I recently bought a brand new AT-PL120 turntable which has reinvigorated my obsession with vinyl. I was sifting through my collection and remembered that I had never actually purchased A Bigger Bang on vinyl. The CD is great but incredibly compressed and limited in dynamic range. CD mastering these days is all about volume, not quality. So the question comes:

Is A Bigger Bang on vinyl mastered better than the CD? Is there less clipping? Or is it the exact same master just put on vinyl...

haven't heard the vinyl but imagined the clipping came from the master, a consequence of the "rough and ready" (bargain-basement) approach they took to the record and boasted about.

I have it - double vinyl edition of course - looks beautiful. but it has the sound 'click' on Laugh I Nearly Die etc. So it's basically the same as cd. just for collection

They recorded it on the same outstanding equipment as past albums. It was all industry standard. The distortion is just the mastering making it as loud as possible. Songs like Rough Justice suffer because the depth is utterly destroyed in favor of volume. Maybe someday my grandkids will be able to purchase the 'remastered' ABB on a crystal shard or whatever they'll be using for audio equipment then. Thanks for the headsup.

imo,the vinyl sounds greater,but this is really my opinion.
i love the vinyl sound,so i love this.

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Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away

I thought it was done in a basement with Pro Tools and a few hard drives?

TeleK Wrote:
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> imo,the vinyl sounds greater,but this is really my
> opinion.
> i love the vinyl sound,so i love this.


This could also have to do with the state of your equipment. I still have my old amp for vinly music...so of course vinyl sounds better ;-)

www.soundstagedirect.com

ABB is very good on vinyl. Well mastered on two dics to preserve a decent dynamic range and certainly not unduly compressed.

I'm not pretending that modern vinyl releases sound as good as the best historical analogue recordings...but they still beat any other commercial format.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2007-07-12 11:11 by Spud.

What do people mean by 'clipping' and 'click'.

ABB is lound and bright but lacks 'dynamic' interest. Yep, industry is stupid - volume rather than quality.

the vinyl sound as smae as the cd. it´s really the same mastering, just depends on the equipment you use

well i guess i'm not very current about these things, but - you can still buy new music in VINYL ???!! that's good news, although not very practical for me, as i live in europe now and my big old record player is back in the states along with about 400+ old scratched up albums and even a little box of 45s ...

anyway i remember reading something neil young said years ago - that he thought at some point vinyl would make a comeback, because there just ain't nothin like analogue music

bluesinc. Wrote:
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> the vinyl sound as smae as the cd. it´s really the
> same mastering, just depends on the equipment you
> use


True up to a point...and most commercially released music is overcompressed to sound impressive on low quality playback equipment...but the CD medium has its own limitations which will still usually result in the vinyl having a musically superior sound. Don't really want to get into the scientifc arguments because a lot of it's opinion and nobody ever really wins;^)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-07-12 15:47 by Spud.

Clipping on the ABB Cd?
I guess you're exaggerating a little, no?
clipping would mean it's a faulty product, an error by mastering and pressing!
a reason to return the CD to the shop.

I can see your point about the lack of dynamics - but clipping, no way.

[en.wikipedia.org])

I'm not sure about ABB but on some modern recordings this can be heard. The worst cases IMO are RHCP Californication and Icky Thump from The White Stripes.
The cd's are not faulty, the sound just sucks

Interesting article today on why CD's don't sound as good as they used to, which supports some of the above comments about the mastering:

[tech.yahoo.com]

kovach Wrote:
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> Interesting article today on why CD's don't sound
> as good as they used to, which supports some of
> the above comments about the mastering:
>
> [tech.yahoo.com]


Hey that's a good link - I have noticed this, but I didn't know what caused it, before now

I have a few spare vinyl copies, if anyone needs one. Also have extras of Voodoo, Stripped, Bridges to Babylon as well... Email me privately.

JR

I confess to being a complete luddite...but in my opinion at the moment there is no current true high fidelity medium for recorded music.
The lowest common denominator of MP3 quality sound via cute little micro systems and i-pods has lowered people's expectations to the point where ther's no mass market requirement for "real HiFi" any more!
It's a huge shame...because listening to music played back on a genuinely good system can give a buzz approaching that from a live performance.
Everybody walks about with an i-pod in their ears today...but very few people actually LISTEN to music.

Aren't I depressing ;^)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2007-07-12 19:18 by Spud.

Good point spud. Are all those youngsters with there MP3s really able to make a judgement - I doubt it. Yes, the market has indeed changed.

I still don't know what 'clipping' and 'click' is though.

MP3 is fine if you´re on the bus or whatever. It´s convenience is an upgrade from the previous convenient Walkman. Remember them? Some years ago I was at a hard to find specialist Hi-Fi shop. I said, I want a record player. He took me down into the cellar. All that was in the room was a Rega Planar 3. Creek amp and Proac Tablettes on spiked stands. A chair. Me . And a copy of Welcome To The Pleasure Dome. He said, be back in half an hour. Jesus Christ! I never head anything so fantastic. 25 years later I can still remember what it was like. I have recently upgraded that original system. Vinyl is where it´s at. But I don,t think the bus driver will let you on with it all. So we have MP3. Don´t believe me? Check out those sounds on vinyl with a decent system.

There is DEFINATELY clipping on A Bigger Bang. Thats without question. The distortion due to volume increase is easily heard on tunes like Rough Justice. It distorts naturally. Don't get me wrong, I love the punch mix, but the dynamic range is DESTROYED. The old recordings (ala Sticky Fingers, etc...) had depth and breathing room in the tracks. With the new CD mastering techniques they totally destroy the dynamic range. On vinyl dynamic range is very limited (sound vs. blank noise basically), but on CDs it is amazingly vast!

Ultimately the reason I asked was because I wanted to know if my purchase of ABB on vinyl would be something practical or just "to have". From what I've read, its the EXACT same master as used for CDs.

Case in point:
*CD sound: digitally mastered, unfortunately blown out by a modern mastering engineer
*Vinyl sound: EXACTLY the same as a CD, but with added crackles n pops

If its the same, and it is, on CD and Vinyl, then there's no point in having vinyl except for collector/nostalgia purposes. If the CD was mastered by a different engineer, then it would be of higher quality, with greater depth and would therefore be my preferred method for listening. Regardless its still a fantastic album, and I'll get a copy sooner or later.

Thanks for all the help my friends.

BTW, I'm 23. Don't knock all the youngsters... =) Some of us do indeed LISTEN to music. Right now I'm working on getting a tube amp.

I agree that compared to an old analogue recording, mastered using the ears of skilled engineers, ABB and all modern releases lack any real dynamic range.
Everything is compressed to hell so that it sounds impressive and loud on playback systems which themselves have little true dynamic range.
It's a sad chicken and egg thing...because listening to ABB will not reveal the differences between a good audio system and an excellent one in the same way that Sticky Fingers or Exile will.
I still the think the timing is better on vinyl though. I've yet to hear a digital medium that captures the Stones' unique swing properly !



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-07-14 18:37 by Spud.

An interesting article can be found in this months excellent Record Collector magazine No.339 about the current state of affairs with regard to vinyl. Page 70 The Survival Of Vinyl.