From Irene McC Sent Wed, Apr 22nd 1998, 10:03
From Irene McC Sent Wed, Apr 22nd 1998, 10:03
On 22 Apr 98, siliconvortex wrote > a cd, which is (given good mastering) an exact digital copy There you said it "DIGITAL". All cut up into millions of little bits and jammed back together, not one smooth sound curve. It samples at 44 thousand.1 times per second.... > or vinyl, which has been converted from dat to analogue, cut with > a lathe into a piece of metal, then pressed into a piece of soft > plastic, then tracked through a dust filled groove with a diamond > connected to a magnet, then put through an riaa equaliser, before > you hear the end result. which did you say sounds better? It's not quite as simple as that. The actual vinyl has "give" in it, meaning that the walls of the vinyl contract and expand - causing a certain amount of compression that happens in the vinyl itself which sounds attractive to the human ear. It's called "Wellie" (coming from the visual image of a kick up the bum with a wellington boot). If you go above clip in digital you get a terrible distortion but in any analogue medium it givies it more 'wellie'. That's why certain recording artists deliberately go from their digital master onto 1/2" analogue tape to saturate the tape which gives it a much better "warmer" sound - and then transfer it to CD from THAT. And many rock artists only record directly to analogue multi-track tape and then use the Apogee UV22 process to achieve analogue-like "warmth" on CD. The mastering process on the CD is the most important : there is a *big loss* between original analog mastering to digital - unless 24-bit mastering is used (which is already available). A well-mastered vinyl 12" can contain harmonics up to 30 kHz, which would be chopped dead on CD at 20 kHz. Brick wall. I * np : The Black Dog Live In Toronto (*** thanks!!)