Is modern vinyl really analog?

[Quickstep192]

I watched an interesting show on TV about how vinyl records are made now. Although automated and modernized, it seems not much else has changed, records are still stamped with molten vinyl. The thing that has changed is the source audio that's used to cut the master. The source of the music is digital since the music was recorded in a studio that uses digital recording equipment.

For me that begs the question about whether or not the sound from a modern vinyl disk is really that much different than a CD. If the input source was digital, are you really getting all the nuances that are attributed to an analog vinyl recording?

[Bob Womack]

Do you remember the code that was used? AAA, etc. The code reflected three phases of the recording's life: Recording, Mixing, Mastering. These days there are still studios using analog tape. I have a 24 track analog tape machine in the machine room of the studio where I work. A few years back I was asked to remix a soundtrack for CD release. The album was recorded on 24 track analog. I sent the tapes to a processing lab in New Jersey where they ran them through a bath and then baked them to repair the degrading tape. When I got them back, hermetically sealed in a plastic bag, I immediately put them up on the 24 track and transferred them to my workstation. I did that to get a snapshot of the contents and to prevent any further wear on the master tapes. I rebagged the reels and set about mixing in the digital domain. My mixes were mastered in the digital domain and fabricated to CD. That was an ADD, Analog, Digital, Digital, production.

Few artists are willing to pay the current $300 per hour analog tape cost anymore, so most are recorded into workstations and usually mixed digitally as well. Their mastering for a vinyl album is in the analog domain so that would be a DDA production.

To be a fully analog production, AAA, you'd have to record on analog tape, mix to analog tape, and be mastered to vinyl, like we did in the old days. It IS done, but frankly, most of what we see is DAA or DDA. And frankly, to my sensibilities and tastes, a DDA or DAA production is inferior to a high-quality DDD product. Why?

There are many problems with vinyl that I was all too happy to loose the format. They include: surface noise, left-right cross-talk, band-to-band cross-talk, phase error, total harmonic distortion within the entire groove of the record, center-hole offset causing audibly wow, pinch warp, dish warp, and inner-groove distortion on the inner tracks. It is a little-known fact that analog vinyl is a velocity-dependent medium. As speed goes up distortion goes down, and vice-versa. To maintain your quality you must maintain the velocity of the needle within the groove. However, because the groove is an ever-shrinking spiral, the distance the needle is traveling on a single pass is also ever-shrinking. Because the rotational speed of the record is fixed, that means that the velocity of the information traveling across the needle is decreasing from the instant the record starts. The threshold of distortion decreases proportionally. By the time you get to the last track, the total harmonic distortion has risen to a distinctly audible point. There were mastering strategies to minimize the impact of this. The most common one was to place a harmonically simple, quiet piece of music as the last song on each side. Coupled with that was also typically the use of heavy compression and a lower level on those tracks. Nevertheless there were many, many lovely little inner track songs that I never heard without horrible, audible distortion until they were released on CDs.

Did any of that help? Can you tell I don't have a session this morning? (I'm a recording engineer.)

Bob

[Mr. Jelly]

Bob I enjoyed your response. I had to smile though thinking how analog records are so love yet so flawed. Such is life

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Mr. Jelly

Bob I enjoyed your response. I had to smile though thinking how analog records are so love yet so flawed. Such is life

Thank you, sir. Glad to have entertained. In their time, albums were the best we had but I often pulled my hair out over the quality of pressings.

Bob

[H165]

a DDA or DAA production is inferior to a high-quality DDD product.

+1. Pretty much anything that has at least one D is superior to full analog. Just the three absolute basics: tape hiss and distortion plus vinyl's lack of dynamic range, made vinyl obsolete. The reason vinyl is still widely appreciated is that lots of people like, and are used to the type of distortion vinyl provides.

It's the same with tube audio gear. I will never give up my tube gear, because I like, and I am used to the type of distortion tube gear provides.

[Chipotle]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

There are many problems with vinyl that I was all too happy to loose the format. They include: surface noise, left-right cross-talk, band-to-band cross-talk, phase error, total harmonic distortion within the entire groove of the record, center-hole offset causing audibly wow, pinch warp, dish warp, and inner-groove distortion on the inner tracks.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I truly can't fathom how many people, including "audiophiles", have no idea of the limitations of vinyl and the contortions you have to put the signal through to get it onto a plastic disc. IMO the idea that vinyl is a "purer" or better representation of the signal than digital (regardless of the two other steps in the chain) is laughable.

(Of course, I'm also a career software engineer, so I may be biased. )

[Willie_D]

Modern vinyl is made from the same master that's used for CDs and other digital formats. The same overcompressed, loudness-war master. Which is why vinyl fans prefer vintage pressings.

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Willie_D

Modern vinyl is made from the same master that's used for CDs and other digital formats. The same overcompressed, loudness-war master. Which is why vinyl fans prefer vintage pressings.

Um, with respect: If you do it right, you mix your album without all the heavy compression and then turn it over to a mastering engineer. If he is mastering to CD, digital, and vinyl, he will likely create different masters for each format because they have far different needs. As a recording engineer I don't brick-wall my mixes for two reasons: 1) I often don't know how the stuff is going to be released and 2) I don't like that sound. If the artist or label want it squashed they can do that in the mastering phase. And by the way, the albums I master also aren't squashed too far. I always pull up Joe Walsh's latest album, Analog Man, to remind myself how BAD that sounds.

Interestingly, vinyl actually requires more compression than digital. Notice I said "requires." Modern practice, however, is carried out quite differently. Because of the irrational "vinyl is better" sentiment and the simultaneous "louder is better" sentiment in the digital, earbud crowd, the whole scheme can be inverted in the mastering phase with the digital product being compressed more. For heaven's sake, don't let reason or taste get in the way of a perception of profit!

Another little-known fact is that the vinyl format requires absolute phase coherence below about 300hz. Out of phase material below that range can cause the the album to literally eject the needle from the groove. As a result, good mastering engineers typically put in a crossover starting around this region and sum the channels in the frequencies below that to mono to force phase coherence and guarantee tracking.

There are some really nice modern mastering jobs happening on modern music. I think of David Gilmour's last album, Rattle That Lock, for instance.

All the best,

Bob

[Rudy4]

Bob Womack, Thanks so much for that! It's appreciated how much thought and care you put into your posts.

On a related note, I had a nice Thorens turntable fitted with a good cartridge and stylus but still had problems with surface noise developing on my records, particularly one label's pressings.

It was a bit of a revelation to me when I happened to be in a city where one of their pressing plants was located and ended up talking to an employee who worked there. When I mentioned the surface noise he told me that wasn't a surprise to him, as there were several manufacturing steps that were being "modified" to save money. Among those manufacturing steps that were changed was a filtering process designed to remove small impurities before the liquid was sent to the presses. They were instructed to greatly reduce the number of times the filters were maintained, the results of that being small bits of debris included in the finished product.

I couldn't wait for everything to be available in CD format!

[merlin666]

I grew up in a world of vacuum tubes, resistors, diodes, big capacitors etc and remember introduction of transistors as revolution. While I utilize convenience of computers and smart phones every day I don't feel that digitalization has improved society at all. I enjoy listening to mp3s on my phone a lot less than to the scratchy vinyl on the HiFi of my youth. As for making music myself I went beyond analog to fully mechanical, playing only acoustic and vocal without amplification.

[jseth]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

Do you remember the code that was used? AAA, etc. The code reflected three phases of the recording's life: Recording, Mixing, Mastering. These days there are still studios using analog tape. I have a 24 track analog tape machine in the machine room of the studio where I work. A few years back I was asked to remix a soundtrack for CD release. The album was recorded on 24 track analog. I sent the tapes to a processing lab in New Jersey where they ran them through a bath and then baked them to repair the degrading tape. When I got them back, hermetically sealed in a plastic bag, I immediately put them up on the 24 track and transferred them to my workstation. I did that to get a snapshot of the contents and to prevent any further wear on the master tapes. I rebagged the reels and set about mixing in the digital domain. My mixes were mastered in the digital domain and fabricated to CD. That was an ADD, Analog, Digital, Digital, production.

Few artists are willing to pay the current $300 per hour analog tape cost anymore, so most are recorded into workstations and usually mixed digitally as well. Their mastering for a vinyl album is in the analog domain so that would be a DDA production.

To be a fully analog production, AAA, you'd have to record on analog tape, mix to analog tape, and be mastered to vinyl, like we did in the old days. It IS done, but frankly, most of what we see is DAA or DDA. And frankly, to my sensibilities and tastes, a DDA or DAA production is inferior to a high-quality DDD product. Why?

There are many problems with vinyl that I was all too happy to loose the format. They include: surface noise, left-right cross-talk, band-to-band cross-talk, phase error, total harmonic distortion within the entire groove of the record, center-hole offset causing audibly wow, pinch warp, dish warp, and inner-groove distortion on the inner tracks. It is a little-known fact that analog vinyl is a velocity-dependent medium. As speed goes up distortion goes down, and vice-versa. To maintain your quality you must maintain the velocity of the needle within the groove. However, because the groove is an ever-shrinking spiral, the distance the needle is traveling on a single pass is also ever-shrinking. Because the rotational speed of the record is fixed, that means that the velocity of the information traveling across the needle is decreasing from the instant the record starts. The threshold of distortion decreases proportionally. By the time you get to the last track, the total harmonic distortion has risen to a distinctly audible point. There were mastering strategies to minimize the impact of this. The most common one was to place a harmonically simple, quiet piece of music as the last song on each side. Coupled with that was also typically the use of heavy compression and a lower level on those tracks. Nevertheless there were many, many lovely little inner track songs that I never heard without horrible, audible distortion until they were released on CDs.

Did any of that help? Can you tell I don't have a session this morning? (I'm a recording engineer.)

Bob

Perfect, Bob... thanks. I knew much of which you spoke regarding vinyl records, most of which I learned the hard way, way back when!

Since the late-60's, I've known that the BEST sound I will ever get from a record is that first playing... a lot of folks would commit the record to tape immediately... so they didn't degrade the vinyl so quickly...

On digital vinyl, I think the first I ever heard in the Pop/Rock milieu was Ry Cooder's early 80's record, "Bop 'Til You Drop". A terrific record, but it had a decidedly "crunchy" sound to it... not awful, just very, very different from what had been...

When I finally recorded my own CD in 1998, digital "bedroom" studios were becoming all the rage... and I didn't want that. Recorded mine in studio in Burlingame, just south of SF in the Bay Area... just 16 track to tape with Dolby SR... after all the mixing at the studio, we sent it to a guy who was some master (former Fantasy records mastering fellow) and he did his thing...

Then finally to the CD makers. After all these years, I still can stomach the sound of the thing (!) which someone told me is a good sign... but it has a warm, softer overall tone to it than most of the good "bedroom stuff" I hear...

Thanks, Mr. Womack, for being such a valuable, knowledgeable contributor to this Forum!

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Rudy4

Bob Womack, Thanks so much for that! It's appreciated how much thought and care you put into your posts.

Originally Posted by jseth

Thanks, Mr. Womack, for being such a valuable, knowledgeable contributor to this Forum!

My pleasure, guys, and thanks for your kind words. I remember three horrible examples: Rick Wakeman's 1977 White Rock official soundtrack to the Winter Olympic Games. Snap, crackle, pop! I returned seven copies before I gave up and kept one.
Alan Parson's Project 1977 I Robot had THE worst pinch warp I have ever seen and an off-center hole. The pinch warp would pitch the needle out of the groove on the first track. I wish I had saved it for a classroom example but it was two years before I started studying recording.
Pat Metheny Group 1984 First Circle was only available on vinyl for a couple of years. Oh, my gosh. It was a highly dynamic Manfred Eicher production and the quiet passages were completely spoiled by surface noise. I think that was my last album. It was replaced with a CD copy that I still play.

CD fun: My first Audio Engineering Society convention was in October of 1984. I represented my company and we were looking for recording consoles. We had traditionally been an all-Neve plant so Neve invited us to meet and chat with Rupert Neve. However, for my studio we were looking at a Solid State Logic 4000 console. SSL closed down their display rooms every night and brought in prospective clients. The 4000 was set up with a copy of the digital multitrack of Dave Grusin's Nightlines tracks from A&E studios. I got to mix selections of that album right after the album came out. That album was all the rage and was playing in many booths, especially in the JBL/UREI monitor speaker room where we auditioned speakers. When I got home I rushed out and ordered a copy of Nightlines which took three weeks to arrive and became my first CD. At that point there was exactly one (1) CD player model available in my hometown (a low-end Sanyo) and I had to wait for one to come in stock. It was horrible - it always up-cut every selection you called for, so I took it back to... Circuit City... and exchanged it. Meanwhile, all CD players worked off a single D-to-A converter and clocked themselves to convert alternate packets from left and right channels creating, you guessed it... horrible phase smear. It took a bit to sort that out by equipping CD players with dual D-to-As. Eventually the Burr-Brown chip came out and we were in heaven again.

Oh and we did buy an SSL 4000 console and UREI speakers eventually.

Bob

[Howard Emerson]

The title track of my upcoming release, The Rhytalin Kid, is absolutely an ADD production.

Best,
Howard Emerson

[H165]

Eventually the Burr-Brown chip came out

I forgot about those! Used them for mods to...I don't remember... maybe
Symetrix mic preamps or something. Interesting thread!

[SongwriterFan]

I always tell people that I can make their CDs sound "just like" the vinyl they say they prefer.

How?

Run it through a tube pre-amp, and digitally add some "hiss" and "crackles" to it.

I don't understand why nobody likes me when I say that.