I had an interesting argument with a tape devotee about tape VS disk and
one thing he never understood was how much is lost when you go from one
medium to another. The weakness of tape is the strength of vinyl and vice
versa. He felt that tape was always superior. I agreed that a properly
aligned deck with good tape stock, run at 15ips (or higher), with maximum
numbers of tracks allowed at 1 track per 1/8th inch, could smoke most
recording methods and should be better than "direct to disk". But, with
D2D, you skip a whole set of electronics, storage and degradation. A
record won't beat a 1st generation master tape on capability. But, if you
have the opportunity to skip that tape generation, you skip all the
distortion introduced by the tape head amps, tape head, storage, playback
head, playback electronics and the extra cables and connections. In other
words, it's apples VS oranges. If vinyl is your media of choice, direct to
disk will maximize the potential because it eliminates distortions you
don't have to have.
Phillip
FWIW, I think D2D is spectacular. "The King James Version" is pretty
close to being there.
Tom Fine wrote:
Hi All:
Was there ever published a discography or listing of all of the
direct-to-disk revival LPs? That was a short-lived fad but there were
some great-sounding records made. I have just a handful but I imagine
there were maybe a couple hundred made.
I would argue that some of those recordings were as good as vinyl could
get. It was an interesting time in the recording business because some of
the great old-school engineers were still around in top form and there
were still jazz and classical artists who could nail it live in the
studio in one take, and the studios were past the early and mid 70's
"dead coffin" acoustics. Plus that generation of mixing consoles sounded
good again in most cases.
Interesting -- in a couple of cases I later bought the CD, which was
obviously made from a tape run at the time. You can really tell how Dolby
A NR on the tape quashes the sound, even when a good CD mastering job was
done.
-- Tom Fine
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