OT: New toy out there

**Old Guy** · April 23rd, 2014, 10:50 AM

I think there will always be a low end market, and a much smaller high end market. IMHO all power to them, but my fear in investing in gear is just how much c0ntent available. As has been mentioned, Jazz and similar stuff would be a good market for this. Not sure most 50's rock recordings would benefit much.

**mah** · April 23rd, 2014, 08:32 PM

192/24 shirt-pocket sized and a lot cheaper: Amazon.com : Fiio X3 Mastering Quality Music Player w/ Wolfson DAC WM8740 24Bit 192K : Digital Media Players : MP3 Players & Accessories

**VolvoHeretic** · April 23rd, 2014, 11:18 PM

Does anyone have experience with remastered CDs? I have only bought the CD versions of LPs from the 70's which are very lacking in the bass department. It would be nice to have the bass mastered for CD only if that would be possible. The highs would be nice also, but I can't hear them anyways.

**mah** · April 24th, 2014, 12:22 AM

I have a few re-mastered Beatles CDs. I am so comfortable with the originals that I see the new ones as having more apparent top and bottom end that sounds alien to me. A new listener would probably opt for the re-mastered versions.

**joyspring** · April 24th, 2014, 04:25 AM

Remasters are always a hit-or-miss affair for a variety of reasons though even the original vinyl releases could and often did have sonic variation during their production runs.

First and foremost, time is never kind to masters on analogue magnetic tape. Much depends on how they were stored and cared for in the intervening years from LP pressing to digital remaster. Many succumbed to these effects.

Second is how faithful operators were in aligning analogue tape machines. In the 1980s as I recall, engineers were (mostly) diligent about this but then again many were using extremely old and worn MRL alignment tapes which - at worst - could result in audible octave-to-octave variation.

Cutting engineers would sometimes tailor EQ to taste... their taste, depending on their experience.

How worn were the stampers that produced the vinyl LP you own that contain the sound that you remember? There always existed the possibility of slight audible variations during a production run depending on QC.

Finally, there is the taste of the remaster producer and engineer...

For early re-releases on CD in particular, often very little was done during the transfer other than correcting gross sonic defects, probably in a rush to quickly build a CD library.

For others, the producers and engineers sought to utilise the extra bandwidth and S/N of the CD medium that simply did not exist on vinyl LP and made decisions that perhaps were not the most faithful to the original release, to put it charitably.

A couple examples I can recall: Blue Note LP releases vs. Blue Note CD re-releases vs. recent Blue Note RVG (Rudy Van Gelder) re-releases. Obviously, the RVG remasters have better bandwidth and would probably sound better to listeners unacquainted with the original LPs, but personally I prefer the older CD re-releases because they do sound closer to the LPs I'm familiar with in spite of their sonic defects.

Another particularly apparent example: the original Columbia LP release of Miles Davis `Milestones' vs. the Columbia CD re-release and in particular, the fourth track `Miles'...

The LP track includes a snare fill preceding the downbeat that is sharply abbreviated on the CD track; I'm sure this was done because of the condition of the analogue magnetic master... I've always found this extremely annoying personally however necessary.

In many ways, I appreciate digital recording and workflow as it cuts out many of the steps where sonic variation from the original mix may inadvertently or intentionally occur, often through the inadequacies of the analogue medium (bandwidth, noise or age/wear in the case of remasters). There still remains the case that mastering will significantly alter the sound though.

Hope this offers some insight on the processes involved.

BobR