[music-dsp] [OT] vinyl? No, thanks...

[Stephen Blinkhorn]

On 28 Nov 2010, at 15:05, Andy Farnell wrote:

> Psychoacoustically, what are the features/behaviours that
> lend themselves to subjective improvement for listening?
> (natural compression etc)
>
> Using modern 64 bit machines can simulate this to
> __really__ give the sound of vinyl, or is the difference
> rooted in the very nature of analogue vs digital reproduction?

The dynamics are often one of the first things I notice with a good  
vinyl setup.  Not loud/soft passages as such but the individual  
attacks of percussion or acoustic instruments which seem to contain  
more detail on vinyl.

Anyway, consider this sequence of events:

Someone makes a track using purely software synths/samplers.  They  
bounce the final mix to disk and off it goes to the mastering house.   
Presumably the mastering engineer has very high quality D/A converters  
at their disposal and is able to take the original digital source and  
send it through some analog EQ/compression and onto the cutting lathe  
with an excellent level of fidelity.  If you've got a good vinyl setup  
maybe you can benefit from that fidelity more than with a CD where we  
will go from digital source >>> D/A >>> EQ/compression chain (probably  
analog?) >> back to A/D >> and then out your CD player via another D/A??

I've been wondering about this for a few years but I'm not a mastering  
engineer.

Stephen