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In Reply to: SACD vs. Vinyl - could mastering be the culprit? posted by tv69 on March 11, 2003 at 06:12:08:
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
Follow Ups:
Thanks for you informative post. Joe Harley basically said just about the same thing you mentioned - that DSD is capable of mirroring whatever is coming off the mic feeds.But he added that once the data is stored on a recorder, somehow there is some trace of degradation. I believe also that the current crop of SACD players are still not yet close to revealing the full potential of DSD. One problem is the software that controls the way the players read the data that generates jitter at the start of every track.
You have read my post on the issue of the track-repeat procedure which improves the tracking ability of digital players? What do you think?
See earlier posts:
Hello Graemme,Thank you for the great reply and for the recommendation of Bob Katz's book which I will be buying very soon. I have become a member of the 'mastering webboard' which is run by Glenn Meadows (the link can be found at the bottom of Bob Katz's site), just wondering if you are a member there as well, especially since you know about Bob's book.
I recently read a post here by 'mikel' who is stating that vinyl still beats SACD, but then again, he owns the best vinyl rig available on the planet. At the same time I have read many articles written by audio professionals that state that SACD is closer to the master tape than any other medium available.
So my original post was to try and make some statements about the differences in mastering because mikel feels that vinyl is better than SACD (in most cases), and my thought was that maybe there is a method to be able to compare apples to apples. I would love to hear the 2 mediums compared on his system, but even moreso I would love to hear SACD compared to the master tape.I read the article in Mix magazine about the Stones' reissues and the transfer process that took place. Here is the link to the article.
http://mixonline.com/ar/audio_satisfaction/index.htm
Read the bit under the heading "The Magic Touch".“We were determined to transfer this material only once and go to three formats with it,” says Klein. “We wanted to go to half-inch, 30 ips analog tape. Then there was the PCM world, which we knew how to do. And then there was this DSD thing, which I'd heard about. We set up a chain where we could listen to all three. We played the analog against the original master as it was transferring, and it sounded okay; the PCM was better. The DSD button didn't work, because I didn't hear any difference between the source and the DSD! Then, I finally got it. The DSD sounded like it didn't work because it was exactly like the master.”
Statements like this from audio professionals is what makes me question if mikel is truly hearing vinyl to be better than SACD.
One last question Graemme. I am very interested in mastering and I feel I would love to make a career out of it. Since you are in the business, do you have any recommendations on how to get into the mastering field? What was the route that you took? I have read on the mastering webboard that Bob Katz's book is a good start, and that is my next move.Thank-you,
Ted V.
They may not have been playing DSD from a SACD, I'm thinking. Maybe our current SACD players aren't as good as DSD through whatever "they" were listening to. Be it DSD from tape or DSD from computer hard disk drive. This is just be babbling wildly....
HowdyYou said "Statements like this from audio professionals is what makes me question if mikel is truly hearing vinyl to be better than SACD."
I can say that I (and others) have listened at MikeL's house and we all (with one exception) agree with him that vinyl there does sound better than SACD or CD there. Unfortunately I haven't been able to hear the master feed to know which is more faithful to the source recording. I do know that I like listening at Mike's house and that I'm looking forward to getting my Meitner DAC6 which will put my system a little closer to Mike's.
-Ted
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