From Mitchell K. Hilton Sent Fri, Jan 22nd 1999, 18:39
From Mitchell K. Hilton Sent Fri, Jan 22nd 1999, 18:39
> Those gold Master Recording CDs are for suckers, I mean > audiophiles. While you're at it, explain why my 15 year old CDs sound > BETTER than they did the day I bought them, unlike my 15 year old vinyl. Well then, I must be a sucker/audiophile, because I have A/Bed aluminum and gold discs of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (AAD) and Joe Jackson's Will Power (DDD), and I can hear the difference on both. On the aluminum Floyd, if you crank it up, the first thing you hear is tape hiss. On the gold, those heartbeats fade up out of almost nowhere and shake the house. The JJ CD, which is orchestral (quite out of print and bloody brilliant BTW), has some very heavy and dramatic accents (sforzandi for you armchair musicologists), and the difference between the aluminum and gold CD's is like a slap vs. a punch. It might be that the gold CD's are simply mastered more meticulously though. That can make a big difference. That said, I grew up with vinyl and there is something comfortingly "je ne sais quoi" about its sound to me. It is *not* higher quality; I just like it. It's a personal thing that can't be expressed in technical terms. There are some great records that sound like total crap, for example Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II. I have it on CD and that infamous brown vinyl, and the pops, hiss, wow and farty noises seem to become part of the music, pulling off the paradox of "organic" electronic music, whereas the CD sounds sterile to my ears. Maybe it's just nostalgia. I'm in my 30's, so that's definitely possible. ;) Peace, Mitch