re: Remasters vs. Vinyl

[Jeremy Mixer <mixer@xxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, Buckeye wrote:

> They say that people can't hear any higher frequencies than about 20Khz.

More recently a lot of people are saying that the normal human ear (there
are of course a few exceptions) can't hear anything above 16kHz.
>
> Of course, things are much more complicated than this.  Our ears and our
> brain are much more complicated than anything we can build.  The best
> devices for music are what God gave us!  On paper, it seems that we can do
> well in capturing music and playing it back.

what scares me is technology- will there be a time when humans can create
living creatures from scratch? Technology, if it comtinues to improve,
could end up showing us that all life is actually created by other
life.....who knows...this isn't the right list.

> Given perfect equipment, perfect medium, I'll take analog any day!
> However, CDs are just so convenient and they sound the same, time after
> time!  I long for the good old days of analog, though!

it's hard to say- the advantage of digital is this- if cared for properly,
you have it forever. Analog, whether vinyl, or tape- will degrade over
time. On vinyl you lose a little bit each time it has been played from
friction, and while only a tiny amount, after many plays it becomes very
noticable. With tape you have minor bleed-through when it is stored for a
long period of time, and over time the magnetic particles move ever so
slightly leading to loss of quality.

It is true that nothing beats that warm analog sound. And digital is so
much more crisp. Eventually digital technology will have the capability to
have more of an analog sound, that is probably years down the road....but
I am sure that it must be possible to be able to pick up much truer sound.

It's pretty amazing that the medium used to distribute music to consumers
that was always secondary were cassettes. Cassettes, while convenient, are
very low quality, especially those that were put out 20-30 years ago. The
cassette tapes of more recent years are obviously a lot better, however
with cassettes, you still don't get a true representation of the actual
sound. the tape moves at 1 7/8 of an inch per second, and with four tracks
on a cassette tape each track is only 1/32 of an inch wide.

There are some cassette decks and recording machines that are adjustable
to record and play at 3 3/4 of an inch per second, this, while splitting
the amount of time available on the tape, provides sound quality that is
twice as good.

Reel-to reel tape is a much better medium, and what was used by
professionals to distribute audio. Whether it was radio stations dubbing
commercials for each other (now they just email them) or whatever it
was.....reel to reel was what was used. Not cassettes.

Reels only go in one direction, and the tape is 1/4 of an inch wide,
allowing much more space for each track. That, along with the speed of the
tape- 7.5 IPS (inches per second), 15 IPS, or 30 IPS, gives you much
better recording quality. Why did this never catch on with the mainstream
public?

Expense is the main issue. You need bigger tape, a lot more of it, and it
is not stored in a convenient cassette. And 10 reels take up a
considerable amount more of space then 10 cassettes do.

The advantage of digital is this- elimination of tape hiss, wow and
flutter, allowing for "cleaner" recordings, along with the fact that You
can make copies that are identical to the original, and bounce audio from
track to track without building up generations of noise each time.

And since computers are digital, you can edit the audio in a computer then
transfer it to digital tape with still no audio loss.

So what is better? Digital. Obviously.

However I am with bruce, I love the warm sound of an analog recording on
top notch equipment.

Jeremy