Mastering Vinyl, Myths, questions, discussion Options

[Axon]

This is a split of a discussion Hancoque and I had, which desperately needs to be elaborated on.

First of all, I've dumped my thoughts on the matter into the Wiki: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...Vinyl_Mastering. Please comment on it.

A couple of the points there are explicitly worth starting this topic off:

• There is no consistent, unambiguous way to identify the provenance of a vinyl master. Most methods - but most of all, the zoomed-out waveform plot - are inaccurate in one way or another. Visual examination of clipped samples is fairly telling, but not applicable or effective in all cases. How can a vinyl master be accurately observed as being the same or different as a CD master?
• Even if a difference exists, whether or not it is audible is another question entirely. IIRC, brickwall limiting of 3-4db, correctly applied, may not be audible. If so, Hancoque's Slayer waveforms might not mean anything, because his peaks are all within 4db of the CD peaks. What audibility thresholds exist for clipped signals?

That said, I may be eating a hearty dinner of crow tonight, as I just examined one of the records I thought was of the same master as the CD (Battles - Mirrored), and I was able to observe pretty strong differences in clipping between the vinyl and CD versions. I'll reply later with some visual examples.

[analog scott]

But that actually has happened quite frequently. Vinyl releases of the same title have been issued without the hypercompression used on the CDs of the same titles. So why try to counter something that is actually a real world phenomenon by completely misrepresenting it and then branding it a myth?

Oh for goodness sake man!

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...ter_than_the_CD

It's like you have this irrational response - "someone might be dissing vinyl here - I must argue with it" - like a clockwork toy that gets wound up and just can't stop!

Cheers,
David.

Wow, you use pure ad hominem and call *my* response irrational? How about offering a logical argument that is supported by facts like I did instead of pure personal attack? Maybe we have very different ideas about what is irrational. I didn't really expect that from you. I don't really care if people like vinyl or not or dis it. But what we have here is a claim of a myth that seesm to me to be eroneous. Your rationalization of it was even worse than an eronous claim of a myth. I'm gonna give Axon enough credit and presume he really didn't take blatent factual errors, apply gross logical fallacies and turn it all into a strawman. I really would like to think that axon is refering to claims that actually have been made and that I am simply unaware of. But to say there is a pervasiveness to it implies that someone like myself who pays attention to the vinyl scene would have seen ot by now. I haven't. So if someone can show me what I have been missing I'll happily concede the point. But if what we have here is a construct of assumptions about what other people are thinking then maybe it is kinda out of place in a wiki article. Axon did invite ciritque did he not?

This post has been edited by analog scott: Jun 29 2010, 14:18

[2Bdecided]

Wow, you use pure ad hominem and call *my* response irrational?

You argued something that was already in the article. I provided a link.

But what we have here is a claim of a myth that seesm to me to be eroneous. Your rationalization of it was even worse than an eronous claim of a myth. I'm gonna give Axon enough credit and presume he really didn't take blatent factual errors, apply gross logical fallacies and turn it all into a strawman. I really would like to think that axon is refering to claims that actually have been made and that I am simply unaware of. But to say there is a pervasiveness to it implies that someone like myself who pays attention to the vinyl scene would have seen ot by now. I haven't. So if someone can show me what I have been missing I'll happily concede the point.

Again, you ask for something that's already in the article!

e.g. this link...
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/mastering-f...side-vinyl.html
...guy assumes vinyl must have been from superior master because it sounds so good - mastering engineer tells him it wasn't.

I've certainly read...
a) assumptions that vinyl can't be cut from brick-walled CDs masters, therefore it must have less limiting - so it should sound at least a little better - backed up with erroneous waveform comparisons which, when examined more closely, show exactly the same limiting on vinyl and CD!
b) statements that a given release sounds better on vinyl than CD, followed by assumptions that it must be because it's better mastering - then found out that it's the same mastering.
...but I didn't bookmark these, and wouldn't know where to start to try to find them again.

That anyone would choose to argue that something isn't a myth (or whatever) because they haven't heard it is just silly.

Or else it's just subtle trolling. I don't know. Either way, I've failed because I've joined the very argument I described as silly!

Cheers,
David.