Re: [LAU] 1980's cds: analog to digital conversion

On Mon, 15 Feb 2010, Peder Hedlund wrote:

> Quoting Ricardus Vincente <wizardofgosz@email-addr-hidden>:
>
>> On Sat, 2010-02-13 at 20:28 +0100, Peder Hedlund wrote:
>>> and do an A-B comparison.
>>
>> Comparing what, to what?
>
> To compare the cassette mix that he remembered so fondly to the CD mix
> he found lacking. I have a hunch it might be entirely possible that
> the sound he remembers from tape is just nostalgia and that the CD in
> fact sounds more or less the same as the cassette.

Not necessarily... I've got a few tapes that sounded way better than
the CD that was supposed to "replace" them, and that's pretty bad
considering how bad cassette sounds. There's something about the way we
hear that can way more easily deal with background hiss, rumble, pitch
instability, and a multitude of other evils than deal with grainy
metallic thin sound that has all the body removed from it.

Granted, some of that may have been the way the original recording
really sounded, and the cassette may have been flattering it with its
pleasant mid-bass saturation. I can't imagine that's always it though.
People always say that when we hear that sort of effect from CD's, the
CD is just telling the truth (kind of like the same excuse I hear about
certain Mackie monitor speakers), when we all know that almost all
recordings made before the 90's were done on an original recording
medium of multitrack tape itself. Surely the studio master tape didn't
sound like a grainy metallic CD!

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ UNIX Systems Admin	 +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ Physical Sciences Div. +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ James Franck Institute +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky
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