Early digital recordings on vinyl vs. CD?

Learsfool, I agree there are inherent flaws in digital recording technology, as there are in every technology. Sorry if I gave a different impression. The last thing I'd want to be is a digital apologist, lol!

Of course there are flaws in analog recording technology too, albeit different ones that are less objectionable to many ears. Still, if I play an analog recording for a young person, the first thing they invariably notice is the tape hiss. Most of us grew up hearing that and we listen through it without even thinking, but if you've never heard it before it really grabs your attention (especially if you have a youngster's HF sensitivity).

Anyhow, we all seem to agree that early digital recordings of classical on vinyl are highly listenable. The flaws noted by Almarg in a few Telarc LPs were flaws of microphone selection and placement, not anything inherent in digital or analog recording.

The early digital classical LPs have the advantage that they were probably mastered from the native mode of the digital recording, and definitely done through a pro-quality DAC. With CDs, regardless of the original sampling rate and word length, the mastering is downconverted to 16/44.1 and most of the market plays it back through an inexpensive DAC or built-in chipset. With LPs you're usually playing back a high quality analog made from a full-res master.

I do remember a digitally recorded classical record I bought for my brother that I thought was a bit brash, but the ones that I own (including Josh Bell, The Planets, some classical guitar) all sound good--low noise floor, good dynamics and clarity, reasonably rich and full sounding. I do like a full analog signal chain better, but I won't avoid an LP at $2-4 because it's digital, and I end up enjoying many of them very much.

05-22-12: Johnnyb53
The early digital classical LPs have the advantage that they were probably mastered from the native mode of the digital recording, and definitely done through a pro-quality DAC. With CDs, regardless of the original sampling rate and word length, the mastering is downconverted to 16/44.1 and most of the market plays it back through an inexpensive DAC or built-in chipset. With LPs you're usually playing back a high quality analog made from a full-res master.

Johnny makes a good point. The Soundstream digital recorder which Telarc used in those days was 50 kHz/16 bits, as Phasecorrect mentioned earlier, but the difference between 50 kHz and 44.1 kHz sampling is more significant than it may seem from a numerical standpoint (even putting aside differences in implementation quality).

44.1 kHz sampling means that the anti-aliasing filter that precedes A/D conversion has to cut off all frequencies above 22.05 kHz, which only allows about a 10% margin relative to the highest frequency (20 kHz) that is intended to be captured accurately. 50 kHz sampling, on the other hand, allows an anti-aliasing cutoff frequency of 25 kHz, which increases that 10% figure to 25%. That represents a considerable relaxation of the sharpness of the filter rolloff that is necessary, which (everything else being equal) can be expected to significantly reduce the side-effects the filter may have at audible frequencies.

Also, I should add to the comments in my earlier post that (as Mapman alluded to) another major reason for the sonic quality of the early Telarc's was the fact that they applied far less dynamic range compression to their recordings than was typical of releases from the major labels, if indeed they applied any at all. Which means that you'll play them with the volume control set to a higher position than it would be set to for most other recordings. Which will make that bass drum even louder :-)

Regards,
-- Al

There are no black and white truths on this issue. Some digitally mastered LPs sound very good; some sound nearly as bad as early CDs. The earlier the digital mastering the greater the risk of bad sound. No surprise there. Mastering engineers found ways to work around the digital limitations.

A couple months ago my local college jazz radio station got rid of all their LPs since they hadn't been played for a number of years. I visted the station and walked away with a large box of jazz LPs mostly from the 1985 to 1988 time period. I suspect the station got them as freebies when record labels were trying to promote FM playing time. The records are almost all in pristine condition and nearly all of them were digitally mastered. SOME of them have excellent sound quality but most of the major label records have some pretty obvious digital colorations.