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Re: SACD vs. Vinyl - could mastering be the culprit?

Posted by Graemme on March 12, 2003 at 00:04:55:
Hi Ted,
"I have been reading a lot about the mastering process lately and discovered that music that is to be released on LP is premastered differently than CD."
Yep. Mastering is done for a particular medium, with the knowledge that each medium has it's own idiosyncracies.

"(The book I am referring to is "The Mastering Engineer's Handbook" by Bobby Owsinski)"
Not the best example of an in-depth look at mastering. Try Bob Katz' new book instead (available at www.digido.com)

Also, it is much harder to make a "loud" LP without having the needle skip off the record.
Yup!! You also lose overall playing time due to the change in groove spacing when getting really loud with vinyl.
"With this in mind, has anyone here considered that when listening to an LP/CD/SACD of the same release, you may not be hearing the same thing because mastering for the different formats differs?"
Agreed. Not much can be done about that, I'm afraid.
Isn't the CD layer of hybrid SACD/CDs usually louder, or more compressed?
Not at all. I have only made one CD layer master louder than the SACD layer version and only because of the transient nature of that particular album. Other mastering engineers may do it differently, though!
One thing to remember is that while 0dB 'Full Scale' in PCM is the loudest that you can make something without getting into non-linearities, with SACD it's around 3dB below that. SACD's version of "0 dB" is 6 dB below full scale (aka 50% modulation) and Sony have said that 3dB above that is acceptable. The plants will reject anything over +3.1 dB above SACD "0" (or -2.9dB relative to PCM full scale)
Oh yeah, my point was that the CD may sound louder because of the different relative levels. The actual SACD player may compensate for this difference, though I'm not sure about that.

"Here is something I believe should be done to make a fair comparison between SACD/CD and vinyl. An analog tape premastered for vinyl should be used to cut a vinyl copy. The same analog tape premastered for vinyl should be transfered to SACD/CD without any additional equalization. Then the comparison should be made. Perhaps only then would you be comparing apples to apples."

Not really. As I said above, each medium has it's own non-linearities to deal with, which is part of the art and science of mastering.
"Perhaps this is the reason that SACD/CD sounds different that vinyl. Then again, maybe the vinylphiles have become accustomed to a vinyl 'sound' that makes digital sound incorrect to them. I would be curious to compare a master tape to vinyl though."
I appreciate your desire to get to the bottom of this. I will say that DSD is the closest thing to the master tape that I have heard and SACD's are a lot more convenient than open reel tapes...
There are no free lunches with any playback medium!
Regards,
Graemme