Anyone Collect or Still Listen to Vinyl?

[Luke]

^Only in the early 80's would a Comedy album win a Grammy whose first track is titled: Faggots revisited.

"Comedian" is still fairly funny.

I'm not too familiar with Murphy's stand-up beyond one (edited) tv special, so listening to Comedian should be interesting.

It's basically DELIRIOUS, joke for joke. You probably won't listen to it frequently unless you like to study comedy, but it is certainly worth a listen, and would be something nice to have autographed.

[marurun]

One thing that you can't argue, that is pure straight fact, is that some times an album is compressed to shit on CD but it's vinyl counterpart isn't.

I know I'm going WAY back in time, responding to this little tidbit, but I've read up quite a bit on over-use of dynamic compression, and this actually DOES go back to vinyl and isn't limited to digital sources. There were many records, especially popular records, mastered with the volume jacked up and the dynamics compressed. And those records that were suffered just as badly on vinyl, if not worse. Vinyl has limits on volume based on the available space for a physical groove, and when you're pushing the volume up and capping the upper end of the audio, you simply get crappy grooves that reproduce crappy music.

So yeah, the loudness war has been going on almost as long as mass-produced popular music has been available for purchase.

Makes me quite sad that we haven't learned anything in the past several decades. Then again, to the average joe, listening tests reveal that people tend to pick louder audio sources as sounding better, so it's really just market response to human perception.

[AppleQueso]

Heavy dynamic compression done for loudness did exist back then, yes, but not at all to the extent it was throughout the past few decades. From what I understand, it was usually on 45s anyway, as labels wanted their records to be louder on jukeboxes.

I don't see how that really counters Ziggy's quote anyway though. (EDIT: I guess you aren't trying to refute him anyway, just going on a bit of a tangent in response) The fact that different masters are usually used for CDs vs Vinyl is pretty well known, and more often than not, the Vinyl master isn't going to be as heavily compressed or as loud.

I'd say that it's probably a lot better today than it was several years ago, simply because more and more people are aware of the "loudness war" and more and more people are making a stink about it, and labels are listening. Heck I've seen labels actually use the fact that they didn't hyper compress an album as a selling point, so... progress!

[Ziggy]

It's funny how you can look at the waveform of the same song from multiple releases. Original release in 1985, greatest hits in 1992, second greatest hits in 1999, and original album "remastered" in 2004. The wave form steadily becomes more and more of just a blob. Like the Micheal Jackson Black or White example on the Loudness War Wiki page.

Rage Against The Machine's debut album turned 20 last year so they re-released it along with some other nice stuff (couple of box sets). The album was advertised as being "remastered" and that got me kind of excited. I was let down when I popped it in and realized they just turned the volume up on it slightly. Luckily, it's not compressed to hell, but I guess they pretty much had to since it's a 20 year old album and not as loud as today's CDs.

Which reminds me of another thing I hate. It's bad enough that every release of a song gets louder, but I've seen a lot of greatest hits that not only have that problem but also use radio edit versions of songs. You know what? Instead of having a collection of 15 songs, I'd rather only have 10. I've read reviews on Amazon in the past where some radio edits were cited as completely ruining the song. Like, removing a major part of the song like a bridge or something.

[AppleQueso]

"Remastered" is almost always just code word for "we made it louder." Though there are exceptions of course...

It's like companies feel like they can't justify a reissue or anything unless they mess with the sound a bit. Not sure why, since I imagine that the general public doesn't care and the hardcore fans would rather the sound not be altered. If they want to do something special for a re-release, just toss in some liner notes! Those are always fun.

[skate323k137]

"Remastered" is almost always just code word for "we made it louder." Though there are exceptions of course...

It's like companies feel like they can't justify a reissue or anything unless they mess with the sound a bit. Not sure why, since I imagine that the general public doesn't care and the hardcore fans would rather the sound not be altered. If they want to do something special for a re-release, just toss in some liner notes! Those are always fun.

Seriously. Eff the "loudness wars"

Luckily a lot of the time vinyl releases aren't butchered as bad as remastered CDs, because pressing vinyl super loud limits how much time you have on each side of the record. Sure, some vinyl is poorly mastered, but a lot of time time real mastering engineers work on vinyl releases.

Snagged this on 12" today (Africa Hitech- Out In The Streets VIP)

[marurun]

My understanding is that it isn't always the mastering that screws things over. In the big kerfluffle over the latest Metallica album's (or was it the one before that?) major loudness problem, the sound engineer actually came out and said he did the best he could to save it, but the studio masters were already jacked up too high.

Some remastering goes well. Depends on the studio and the engineer. And the goal. Some old analog tape recordings did have some minor tape issues (flaws in the tape, etc...) and remastering can be a good chance to try and mask it with some audio trickery, not all of which harms the sound of the recording. I can't remember the name of the studio, but there was one remastering studio that was really famous for doing excellent remastering releases, and they were only released in limited numbers and were held in rather high regard.

These days you just have to do a little legwork and look into what you are buying before you put down your cash.

[AppleQueso]

My understanding is that it isn't always the mastering that screws things over. In the big kerfluffle over the latest Metallica album's (or was it the one before that?) major loudness problem, the sound engineer actually came out and said he did the best he could to save it, but the studio masters were already jacked up too high.

The guitar hero versions of the songs on that album don't have the clipping or dynamic range issues that the actual album version has, so yeah, I dunno. Maybe it was the mixing engineer's first day on the job or something.

These days you just have to do a little legwork and look into what you are buying before you put down your cash.

Very true

[GSZX1337]

This might be a stupid question, but I'll ask anyway. Are picture discs inferior to regular vinyl as far as sound quality? I recently bought a couple of Iron Maiden picture discs and throughout both of the albums are these brief static noises. It's nothing terrible but it does bother me. I've read a few forum threads and have seen mixed responses. I've noticed a few of the posters have used the word "noisier" when describing the picture disc's audio inferiority. Would the brief static noises be what these posters are referring to? I'm also a bit confused since I have a couple picture discs that sound great like Overkill's The Electric Age.

[AppleQueso]

This might be a stupid question, but I'll ask anyway. Are picture discs inferior to regular vinyl as far as sound quality? I recently bought a couple of Iron Maiden picture discs and throughout both of the albums are these brief static noises. It's nothing terrible but it does bother me. I've read a few forum threads and have seen mixed responses. I've noticed a few of the posters have used the word "noisier" when describing the picture disc's audio inferiority. Would the brief static noises be what these posters are referring to? I'm also a bit confused since I have a couple picture discs that sound great like Overkill's The Electric Age.

Picture discs usually have more surface noise because of the way they're made. Basically two thin vinyl halves with a picture sandwiched between them.

Of course, plenty of factors can make a pic disc sound better or worse, but as a general rule of thumb, picture discs are made to look nice more than sound nice.

At least that's what I've read.