Die-hard engineers stay passionate about their craft in a world gone digital...

http://web.archive.org/web/19990909001646/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/02/01/BU78272.DTL

Excellent article!!!!

I hope they are still clinging to what they love :)

If I could, I'd buy a shirt for you that says "DIGITAL IS OVERRATED", in big letters.

I think digital is better. To each his own.

Ed.

I have my CD recorder which has both analog & digital inputs hooked the computer and analog definitely sounds much better. My VCR is also hooked to the computer but doesn't have a digital input option and that's fine with me.

Yup it is buddy!!

Im glad you are able to see that Chas :)

Originally posted by Vahan
If I could, I'd buy a shirt for you that says "DIGITAL IS OVERRATED", in big letters.I would love it Vahan :)

I don't think there is any argument among sound engineers that Analog is better than digital audio. Analog is "continuous" while digital is broken down to bits of 1s and 0s. The problem here lies with the analog delivery medium such as Cassettes, 8-Track and vinyl records as their shortcoming (mainly low dynamics and high noise) fall to deliver high quality analog sound.

Back in the early 90's, a tech magazine did an audio comparison of CD with vinyl record using one of Frank Sinatra's recordings. They noted that on the CD, one can hear slight sound of Sinatra breathing in before singing the next verse of the song. On the vinyl record, the breathing sound was obscured by the record surface noise and was not audible.

If you want to hear analog recordings with all it glory, you will need one of these :)

https://img.canuckaudiomart.com/uploads/large/737895-219263f2-teac_x2000_reel_to_reel_recorder_in_mint_shape_see_pics.jpg

With the right audio setup, LPs sound really good.

LPs transitioned to cassettes (I'm not counting 8 track tapes, which were a short-lived fad). Cassettes were a good medium for making mix tapes to listen to in the car, but they never really solved the tape hiss problem. Dolby was a good idea, but it required perfect tape head alignment (both record and playback) that was hard to achieve in the real world.

CDs were next. I got into those via a record club and found them shockingly bad. I eventually got a CD recorder, and I was able to make great copies of records onto CD--it sounded exactly the same. So the problem was in the engineering of commercial CDs.

Why are so many CDs--particularly of older analog recordings--so bad? Well, for one thing, they're often made with analog tapes that are old and play-worn. Nothing wrong with old, but if they're old, they've probably been played many times. Tapes get play-worn, and a new safety copy is made from the old worn tape. With these processes the music loses its ambiance, and the general quality suffers. When the original Simon and Garfunkel engineer was given mixdown tapes by Columbia to make a retrospective CD around 1990, he publicly stated he would have been better off using original 1A pressings of the LPs from the 1960s as masters. So for a later CD around 1998, they remixed the music from the original multitrack tapes, which had largely been unused for years. SUCCESS! But using original LP pressings was also a good idea.

Im listening to my BArry Manilow record right now! (Barry)

I have a MONO player which is nice.....

Why are so many CDs--particularly of older analog recordings--so bad? Well, for one thing, they're often made with analog tapes that are old and play-worn. Nothing wrong with old, but if they're old, they've probably been played many times. Tapes get play-worn, and a new safety copy is made from the old worn tape. With these processes the music loses its ambiance, and the general quality suffers. When the original Simon and Garfunkel engineer was given mixdown tapes by Columbia to make a retrospective CD around 1990, he publicly stated he would have been better off using original 1A pressings of the LPs from the 1960s as masters. So for a later CD around 1998, they remixed the music from the original multitrack tapes, which had largely been unused for years. SUCCESS! But using original LP pressings was also a good idea.

They had the same problem in late 80's when Led Zeppelin albums were released on first generation CDs. The listeners complained about sound quality being bad and had a "shrill" quality to it. Rumors was that the sound engineers were using the same LP mastering for the CD also. So Jimmy Page had to go back to the original master tapes and supervise a new mix for the CD pressing that had so much better audio quality than previous CD release.

They had the same problem in late 80's when Led Zeppelin albums were released on first generation CDs. The listeners complained about sound quality being bad and had a "shrill" quality to it. Rumors was that the sound engineers were using the same LP mastering for the CD also. So Jimmy Page had to go back to the original master tapes and supervise a new mix for the CD pressing that had so much better audio quality than previous CD release.

Yep, worn mixdown masters. And on top acts that are reissued countless times, they end up going to 2nd, 3rd, etc. generation as each subsequent safety copy wears out.

Rhino issued tons of various artist CDs in the 90s, and many of them had that same horrible CD sound.

What Jimmy Page did for Led Zeppelin is the same thing Bob Irwin did with Simon and Garfunkel, with the cooperation of their original engineer. I read that gathering all of those multitrack session tapes was a years-long project, because they were in Columbia storage facilities all over the country.