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Vinyl masters?

D

dannyscott101

In my frustration of dealing with all of this modern hypercompressed crap that sounds like shit on the air, (and equally like shit on the studio's line out speakers with no audio processing) I have started the process of experimenting with Perfect Declipper and low-pass filtering.

Today, I had another thought... Vinyl masters. Since mastering for vinyl can't be as brutal as CD mastering, why can't we access a database of vinyl masters of new releases?

I did successfully locate a pirate download of the brutally distorted Rihanna's "Only Girl In The World" from vinyl source material. It didn't sound bad, but it was a dance remix. (ARRGGHHH)

Why the hell won't the record companies at least release the vinyl masters for radio use???

All of the stuff we get from TM Century is the same clipped crap you would get from the record store. Even worse, a few cuts look like they've gone through an 'analog' stage somewhere, as the waveform does not have the "flat brick" look of the digital master. I am guessing these have passed through something that could have altered the phase, and that perfect declippper would now not work as well since the original 'flattened' peaks might be randomized throughout the waveform.
 
I don't trust the modern TM Stuff too much. I've seem the same things as you.

I deal with this stuff too. Unfortunately, I have pretty much accepted we are going to be depending on software to fix this. The industry isn't going to fix the mastering. It's getting worse, actually.

At least we have things like O9 and I've been hounding (or pleading) Hans about implementing Declip/Undo in a better state in ST.
 
I still suspect TM either gets different source material, or they run it through in-house processing such as expanding.

R
 
Couple of years ago--we had planned to use ABC Satellite's Christmas music feed--then they canceled the feed. About a week before our Thanksgiving start date to go all Christmas.

So there I was dumping Christmas music from all kinds of CD sources into a computer. Had a Sound Forge copy on the box which I used to clean up in and out & rip the CD's.

What was interesting was the dynamic range on the older stuff (e.g. Boston Pops). Especially compared to our free CD copies (plus some stuff we bought) of more recent cuts. The Christmas albums from current pop artists looked like an over-modulated AM signal--flat-topped and carrier pinched!
 
That's hypercompression for ya!

R
 
dannyscott101 said:
Since mastering for vinyl can't be as brutal as CD mastering...
Click to expand...

I fail to see the difference. Both formats are "stamped" from glass masters. If anything, making a vinyl glass master would be more so, because we're talking about a stylus cutting vs. a laser burning.

R
 
With a CD it is not the "stamping"--since at that point we are talking about a digital signal--it is the creation of the digital master. As well as the steps taken before creation of the final digital master.

That was the basis of my comment about the Christmas music I was ripping into the computer. Some of the music was from the 70's, undoubtedly recorded on magnetic tape by competent engineers. The peaks were well below those on more recent recordings (such as Sarajevo 12/24 from the TSO-1995)--but the peaks on those 80's-90's recordings were still below clipping. Which were probably also mastered on tape, although some could have been digitally mastered.

It is those recent pop recordings using all the wonderful digital devices to smash the audio as much as possible.

BTW: What "Vinyl masters?" Even back to the sixties most music was "mastered" on audio tape. Through various steps a pressing was made from this tape master which was then used to make the vinyl records. But the original master was usually on tape. When that music was re-released on CD, the better labels went back to this tape master. The tape master had the advantage of NOT being equalized for the RIAA curve.

See, for example this article about recording the Beatles:

http://www.jamcast.co.uk/early-recording-techniques/

which features a picture of a 4 track Studer, or this:

http://all-you-need-is-ears.blogspot.com/2012/09/an-afternoon-with-bill-putnam.html

which shows multitrack Ampex machines (looks like 350's) at United Recording.
 
Well SOME labels did use the RIAA curved master tapes to press old albums to CD, especially in the early days of the format. Lord knows I still have CD's in my collection that were made this way. But today, vinyl records are likely mastered from the same source as their CD counterpart. So a vinyl copy of a new song today would be just as smashed as the CD version.

R
 
Robert Bass said:
Well SOME labels did use the RIAA curved master tapes to press old albums to CD, especially in the early days of the format. Lord knows I still have CD's in my collection that were made this way. But today, vinyl records are likely mastered from the same source as their CD counterpart. So a vinyl copy of a new song today would be just as smashed as the CD version.

R
Click to expand...

Not really... You can look it up. And I'm not talking about the RIAA curve. There are vinyl masters being made of new material with more dynamics than the CD version.

I'm not talking about literal "vinyl masters"... I'm talking about mastering done that is intended for recordings to be put on LPs.

Masters for vinyl are still made WITH some dynamics, since the physical cutting process will not tolerate the brutal techniques of today's CD mastering, or at least if it were done the overall level would have to be reduced a great deal to prevent the cutter from 'jumping' off the lacquer.

I could post a link, but simply type "vinyl mastering vs. CD" into Google and it will give plenty of examples.

Again, I'm talking about NEWER releases that have versions made for release on LP.
 
Robert Bass said:
I still suspect TM either gets different source material, or they run it through in-house processing such as expanding.

R
Click to expand...

TM does not run expansion. They simply send the 'brick wall' tracks with the overall level reduced (to say, 50%) to make the average levels the same as older releases so they will have similar VU response at the same pot settings.

When I run them through perfect declipper, I normalize them to 100% first, otherwise declipper 'misses' some of the hard peaks. Then I reduce them to an appropriate level again.
 
I backed off my AGC on my outboard processor and I run declipper too. Sometimes, it doesn't help though and makes it sound worse than the original.
 
Unless the input level is really low (around -18 dB), you shouldn't need to normalize first. If the input level is indeed very low, lower the value of "Sample not clipped if below"!

There's a new version of the declipper coming soon (it's already available inside Stereo Tool, I'm now working on a new version for the Omnia 9; the separate declipper product still needs to be converted to the new GUI mechanism that I'm using for Stereo Tool). This new version contains some extra filtering that removes certain artifacts that the declipper can produce, but the biggest difference is that there are new and much better presets (based on a preset made by Jesse Graham). This new preset more accurately detects clipping - it causes much less false positives (which could make things worse).

Normally I would ask you to send me any tracks that come out worse (usually there are similar sounds in tracks that cause this, and when I know which sounds they are I can detect them and back off in the clipping detection, as I'm already doing in case of loud bass), but since there's a new version coming soon anyway I want to wait for that.
 
dannyscott101 said:
Masters for vinyl are still made WITH some dynamics, since the physical cutting process will not tolerate the brutal techniques of today's CD mastering, or at least if it were done the overall level would have to be reduced a great deal to prevent the cutter from 'jumping' off the lacquer.
Click to expand...
It depends if the music even left the recoding studio with its dynamics intact. With today's PC-based digital audio processing, some (many?) artists and producers feel to need to do their own "mastering" right in the studio, so that the audio is already smashed-and-trashed even before it gets to the real mastering engineer. I've seen many modern CDs where some tracks have peaks flat-topped at only 80% while others are at 95% or 99%, because the mastering engineer had to normalize the volume from track-to-track but was dealing with pre-clipped source material.

Also many new LPs are criticized for being mastered too loudly and requiring an extremely good cartridge and stylus to track it properly without distortion, especially towards the inner grooves. The old standard of "put a ballad as the innermost track" isn't routinely followed anymore, and a "loud" song as the innermost track is common now.
 
Nice subject. I am currently finishing preset for ST that do exactly this, by using declipper and (hidden) natural dynamics.
Is anyone willing to check? :) -
 
satech said:
dannyscott101 said:
Masters for vinyl are still made WITH some dynamics, since the physical cutting process will not tolerate the brutal techniques of today's CD mastering, or at least if it were done the overall level would have to be reduced a great deal to prevent the cutter from 'jumping' off the lacquer.
Click to expand...
It depends if the music even left the recoding studio with its dynamics intact. With today's PC-based digital audio processing, some (many?) artists and producers feel to need to do their own "mastering" right in the studio, so that the audio is already smashed-and-trashed even before it gets to the real mastering engineer. I've seen many modern CDs where some tracks have peaks flat-topped at only 80% while others are at 95% or 99%, because the mastering engineer had to normalize the volume from track-to-track but was dealing with pre-clipped source material.

Also many new LPs are criticized for being mastered too loudly and requiring an extremely good cartridge and stylus to track it properly without distortion, especially towards the inner grooves. The old standard of "put a ballad as the innermost track" isn't routinely followed anymore, and a "loud" song as the innermost track is common now.
Click to expand...

I never thought about the inner-track ballad before, but you're right! Journey's "Open Arms" and "Faithfully" were both innermost tracks.

By the way, to hijack my own thread... Does anyone know the difference in linear velocity between the outermost and innermost groove area of an LP? I know it's a matter of simple measurements and math, but I just wondered if anyone knew off hand.
 
dannyscott101 said:
By the way, to hijack my own thread... Does anyone know the difference in linear velocity between the outermost and innermost groove area of an LP? I know it's a matter of simple measurements and math, but I just wondered if anyone knew off hand.
Click to expand...

For a 33.3 rpm, 12" record, the interior speed is about 1/3rd the exterior speed. Something like 21 inches per second at the outermost groove.
 
satech said:
Joe Collins ("BadEditPro") has a lot of great videos about the technical aspects of vinyl on his YouTube channel.

Here he talks about the varying quality (from very bad to very good) of modern LPs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0rCVljL78k

And here is a detailed video about inner groove distortion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acgDhvjjrnE
Click to expand...

Popular Communications many years ago discussed electronic transcriptions. The reason for many disc being cut inside out was a compromise of quality. The outer section was thicker and produced better reproduction. However there was stylist wear so by starting the cut on the inside the advantage was a better stylist quality for the weaker part of the disc. Then by the time the cut made its way to the outside the audio was in the better part of the disc but the stylist suffered wear. The idea was the sound would have consistency.
 
radiorob2.0 said:
Popular Communications many years ago discussed electronic transcriptions. The reason for many disc being cut inside out was a compromise of quality. The outer section was thicker and produced better reproduction. However there was stylist wear so by starting the cut on the inside the advantage was a better stylist quality for the weaker part of the disc. Then by the time the cut made its way to the outside the audio was in the better part of the disc but the stylist suffered wear. The idea was the sound would have consistency.
Click to expand...

I assume you meant "stylus" instead of "stylist" (blame it on Autocorrect, I'm sure!). I believe multiple-disc sets of ETs alternated between going from inner groove to outer groove and from outer to inner, so that there would not be a noticeable change in surface noise when going from one disc to the next, making the transition more seamless to the listener.
 
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