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The main reason vinyl often sounds better is because it is better mastered, so this is concerning.
by mdhen 3mo ago
The main reason vinyl often sounds better is because it is better mastered, so this is concerning.
- esikich 3mo agoThat's just not true and vinyl doesn't sound better by any measure.
- CarVac 3mo agoIt's true from time to time. Low's last digital releases are actually unlistenable due to heavy-handed compression, but the vinyl seems to have been spared. I had to record the vinyl to get usable digital files.
- wk_end 3mo agoThe loudness and compression on Low's last couple of albums is very much deliberate, so it's surprising that the vinyl doesn't have it. Though I heard similar claims about Sleater-Kinney's The Woods, which was also intensely compressed for artistic effect.
- CarVac 3mo agoThere's compression and distortion for sure on the vinyl, but when you look at the waveform on the digital it's right up to the max. It completely changes the sound.
- jlarcombe 3mo agoThe thing is, vinyl (and tape) typically can't reproduce waveforms like that accurately, so it's difficult to compare. You can take a hyper-compressed master, cut it to vinyl or record it to tape, then play it back in to a computer, and it'll look different and less "brickwalled".
- CarVac 3mo agoRegardless, for me the CD is actually painful to listen to even at low volumes, while the vinyl is excellent.
- Slow_Hand 3mo agoThis. The loudness is an aesthetic choice. The reason it was backed off for the vinyl master is most likely due to physical limitations of the medium. If the audio channels are too loud (wide) there is risk that the needle will jump out of the groove.
- esikich 3mo agoThis is exactly why vinyl is inferior to tape and digital.
- majkinetor 3mo agoYou mean beside all the noise it has?
- esikich 3mo agoA new dust free record shouldn't have any but yeah, that'll happen over time.
- CarVac 3mo agoSometimes limitations can have benefits.
- globular-toast 3mo agoIt's worse for recording arbitrary waveforms, sure. It's very well suited for music, though.
- breezybottom 3mo agoI mean you literally just acknowledged evidence that it WASN'T for artistic effect.
- wk_end 3mo agoI dunno if you’ve listened to these records in question but it’s very, very obviously for artistic effect. They’ve discussed it in interviews and stuff. Low wasn’t looking to get radio play with fractured collages of distorted noise. The “vinyl can’t reliably reproduce these waveforms” explanation someone else suggested makes the most sense.
- breezybottom 3mo agoArtists usually aren't involved at the mastering stage, at that point the music is already recorded and mixed.
- wk_end 3mo agoThat's just not true. I just had my band's album mastered; we weren't in the room or anything but the mastering engineer asked us directly questions about how we wanted the record to sound and we got final approval on it.
- nighthawk454 3mo agoIt’s completely true, when the vinyl has a different mastering. It can be a completely different version. It’s not because it’s vinyl
- esikich 3mo agoMastering doesn't change much. They're just going to roll off the low end a bit. A separate mix is an entirely different thing though.
- nighthawk454 3mo agoIt really does on some records, if you’re interested check out some comparisons on YouTube. Many times it’s subtle eq tweaks, granted, and that won’t much matter. But a lot of older rock and pop records for example go from being super dynamic and well produced to completely crushed with boosted bass and treble to ‘modernize’ the sound. You can see some examples of how dynamic range (they don’t track ‘mastering’ overall) varies across releases on this site: https://dr.loudness-war.info/ https://dr.loudness-war.info/
- shmageggy 3mo agoSorry, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. Many releases get mastered separately for digital and for vinyl, and one or both of them often does “change much”. Usually the brickwall limiting (among other things) on the digital master.
- esikich 3mo agoI absolutely know what I'm talking about and have released multiple records. I don't think you know what mastering is and how subtle it is. You're thinking of a separate mix which, yes, does sound quite different.
- shmageggy 3mo agoJust because you chose to have subtle mastering applied doesn’t mean that the commercial records we’re discussing have done the same, particularly for their digital releases, which is why they sound different. If you listen to vinyl versus digital releases of certain albums, it is obvious. Stop spreading misinformation.
- BoingBoomTschak 3mo agoI'd say "rarely" instead of "often" though it depends on the genre I guess. There are also a lot of genres that can never sound as good on vinyl simply due to the lack of dynamic range/silence; mostly classical and electronic.
- scns 3mo ago> There are also a lot of genres that can never sound as good on vinyl simply due to the inability to encode very low tones.