Re: [ARSCLIST] From ProTools to Vinyl? was [ARSCLIST] Fred Layn's post on the Studer

[Matthew Barton <mbarton@xxxxxxx>]

Andy,

You're quite right--and there's a lot vinyl out there that's from
digital sources. However, if that digital source is 24/96, SACD or
somesuch, the potential is there to make a vinyl pressing that would be
superior to a 16/44.1 commercial audio CD that was scaled down from the
same source, provided the LP was EQ-ed to take advantage of this. I'll
bet a lot of the vinyl aimed at the DJ market pumps up the bass quite a
bit, even when it's from a digital source. Abkco's recent vinyl releases
of the early Rolling Stones catalogs were mastered from the SACD
transfers made from the original master tapes.

Mosaic Records usually provides this information for it's vinyl
releases. The new catalog has a Miles Davis vinyl set of his work from
1963 and 1964, and it says that everything on it was from analog
sources, except for the Miles in Berlin album. The CD history of "Kind
of Blue" was a real comedy-of-errors until fairly recently.



Matthew Barton
American Folklife Center
The Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540-4610
phone: (202) 707-1733
fax: (202) 707-2076
email: mbarton@xxxxxxx

>>> akolovos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1/12/2005 10:07:45 AM >>>
Folks,

While we're on the topic of analog v.s. digital here, I just want to
present something that has vexed me for a while.

What in the world is the point in pressing LPs or 45s from
digital-source studio recordings and then marketing them as "analog"?
I
mean, outside of "marketing" that is.  Sure the resulting playback
format is analog, but if the source recording is a born-digital
multi-track studio recording, then the analog LP has been derived from
a
digital source.  It's like after-the-fact-analog or something.  With
an
"audiophile vinyl" markup to boot!  Please correct me if I'm wrong
here,
but the only "analog warmth" (or whatever) present would be the result
of whatever artifacts got added to the signal through the
digital-to-analog conversion the signal went through to make the disc
master, the surface noise of the disc, the pre-amp, etc, but not a
natural part of the recording from the get-go.  Does surface noise add
"warmth"?--Sure it does.  Is surface noise the source of all that
people
love about analog?--I don't think so. At that point I'd rather have my
CD player reconstruct the bits and feed me the sound.

I understand that DJs (meaning dance club and Hip-Hop DJs as opposed
to
broadcast DJs) have a whole other set of reasons (scratching, cueing,
complex mixing and other stuff that works well in the analog domain)
for
working with LPs that don't generally apply to the home listening
environment, and I also realize that they are a big market for vinyl
pressings of born-digital audio.  But for the rest of us it seems
kinda
like an audiophile/nostalgia racket.

When I buy LPs, I always try to make sure that the source recording
was
analog to begin with--otherwise I'd rather buy it on CD.  And, from
the
other side, I prefer to get analog source recordings on LP rather than
CD. Am I being an over-sensitive madman here?