How much did ADCs in the 80s affect the sound quality of CDs?

[levimax]

From the late 80s and the mid 90s might be the golden era for CD mastering, when better sources were used for remasters, while the loudness wars hadn't kicked in.

I agree but that was kind of a small window of opportunity. Do you have some favorite remasters from that era?

 

[krabapple]

? The surround mix is hardly thin or undynamic, and certainly one can pick out all the intruments.

I'm not questioning the quality of the original stereo mix on the DVDA, which was from the correct 1610 source. It's great too.


DVDA, "I.G.Y.", lossless 5.1 mix

 

[Tell]

We also have the whole thing with sampling and early digital synthesisers. I mean have anyone complained about the sound quality of Yello's music? Stella was made on a Fairlight CM1 from 1979 which could apparently do 16bit 100kHz, but seeing that memory was a bit limited I doubt it was used that often. So the Fairlight was the ADC, DAW and DAC, and personally I can't hear any faults with it.
This track is my favourite from Stella, sounds great

 

[manisandher]

It really depends on how each HDCD was mastered, in particular if Peak Extension was exploited. The difference could be substantial.

I tried all the HDCD processes, but preferred the sound with them all disengaged. But ulitmately I recorded in 24-bit anyway.

 

[krabapple]

I agree but that was kind of a small window of opportunity. Do you have some favorite remasters from that era?

Hard to recall now, because the first edition CDs are long gone from my collection. But ISTR the early Genesis catalog sounding better after its first 'definitive' remastering. (Now they've all been replaced by 2-track remixes that I don't like)

But there are other things that matter besides compression. There was sometimes overaggressive use of noise reduction. That predated the loudness wars. And of course, the re-EQ preferences of any given ME were a crapshoot. The urge to 'improve' on the EQ of a flat transfer of the master tape must have been strong. I suspect the thinking might have been, why leave it 'flat' if you're paid to 'remaster' something? (And 'flat' isn't always best anyway)

 

[krabapple]

I tried all the HDCD processes, but preferred the sound with them all disengaged. But ulitmately I recorded in 24-bit anyway.

oh, duh, I didn't realize you were talking about the ADC.

Sure, IIRC the selling point of the Keith Johnson ADC was its intrinsic high quality; the Peak Extend and Filter Switch options were just gravy on top for producing CDs.

 

[Snarfie]

? The surround mix is hardly thin or undynamic, and certainly one can pick out all the intruments.

I'm not questioning the quality of the original stereo mix on the DVDA, which was from the correct 1610 source. It's great too.


DVDA, "I.G.Y.", lossless 5.1 mix

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Oh no did not questioning the surround mix actualy never heard it ( i don't have a surround set) I only was interested in the 1610 master to hear the difference between one of the first cd release i bought in the 80ties.

So i extracted the 1610 2.0 stereo file only. An yes imo there was clearly a difference.

 

[Cbdb2]

We also have the whole thing with sampling and early digital synthesisers. I mean have anyone complained about the sound quality of Yello's music? Stella was made on a Fairlight CM1 from 1979 which could apparently do 16bit 100kHz,

Synclavier , 1978. Also did sampling at 16bit and multiple rates 25khz to 100khz. And did something no other sampler did, play back any samples at different rates at the same time. Zappa, Sting, Townsend all loved them. If they didn't sound good these guys would not have used them. I spent 10 years editing sound effects on one. When we started using protools we called it slowtools or prostools. And the Synclav sounded better.

 

[Blumlein 88]

When we started using protools we called it slowtools or prostools.

I didn't use it back then, but have heard it called SlowTools before. I seem to recall hearing you would make edits/processing, and might wait 30 minutes for it to finish. Then if you didn't like the result an undo was another 30 minutes. Don't know if that was exaggerated or not.

 

[Cbdb2]

We started using it at version 4. It wasn't that slow or it wouldn't have made it in the door. Sound effects were the most demanding editing I've ever done, the process was just much more streamlined with the synclav sampler/sequencer. A gun fight would need gunshots, bullet pass bys, bullet hits, ricochets, gun loading, cocking, body falls, a half dozen of each. With protocols you'ld have to import each gunshot, layer them (yould use 2 or 3 differnet sounds for each one) one by one on different tracks, balance the volumes then bounce them down to 1 track. We were still using a Neve analog mixer and only had 16 tracks for SFX. With a sampler one button brings up a patch of all your gunshots and hitting 3 keys on the piano keyboard layers the 3 shots with instant audition all on 1 track.
You could also edit real time like SciFi button beeps by hitting keys as the picture was running.
And also instant audition and recording of pitch changes if you spread a sample across a few keys, used that a lot. And if you wanted to drop pitch a lot you would sample at 100khz.

 

[HaveMeterWillTravel]

A bunch of Telarc DDD classics were re-released on SACD which had the full 50 kHz sources used. These have appreciated in value on eBay since you don’t get high res Telarc content on streaming.

Do you have a reference for an accounting of all these re-releases?

 

[HaveMeterWillTravel]

Sadly not. I was too young, just a music consumer back then. I've never seen a Soundstream system in the flesh. At $160,000USD back in the day, I don't think many made it to Australia. Plenty of Sony units and some Mitsubishis. I was offered a free X-80 in Sydney several years back, but decided driving 1800km to pick up what was essentially a giant historical paperweight was foolish.

Thomas Stockham died January 6th 2004. He was president of the AES in 82/83?

Thomas G. Stockham, Jr.

I recently picked up a small haul of early Michael Murray Telarcs to go with the others I have squirrelled away. I think between my father and I, we have pretty much all the Telarcs of that era. Amazing recordings. Can't resist another copy of THE 1812 as you can never have too many just in case...

View attachment 392375

For no particular reason, are you familiar with torrents?

 

[HaveMeterWillTravel]

A lot of people like to purchase older CDs of their favourite albums since they tend to have better dynamic range and are perceived to sound better than newer masterings. But are there distortions that the older ADCs used to create the digital masterings back in the 1980s that would be (1) measurable and (2) audible?

It has been quite a while, but here is my recollection. The early CD era was plagued by several common issues. The first was simply due to the digitization of post RIAA de-emphasis. They literally took the final mixing for an LP, digitized it and made a CD. Gawd did those sound awful, beyond 'bright". The next problem was they were rather compressed, an effective 10-12 bit. This meant alot of constant low level hiss. Basically, it was a bum-rush of profit. It had almost nothing to do with the quality of the professional ADCs used. IIRC, most were equivalent to 20-bit when properly used. By the late '80s, I helped my dad record many of his LPs @ 48kHz @ 16bits.

 

[HaveMeterWillTravel]

Early analog anti aliasing ADC filters were poor, with horrible phase response.

In the audio field, yes.. I have seen digitized time-waveform recordings from the 60s with a dynamic range over 120 dB. or approximately 20 bit.

 

[HaveMeterWillTravel]

. A gun fight would need gunshots, bullet pass bys, bullet hits, ricochets, gun loading, cocking, body falls,

Had you thought of simply hiring Alec Baldwin?

 

[Blumlein 88]

The first was simply due to the digitization of post RIAA de-emphasis. They literally took the final mixing for an LP, digitized it and made a CD. Gawd did those sound awful, beyond 'bright".

Do you have any knowledge of that with specifics. I've heard this a lot, and I don't think it was common at all. RIAA would be extremely wrong. Compression was used on most music and was used more in the last 25 years.

Friends and I once got together all the LPs, CDs and RTRs we could of the same recording. This was in the 1990s. The LP was always very different. The reels and CD were quite close with the same basic balance. We had a few dozen such recordings to compare and used 3 different systems at different times. Any CD made from the LP master would have been obvious. We found none.

 

[Mart68]

Do you have any knowledge of that with specifics. I've heard this a lot, and I don't think it was common at all. RIAA would be extremely wrong. Compression was used on most music and was used more in the last 25 years.

Friends and I once got together all the LPs, CDs and RTRs we could of the same recording. This was in the 1990s. The LP was always very different. The reels and CD were quite close with the same basic balance. We had a few dozen such recordings to compare and used 3 different systems at different times. Any CD made from the LP master would have been obvious. We found none.

Seen that claim made 100 times over the years, every time I ask 'Name one' - no-one ever can.

As you say it would sound badly wrong, not just 'bright'.

 

[HaveMeterWillTravel]

Do you have any knowledge of that with specifics. I've heard this a lot, and I don't think it was common at all. RIAA would be extremely wrong. Compression was used on most music and was used more in the last 25 years.

Friends and I once got together all the LPs, CDs and RTRs we could of the same recording. This was in the 1990s. The LP was always very different. The reels and CD were quite close with the same basic balance. We had a few dozen such recordings to compare and used 3 different systems at different times. Any CD made from the LP master would have been obvious. We found none.

With respect to RIAA pre-emphasis/de-emphasis, the analog circuit uncertainty of gain can be significantly larger than the generally accepted audible limit.
I would wager that if you were able to obtain RTR masters, your sampling population is skewed towards those production labels who actually cared about sound quality.
I remember many CD's which sucked compared to their cassette releases!

 

[Mart68]

Name one.

 

[HaveMeterWillTravel]

Seen that claim made 100 times over the years, every time I ask 'Name one' - no-one ever can.

As you say it would sound badly wrong, not just 'brigh

What are you objecting to? That in the early days that many CD's were just "badly wrong"?