Pure anologue modern vinyl

[Geoff.R.G]

I really don’t need to know the details of how a particular recording was made but I can sometimes hear effects I know a little about creating. I know something about what various effects do and I know which ones I don’t like.

To my way of thinking a great recording is one where I can hear the music not the techniques used. The problem is that, with digital recording, editing is so easy pretty much anyone can create a seamless insert or cut, and if you mess it up you can undo and try again. Done well the edit is undetectable. The same can be true of analog editing but considerably more skill is involved.

Now if you buy a new vinyl record can you be sure none of it was ever in the digital domain? I suggest not, short of being in the studio the whole time. Or you can trust the artists. Personally I prefer to listen to analog streaming, better known as radio, and I record what I want from concert performances.

[Fretless]

The HFS fact-checker service has issued the following bulletin:

'Earlier in this thread it was stated the the Genesis album 'Duke' was recorded at Tony Banks home studio 'The Farm' in Surrey. This studio was first used by the band to make the next LP 'Abacab'.
'Duke' was recorded in ABBA's Polar Studios in Stockholm.'

[Grumpytim]

I was quite surprised by the Qotsa and Tool mentions down thread, both Lp's are favorites of mine but I only have them as CD's . I'd never really seen either of them as being analogue addicts. The modern vinyl I have bought recently has been mainly either from The Eels, Einstürzende Neubauten or Nick Cave, they all sound ok to me.

As others have said there are so many sound processing steps available to artists in the recording process that authenticity can get rather blurred. For me I appreciate a well produced record and I don't get too hung up about it's provenance, authentic analogue or otherwise. I have the Sound City recording on cd, and the quality of the recording is obvious, that in itself is good enough for me. Likewise if the only version I can get is vinyl, that's great, but equally so is a 96/24 download, the actual music is what I'm after, the format isn't an issue.

[Vinyl-ant]

Sound city - real to reel is a fully analogue modern record
Dave grohl of nirvana and the foo fighters bought the neve 8028 console from a studio that was closing and set it up in his own studio. There is a counterpart program to go with the album which is really interesting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Cit ... prov=sfla1

The album is done top to bottom on that neve console.
I have it, it sounds bloody fabulous

[Vinyl-ant]

Theres a track on it called cut me some slack, dave grohl, krist novoselic and paul mcartney, its brilliant, one done with rick springfield thats brilliant, and one with stevie nicks that is one of my favourites

[slinger]

On a more serious note, I do find knowing more about a song can enhance my enjoyment of it. Having been a distinctly average musician for many years, and having hung around a couple of studios on my time, progressing to home recording, and having some small insight into what goes on, reading about other peoples' techniques and processes holds a genuine interest for me. Considerably more than half of my "proper" (i.e. real hardbacks) books are about music and musicians.

The rest are mostly autobiographies of ex Liverpool FC players, but we'd best leave that alone.

It's the same with songs and songwriting. Here's an incredibly long-winded example:

One of my all-time favourite songs is called "Mr Tanner," by Harry Chapin. The live version is (to me at least) highly emotionally charged. It's as close to the perfect recording of the song as I can imagine.

Since I fell in love with that song I've learned that it was based on a true story about a small-town tenor and what happened to him. Not only that, but quite a while after Harry's death two of his brothers and a nephew, arranged a charity gig for the Harry Chapin Foundation, in Chicago I believe, and Martin Tubridy, the man Harry wrote the song about appeared on stage talking about how he felt when he was told about the song. Not only that, but he then joined the band to sing the tenor part (actually the chorus from "O Holy Night" a.k.a. "Cantique de Noël" by Adolphe Adam) for the song itself when they played it. It's on YouTube.

Knowing all of the above doesn't make the song *better* - Obviously, it doesn't. It can't. It is what it is - but knowing all that does give it an extra dimension as far as I'm concerned. It gives the song "a life of its own." The song exists outside of just being a track on an album to be a bit of a pretentious cock about it.

Give me music facts and trivia. I love all of them.

[Geoff.R.G]

On a more serious note, I do find knowing more about a song can enhance my enjoyment of it. Having been a distinctly average musician for many years, and having hung around a couple of studios on my time, progressing to home recording, and having some small insight into what goes on, reading about other peoples' techniques and processes holds a genuine interest for me. Considerably more than half of my "proper" (i.e. real hardbacks) books are about music and musicians.

The rest are mostly autobiographies of ex Liverpool FC players, but we'd best leave that alone.

It's the same with songs and songwriting. Here's an incredibly long-winded example:

One of my all-time favourite songs is called "Mr Tanner," by Harry Chapin. The live version is (to me at least) highly emotionally charged. It's as close to the perfect recording of the song as I can imagine.

Since I fell in love with that song I've learned that it was based on a true story about a small-town tenor and what happened to him. Not only that, but quite a while after Harry's death two of his brothers and a nephew, arranged a charity gig for the Harry Chapin Foundation, in Chicago I believe, and Martin Tubridy, the man Harry wrote the song about appeared on stage talking about how he felt when he was told about the song. Not only that, but he then joined the band to sing the tenor part (actually the chorus from "O Holy Night" a.k.a. "Cantique de Noël" by Adolphe Adam) for the song itself when they played it. It's on YouTube.

Knowing all of the above doesn't make the song *better* - Obviously, it doesn't. It can't. It is what it is - but knowing all that does give it an extra dimension as far as I'm concerned. It gives the song "a life of its own." The song exists outside of just being a track on an album to be a bit of a pretentious cock about it.

Give me music facts and trivia. I love all of them.

Harry Chaplin was the kind of singer songwriter who put the background into his music. There are stories behind many of his songs, possibly all of them. He is buried in Huntington, New York, not far from where my wife’s sister lives.

[savvypaul]

Off topic posts removed

[NSNO2021]

Give me music facts and trivia. I love all of them.

Kindred spirits, apart from our obvious red/blue afflictions

Back to vinyl. Mark Hollis of Talk Talk fame was according to legend a big fan of analogue recording production and his work has depth & presence that I have yet to find in a digital recording

[Geoff.R.G]

I would concur that whether analogue sounds better than 44kHz 16 Bit digital is a matter of opinion. For me redbook digital sounded better, but for extended listening I preferred vinyl. The game changer for me is upsampeling. IMO it restores everything digital looses in terms of emotion. Lets face it, analogue has been going for over a hundred years and it took many decades to reach a standard anywhere near what we have now. Digital has only been around for little more than forty years and for me, with technological advances (eg the micro chip, high speed broadband and upsampling) it has now really come of age.

Interesting, although the M-Scaler is beyond both my wallet and my own (self-inflicted) value equation. I've heard of some people upscaling before the DAC, using software. I can't remember exactly what, though.

EDIT - I think it was HQPlayer

I am intrigued as to how upscaling or upsampling make the sound better. As with burnt out highlights in a photograph, you can't put back what isn't there. If something important happens between samples it is gone. That applies whatever the sample rate, with analog you don't have that problem but you do have dynamic range limitations instead.