#9261918, By buggrit The sound quality thread

buggrit 1 Jan 2013 05:32:17 5,178 posts
Seen 5 days ago
Registered 14 years ago

mal wrote:

buggrit wrote:
Re iTunes - there's this excellent article on the matter: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/02/mastered-for-itunes-how-audio-engineers-tweak-tunes-for-the-ipod-age/

CDs have been crap for years, by and large - due to most people listening on shitty systems and not understanding the concept of dynamic range, for the most part. Hence me moving most of my recreational listening to vinyl these days.
Hmm, good point about audio engineers mastering separately for separate target mediums. I'd always assumed beat-heavy music sounded better on vinyl due to the physicality of the medium (the head itself can bounce around slightly in sympathetic rhythm) but the fact everything from old rock to drum and bass sounds better on vinyl probably points to engineers using the dyniamic range you can get out of heavyweight vinyl rather than my magic dancing head.

I think it's as much to do with sympathetic, skilled people doing the mastering as anything else - cutting vinyl masters is a genuine art. There's actually LESS headroom on vinyl than on CD (mostly due to the noise floor), but it's how it's dealt with that counts. There's no escaping that well-mastered music on good quality vinyl played through decent kit sounds bloody wonderful though - there's a really different sense of weight and realness to the sound that just isn't there on CD

Heavyweight vinyl is used more for rigidity than any sonic benefit, unless you start cutting 12" records at 45rpm (I have a few albums like this and they're excellent).