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Digitally remastered vinyl record? Seriously?

Hi folks, this is my first post in the forum. Today I went to my favorite coffee shop/record shop. They had the legendary U2 album "The Joshua Tree" as a 180g audiophile vinyl record which proudly wore a sticker "digitally remastered".

Well, I might be to nit-picky but doesn't that defeat the purpose? We love vinyl because it's an analog source which has all the beauty and vibrance of analog recordings. If you run it through an A-D converter, remaster and then run it back through a DAC (who knows what hardware they're using?) and press it in vinyl, you might lose the analog kick, don't you?

What's your opinion and experience?
128x128mblfan
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
I am usually listening to a vintage Sony Walkman portable cassette player, I have a bunch including the Sony Professional Portable Cassette Player. I use vintage Sony ultralight headphones. I listen to standard issue commercial audio tapes as original as humanly possible. Generally speaking I find audio cassettes much more true to actual musical instruments than CDs and more dynamic as well. One assumes it’s due to no house AC, no interconnects, no big old speaker cables, no power cords, no fuses, no big honking transformers, no big honking capacitors, not a lot of wiring period for that matter. Oh, and also due to the medium of tape.  It's a natural medium.  It breathes.

lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,417 posts
 
I have a bunch including the Sony Professional Portable Cassette Player.
geoffkait... is that the tc-d5m professional player/recorder?
Just interested, as a former cassette lover. And did you ever own the Pro Walkman player/recorder?
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
It’s the D3 Pro Walkman. 
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 

I’ll probably get castrated for this but don’t give a ****

If you vinyl junkies want to make your digital sources sound like vinyl this is all you have to do.

All you have to do is "ruin" the channel separation of digital (110dB-120dB) with a left + right bleed network for different frequencies across the digital sources (L&R) output stage.

Bring it down to around 30dB-40dB max at 1khz, and 10dB-15dB at 20hz and 20khz, this then mimics the channel separation curve of a phono cartridge on vinyl, and "monoize’s" much of the audio band , and you’ll be in digital heaven without the noise.

I’ve done it and it adds body and weight to those old digitally transferred master tape recordings to CD’s, to sound just like vinyl original replay but with no noise!!!, eg: Beatles ect.


Cheers George

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