Be Excellent To Each Other

I have some King Crimson albums that also are, ja. Sorry, I confess to being more interested by the mention of Scott Walker

With you on the subjective vs objective (big fan of Theaetetus in first year, me). I assumed people would infer my 'better' = 'what I'd rather listen to' so it's all good. But like I say, while your technical arguments are certainly pertinent, they rarely affect my actual listening (be it frequency range or the stereo image width argument someone threw at me on another board).

I'll take Tool's Aenima on CD any day, but that's largely because I don't want to drop £200 on the 12.

Incidentally, I am legit interested to read more of your thoughts on when CD mastering peaked and why. Not for argument fuel or owt (because you and DG are me fave posters here), but because - as aforementioned - I reckon it was 1995-98ish and downhill after.


NOFX also release(d) their albums on HDCDs. Not sure what difference it makes, and I am sure that insanely few CD players actually have HDCD decoding*. Still, it would be a fun thing to try out (though perhaps a tad moot in this SACD age).

* It's usually emblazoned on the fascia.

You can have mine for £150, if you like...

I'll sell you mine for £125.

£120.

£119.99

Fuck.

If I had an expensive vinyl edition of any of the latter-day Tool albums, I too would be dropping my price like crazy to try and shift it. Although, I suspect I may be missing the point here.

I am actually tempted.

And lol @ Aenima being 'latterday Tool'.

I get it, you don't like Tool post-Undertow (Opiate, whatever). You're obviously way cooler than me.

Anybody up for some collaborative NIN remixing?

No, I just obviously don't like their more recent stuff. And I'm not wild about their early stuff. I like Aenima.

Ahem - ooo, you've got the ltd. ed. of Aenima on vinyl, oh, you are just SO cool.


Hell yeah. Wait, what do you meany by collabaaahhhhhhh!!ithurts!!

Coolio, I think for the overwhelming majority its about how it sounds subjectively, which is ace because vinyl does sound lovely and has its own unique sonic character. I'm always there to straighten out any misunderstood "technical facts" though when people try to scientifically justify why they prefer vinyl to CD. It's a shame some people can't just say "hey, I just like the sound better on vinyl", without having to try arguing technical facts they don't understand. Consumers are weird like that, they often don't have enough confidence in their own opinions. See also MAC users screaming at PC users (and vice versa, of course) how their machines are technically better at A or B. Why can't people just say "I prefer OSX and the nice shiny Mac boxes to XP and an ugly looking Dells). I can respect that, that's fair enough.*

Re: Mastering at its best. Again, its completely and utterly subjective. The thing is, a lot of modern producers are more to blame for completely over compressing a bands recording (take a bow Ross Robinson, you cunt), so then the mastering engineer can't really be held accountable for the CD sounding like utter shit at the end. It takes two to tango, and digital has completely changed the way things work and thus completely changed how people can mix/master. Sometimes massive digital compression is good and it works, eg I love how Justin Broadrick produces the Jesu albums, they're so thick and intense sounding.

But for the best mastering engineers who take a classic analogue recording and present it onto CD/Vinyl as optimally as technologically possible, those MFSL guys are incredible, their masters sound beautiful. They are certainly the Criterion of audio mastering.

*Of course that isn't aimed at you mate.



Yeah, HDCD is uber rare on CD players in stereos, but your PC can decode them fine with media player. Reading about it on their site and Wikipedia though, it sounds like marketing hype. It doesn't explain the science very well but basically you get greater bit depth (20 instead of 16 bits) available in the recording. This just means you can play it 3 times louder and the quietest sounds in the recording will still be just audibly perceptible. Thing is, anyone who values their ears isn't going to listen to a 16bit CD at full dynamic range anyway (about 90dB). 20bits is 120dB dynamic range which is the absolute threshold of hearing for a person, exposure to this WILL fuck your ears. 20-24bits is good for archiving a recording (which mastering engineers will do), but consumers wont need it for playback. What it says on the website about improving the sound quality is crap, it just means the the CD can be played as loud a jumbo jet before you can hear the noise floor, which obviously is completely pointless.

I'm all for 60KHz/20bit audio files becoming the standard for audio recordings as that is the optimum that our ears can hear, but it's a waste of time with physical formats, as CDs are perfectly adequate and replacing your CDs for anything "better" would be a con. When we give up on CDs, then we might as well adopt the optimum standards since it'll just mean a slightly larger downloadable file, which matters not.

Oh. I prefer the other two. Of the four. Although I like Tilt best. The Drift is interesting! Yes. Do we have enough people on here to have a conversation about Scott Walker somewhere else? I've never had a conversation about Scott Walker.

I did not know that.

I always thought Robinson got a bum rap for the mastering of 'his' albums, but perhaps not. That's largely because I love his Burning Red-Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence-Relationship of Command run. They may be loud, but goddamn does he ever get his singers screaming.