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From: gene@batman.UUCP (Gene Mutschler)
Newsgroups: net.audio,net.music
Subject: Re: Sound quality of CDs
Message-ID: <180@batman.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 22:38:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: batman.180
Posted: Wed Sep  4 22:38:29 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Sep-85 04:24:49 EDT
References: <446@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA>
Organization: Burroughs Austin Research Center, TX
Lines: 58
Xref: watmath net.audio:5757 net.music:9124

(this really should have been mailed, but our mailing system is
such that 'r' almost never works...)

> Does anyone out there have any useful comments on the sound quality of various
> CDs, especially those produced from analog recordings?  I've noticed that the
> amount of hiss on the analog albums I have ranges from very low (Billy Joel:
> An Innocent Man) to very high (Stevie Nicks: Bella Donna).  I got a CD player
> largely for sound quality; while I am willing to put up with a certain amount
> of hiss on analog albums (out of necessity), I want to avoid buying CDs that
> have a lot of hiss (why pay $16 for a CD when one could pay $7 for a LP with
> the same sound quality?).

Hiss has never bothered me as much as ticks and pops, since it is a
constant source and you can tune it out.

But, more to the point, it makes sense to me (fiscally as well as
aesthetically) not to buy pop music in general and older pop music
in particular.  Most pop music, in addition to having about 3 db of
dynamic range, is recorded by mixing down a bunch of analog tracks
so that a song may have been through a couple of tape generations
before the "master" is even made.  The result--hiss.

If you want old pop stuff on CD, you ought to at least wait for a
few years, until CDs cost less than LPs.  In the meantime, buy the LP
and immediately dub it to a cassette and then put the LP away.
The extra hiss added by the dubbing is not as objectionable as the
degradation of an LP with repeated playings.  When the cassette craps
out, you make another dub with your still-new LP.
> 
> Another CD to avoid is Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water".

This was one of the most over-produced albums in the history of western
civilization, so it's got more hiss than usual.  (I don't mean
over produced pejoratively--I'm a great fan of heavily-produced music--
Phil Spector and Paul Simon in particular.)
> 
> On a completely different subject, does anyone know why an artist would make
> one digitally-recorded album, then go back to analog recording?  Apparently,
> both Billy Joel and Bob Dylan have done this (while 'The Nylon Curtain' and
> 'Infidels' were digitally recorded, 'An Innocent Man' and Dylan's latest CD
> were recorded using analog equipment).  Is digital equipment hard to find?
>                                         -- Thomas Newton
>                                            Thomas.Newton@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA

That(lack of equipment) seems to be part of the problem in that
a lot of studios have tens of thousands of dollars invested in
multi-track analog equipment.  But it's also possible that you can't do
all of the overdubbing and pan-potting tricks with digital, which would tend
to cramp the style of many producers...Which is a pity, since digital
is at it's most useful when making an n-th generation dub that is
guaranteed to sound like the original.  Maybe later generation digital
recorders and mixing boards will address this problem (if indeed it is
a problem).
-- 
Gene Mutschler             {ihnp4 seismo ctvax}!ut-sally!batman!gene
Burroughs Corp.
Austin Research Center     cmp.barc@utexas-20.ARPA
(512) 258-2495