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RE: PC Audio - how to get close to vinyl sound

I made a huge breakthrough a while back when I wanted to improve the sound of some CD's I had that had great music but not so great mastering.
Turns out that most CD's are dramatically moved closer to the mastertape sound by doing this.
I use Wavelab to remaster the files. I open the file and tell wavelab to use 24 bit editing. This is a HUGE step forward. Going from 16 to 24 bits drops the noise floor enormously and improved dynamics to boot.

I then resample to 88.2 or 176.4k
I sometimes do a slight EQ .
then I remove DC offset.
Then set the gain to maximise the full 24 bit scale without clipping.

The exact order of these edits is critical.

When saved in the new higher rez format you have a very different animal.
Higher level of real detail, better space and improved dynamics without any harshness.

The benefit is from the 24bit format. Analog has no hard limit to dynamics it just "softens" extremely high dynamics through saturation of the recording medium. Higher bit levels moves in this direction. High sample rates effect the high frequency extension not the naturalness of the dynamics. When you move the data that was in the 1st bit( lowest linearity) to a higher bit with better resolutio you get better low level detail.

Just running Secret Rabbit on a 16 bit file is not the same as properly remastering to a higher rez file and does NOT sound anywhere near as good as actually converting the file in Wavelab.
Bob
www.PlateauLight.com

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