Tea for the Tillerman
- Thread starter Myles B. Astor
- Start date
radioactive
New member
Funniest thing I've read this week. You win the award Bob! Talk about straight shootin'!
I was in a much better stance when I was in my teens; smoking hashish and all that jazz of being young.
I guess all my copies (versions) they are simply no good, and it's ok now with me because I listen to other stuff anyway.
Upgrading the old stuff is not always worthy when you're into the newer stuff and other music styles.
For example; The Beatles, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, ... I rarely listen to my albums and CDs now.
I love(d) Cat Stevens music, and if some people are into the latest and best remasterings from the original pressings (tapes, acetates) the more power to them if they are still listening to it.
Life's just too short to live in the past.
* I'm just talking, in an audio forum, about music. ...Today, right now.
One may want to consider that some recordings made in the past will only sound so good. Sure we can remaster them and tweek them to get them to their best potential, but the die is set from the master -- and one could argue that every playback of the master degrades its quality. After all, that's the nature of analog -- there's something physically running across some other medium to transfer the signal (tape, groove, etc.).
The Beatles' Love, IMHO is a unique case where they can improve on the masters, but I've found a few "remasters" that were worse than the original.
I have the Sterling Sound (AP) SACD remster of T for T and went and downloaded the direct DSD version from AS and did a comparison myself. There is a difference. In both, the guitar in "Wild World" is visceral, however the cymbals on the AP Sterling Sound (AP) version are shrill and remind me of listening to crappy speakers in the 80's. The direct DSD version is smoother, but you can only put so much lipstick on a pig. The piano is one-dimensional, and his voice exhibits sibilance quite frequently in both recordings. The AS direct to DSD is better sounding, but it's not night and day.
Thank you for bringing this up Miles. I think there's a good lesson to learn here and it's that just because something is in DSD doesn't mean it's better. Sound quality is only as good as the source and method used to create DSD. I wish that AS and other sources of Hi-Res material like HDTracks would better document their source and process for creating these works. For all we know they're just taking the 16bit source and upsampling and calling it "hi-res" for a premium. Case in point, I've yet to hear a significant difference between the 16/44 and 24/44 material showing up on HDTracks. Are we to believe that modern recording studios are only mastering in 24/44? Seriously...
Bryan
The source sampling info would be really good to know , but doesn't it put us back where we are anyway. Even if it was from the analog master and a fresh remix it still will not be as good as we may want. I have the cd, sacd , and dsd and a flac. The truth us Myles sounded better than what I have. Not sure if I posted this here but on the all but the cd there is a audio drop,out at about ten seconds in. It's on three of the samples I have , it a the lead track. So is the analog master have this or all three samples from the same mix master. Please people check yours now. This would be a good way to know something
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