Digitally remastered vinyl?

Very true most vinyl albums in 80s,90s,20s are digital mastered.So unless it was remastered that's it...

I agree with Lugnut. There are excellent examples of both analog and digital recording. There are also less than stellar examples of either as well. I guess I'll have to get a vinyl preamp and break out my LPs again to see what the fuss is about. The last time I listened to vinyl, it was on a system much less accurate than I have now. I really did like the sound of vinyl but only about 30% of the LPs I bought sounded good. Most had so much surface noise, so many clicks and pops and so much distortion that they were painful. Combine that with the inevitable deterioration in spite of the great care I was giving them and I opted for digital. I think I now have a digital system that would rival most analog systems but I guess I should probably revist the issue just to make sure.

One of the reasons they dropped the "DDD" "AAD" and "ADD" labels is that modern record production is rarely so simple in its use of technology. In a modern pop/rock recording the original base tracks of a song may start out as a digital recording within a computer running Cubase or some other sequencer/recording program. These tracks may later become synched to a 24 channel, 2" analog tape recorder and additional music tracks added. Everything could then be ported over to ProTools, a digital workstation, for editing and mixing. Rather than keeping it digital through the final mastering stage, alot of producers/musicians like the sound of their final mixes when they are transfered to 1/2" analog tape. Whether or not the submitted music is in a digital or analog format, most of the better mastering houses still use analog signal processors before downloading the material into a digital workstation (SADiE or Sonic Solutions) for final prep to redbook CD format. What's interesting is that great sounding records can actually result from such a serpentine recording process, but to Lugnut's earlier point, it's all about the skill of the engineers and the level of care they take.

I've thought of this a lot. Especially all the studio-grade cabling and connectors the signal goes through, in addition to all the circuitry. The ABKO releases of the early Stones proved this.

It all adds up to vinyl for vinyls sake, and it isn't worth it. I'd *much rather search out a used original, for the most part.

Viridian, it is inherent in the playback of vinyl through the recovery of the signal from the grove, because of the 90 degree difference where the L and R signals are picked up. In a recording, some of the left signal is captured in the right channel and vice versa. That "bleed" is slightly out of phase with the opposite channels. If this is not permitted (highly isolated L & R channels), then reproduction of this by CD will not add this effect. If this same "poor" recording is, however, retrieved through vinyl, the inherent phasing effect of the cartridge puts some phase difference in the L & R signals, giving a more "real" sound.
Remember that one of the reasons that we can locate sounds in space is due to phase clues due to the slight arrival time differences in the left and right ears.
It is this phase difference and reverberation clues that enable us to get a feel for the size of the room in which a recording is made.

Vinyl playback of digital recordings in the late 70s, for the most part sounded very poor (DG's especially), but some were quite good after a while of learning how to do them properly. A well recorded CD (with the appropriate microphone set-up which allows some phase difference information in each channel) sound just as good as vinyl.

I am not surprised that you haven't heard of this explanation, since we just don't pay enough attention to recording process as a way of understanding the listening process.

BTW, it is exactly this hidden information in the L & R channels that is retrieved by the Hafler circuits for rear channels. On poor sounding CD's one does not retrieve as much signal for the rear channels as the same recording played back through vinyl, even though the source signals are the same - vinyl creates some of it to be retrieved. Trust me I have done the experiment to confirm this.

Many of the early digitally mastered vinyl recordings sound harsh and thin. There are some gems from this era also. Like I've said so many times before, everybody along the chain must care a great deal to arrive at a great finished product. The concept of real professionals with excellent hearing and the experience required to get the desired end product is the biggest issue we consumers must contend with. Unfortunately, the great recording engineers during the pre-digital days were highly paid and intuitive (through experience) in their approach. The young technical types that replaced them lacked experience. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about an audio compact disc or a analog vinyl record, pick "one" best example and "one" worst example and play them. The best example is worth several thousand dollars in equipment upgrades. The worst example can't be made right regardless of the dollar investment in equipment. The upgrade heirarchy should start with the source and the real source is the studio work, artists included. Vinyl at it's best and digital at it's best are both great mediums with individual strengths and weaknesses.

To my ears, TWL and Viridian are absolutely right, they sound mostly pretty flat on a good vinyl system.

Jackcob, the LP playback system does introduce phase differences between L and R channels and this is what makes most people think that vinyl is more "real" than CDs. If the original digital recording, however, contains these clues (and a good digital recording can contain these clues if the recorder/engineer knows what he/she is doing), then the CD play back will be just as good as the vinyl, minus, of course, the noise etc..

If the/a problem with CDs is that the original digital recording methods did not capture all the information that is captured by analog equipment, how can an LP of digitally remasteredtaape possibly be as good as analog? The LP may add various colorations and distortions, but it can't add information that was lost at the time a digital recorder was introduced into the chain.

I own 70% of ECM released vinyl albums(arround 100) almost all digitally recorded or mixed and all with no exception sound superb. More than half on my collection are pressed in Germany.

Fagen's "Nightfly" IS a good example, Onhwy61. I have a Japanese pressing of this LP it is one of the better sounding LP's I've heard of any kind. Sadly, these examples are MOST rare/

There are people who claim that certain early 80's digital recorders (Soundstream & 3M) were superior to any current 16/44.1 technology. Unfortunately these systems never attained wide use. Ry Cooder's "Bop 'Til You Drop" and Donald Fagen's "Nightfly" are excellent sounding pop recordings made with these machines.

The problem with the majority of early 80's digital recordings is that few people understood the importance of jitter and dither. When attention is not paid to these issues a recording can become brittle and generally unpleasant sounding.

Hah, faaar better than 24/96 since the digital mastering equipment has different format compared to CD and resolution used to master digital vinyls back in the beginning of 80's were and is much higher than in today's conventional CD-players or DACs or even SACD-players. Even DATs have a higher resolution and the recording on DAT sounds far more superior than even on SACD.

Imagine yourself the sampling ratings that realy divides the amplitude and the freequency on much more samples than conventional DAC or CD-player.
Now imagine that there is no DAC and only regular mechanical pickup is used for jitter- and digital noise-free reproduction.
Now finally imagine that digital mastering mostly is only used to place an analogue recorded instruments and voices together due to simplicity and preciceness of a digital mixer to deliver the signal to the recording domain that can be an analogue or digital tape.

Dspite your eyes and stereotype minds can still read "DIGITAL", you realy get real analogue sound

Now to the general global points I would say and the other folks I believe would agree that not every 100% analogue recorded vinyl sounds perfect and so is the digital one as well. I can assure that every vinyl after 80's has something digital present either digital mixing or digital primary source even if there is nothing written about it on the jacket cover and it doesn't realy mean to me that I have to void these records. I treat them as regular records that most-likely I will enjoy to listen.

When the first CD-players were introduced there was a concearn about optimal size for home equipment and heat dissipation of the digital proccessor which was not a concern in the studio. Nowdays the standard is still in effect even if there is no more space and heat dissipation issue on the digital devices anymore and we realy wish that we could bring that standard to the digital studio level for our home devices.

Oh! Now I see.

Anyone who thinks such LPs sound like CDs cannot have listened to one. A vinyl LP of a digital master is going to have all the sonic quirks of vinyl--good and bad. These recordings were presumably digitally remastered in the course of producing CDs. Because they're remastered, they might well sound very different from the original LP versions. (And if the remastering didn't properly take into account the sonic limitations of vinyl, they could sound wetched.) But that's because they were remastered, not because the new master was digital.

I like 60's and 70's technology where they just left out the D altogether.

Viridian's got it pegged. They sound like 12 inch CDs. Not exactly what I am looking for.