and if you squint very hard you can see a small flicker of activity up to 26kHZ, though it's down at -110dB. But hey, Superman might appreciate it as long as he ignores the massive noise-shaping hump.

 

[Count Arthur]

but only because they release music that's actually worth listening to.

Citation needed.