Interesting and worrying article on the challanges facing the vinyl manufacturing industry..

[o0OBillO0o]

I would have to say less than more for right now with regards to how much agreement we have together on this subject. As for the lack of a "deterministic way to show the AD/DA process is a detriment" I guess you need to define what the detriment is in reference to so we aren't playing a semantics word game. I hope that you don't think you can run an analog signal through two digital conversion processes and expect no changes to the sound. Degradation occurs even in digital to digital conversions (PCM to DSD or DSD to PCM for instance). If you don't believe this, talk to mastering engineers like Bruce Brown who do this for a living.

Here is are definitions: Deterministic and detriment

Ha I am not trying play word games, words have meaning

Can you put Bruce Brown in contact with this Forum and Thread, I am sure he would be a great addtion to the team!

Please define your idea of why digitally sourced vinyl is a "good thing." Is it good because it is making a reissue available that might not otherwise be? I will say this againeople who love analog and LPs are not going to be purchasing LPs made from digital masters if the same LP is available from the original analog tape. Will analog people abandon their LPs and sell off their vinyl rigs after MQA files become available? Time will tell. We will keep an eye out for Mike selling his rig.

Bolded quote, I am sure you speak for yourself and not "people"- I understand the generalization and the concept. Of course if that is your opinion- cool. no argument there. My opinion is that "people buy" what's accessible to them. There will be a small niche population that will go to great lengths to find the original or remastered original transfer. Moreover, there is nothing wrong with buying the all analog version. AAA all the way baby!

Did you watch Michael Fremer's review? He is a stalwart in Analog music listening. If he says "Digitally Sourced Vinyl" is a good thing that I am going to take his word for it. I don't have the impetus for Vinyl like Michael Fremer. He's awesome and unbeknownst to him, on this forum, I thank his life's work

 

[mep]

Uncle!

 

[o0OBillO0o]

Uncle!

[Olive branch= Okay] :ko: [/Olive branch]

 

[rbbert]

It will take a lot more than I have read anywhere to convince me digitally sourced LP's are in any way a "good thing"; in fact, I think they are a particularly bad thing because there is really no way an LP made from a digital master can sound more like the digital master than that master does to itself. Rather than making LP's from digital masters we need to find a way to make those digital masters commercially available with DAC symmetrical to the ADC. Beyond that, those LP's take away from (analog mastered LP's) the limited LP mastering and pressing capabilities which was the point of this thread.

 

[o0OBillO0o]

It will take a lot more than I have read anywhere to convince me digitally sourced LP's are in any way a "good thing"; in fact, I think they are a particularly bad thing because there is really no way an LP made from a digital master can sound more like the digital master than that master does to itself. Rather than making LP's from digital masters we need to find a way to make those digital masters commercially available with DAC symmetrical to the ADC.

Good point- There isn't a way to get a Digital Master and a Vinyl disc to sound the same, because they aren't (the same) and both go through a different playback process. Do you think you will receive same level of subjective enjoyment? I know we want everything perfect and pure, but if this is the current and future nature of things, you can continue to opine the AAA process, but we're fastly approaching a DDD, DDA, ADA, and AAD (who even uses SPARS Code, who cares?)

This symmetrical thing you write about, what is it? I think MQA is doing this exact feature that you seek.

Sure we went off path a bit, but The article is about non fact supported concepts of limited pressing capabilities from Mastered LPs, not Mastering LPs itself. It's hearsay, and if you believe it, so be it. I would default to a manufacturing engineer to solve this problem, no me or another audiophile or even a mastering engineer. Go to the experts for results.

He cites a handful of people, doesn't talk numbers or identify the few lacquer producing facilities. Although it takes the words of the few, to create a tipping point, I would be more convinced that this is all "doom and gloom" if there were more plants that came online about failing to keep up with demand-- and that's a "good problem."

Who's that guy that offers those "Hot stampers" for like a grand- That guy is a genius!

 

[rbbert]

Yes, MQA talks about symmetrical conversions, I just don't see 1) why it has to be only done in a lossy format like MQA and 2) how that will be widely applied (in a practical way)

 

[mep]

Yes, MQA talks about symmetrical conversions, I just don't see 1) why it has to be only done in a lossy format like MQA and 2) how that will be widely applied (in a practical way)

I read the words they are saying, but I don't to pretend to understand how the software used for encoding MQA files will gather the information about which digital converters were used in the recording process and somehow apply some corrections after the fact with another MQA decoder. Seems like this would involve lots of detective work upfront and lengthen the time it will take to release each MQA file. Also not clear to me is how they are going to have the recording label and the artist agree it was done correctly for every single MQA release.