Oh Ye of Little Format

I am an engineer, manufacturer and a importer. The attempts to compare formats analogue to digital in whatever forms they may take is difficult at best. You need to consider how the music was recorded, the engineer who did the work, the equipment, and the studio for the original event.

I have been fortunate enough to here some music recorded on analogue equipment from the '70's which was remanufactured with audio grade components. The recording were made in a studio where the sound stage was a separate building on the inside of another building with separate foundation piling and the studio was constructed on top of isolation platforms. Just as much attention was done on the power, cabling, mics, .... The analogue recorder was added to the recording system which is 384kz 32 bit. The recording controls in the control room are analogue. No post mix down!

Lacquer's were made from both the digital and the analogue. Hard to tell which lacquer was which by the ear test. Hard to tell the difference between digital, analogue tape and lacquers. The tests got the same results with all that auditioned the test material over the 3 months I was there.

On the other hand, there are plenty of recordings which were made with cheap equipment, cabling, mics, in only a so-so studio. Add questionable skill level of the person in control of the recording and you end up with not the best sound quality by the time it gets to the user. The beginning of the CD era actually made this issue worse, in my opinion. On top of this is what is the intended audience and what equipment was it likely to be played on and you end up with some music that only sounds good in a car, in my opinion.

In conclusion I would like to say this; my search is for great recordings of great music, format is optional. When given the opportunity, while helping a client. I ask them to introduce me to the music they like. Always a great experience. I also enjoy my music collection which is not the best recordings. For me, it is more about the music, when you get to the bottom line.

I’ve done the same test and we were all over the place with our answers. So many albums are poorly recorded, so it doesn’t matter what the format. “you can t make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.”

All the best.

JD

 @audio-union "In conclusion I would like to say this; my search is for great recordings of great music, format is optional."

T H A N K  Y O U ‼️ 

Blind tests are interesting. In most blind tests, people tend to look for the obvious differences first. So they tend to find the easy things. A bit more treble or bass or loudness...all the things compression can give you.

Long ago, I remember listening to Brubeck’s Take Five and chose CD over LP. The CD had more treble and the bass was jacked up. It was remastered. It was after listening to the track many times that I noticed more ’air’ and decay in the snare drum with the LP. And after some time, I began to prefer the LP.

This is not an vinyl vs digital argument. I enjoy both. This is about the various recording qualities out there regardless of format. The remastered CD was just jacked up to sound sweeter. This happens more often these days. I prefer digital recordings that are truer to the original production.

The magic is often in the middle. And that is not easy to understand in a blind listening test as I think we’re looking for the obvious.

Time for a gross generalisation interlude?

Music in the 50s was made for radiograms?

Music in the 60s was made for Dansette type record players which had a speaker built inside it's console?

Music in the 70s was made for listening to in cars.

Music in the 80s was made for walkmans?

Ditto the 90s.

Music in the 00s was made for the iPod?

Music in the 10s was made for the smartphone?

Perhaps one day we might finally see music recorded for first rate audio playback systems?