"Spiderant" wrote in message
news:xQUod.317587$nl.7866@pd7tw3no...
"JustMe" wrote in message
...
I think everyone here would agree that the concept behind "Straight-line"
is
to deliver the music as the artist intended, unsullied and uncoloured -
an
accurate reflection of the artist's work.

Just reading an interview with Neil Young (HiFi Choice, January 2005),
in
which he states,

"The analogue records always sounded better than anything else to me.
But
I
compared the new vinyl versions, which are taken from a first generation
analogue master copy, and the best just got better. It's a really good
feeling."

To be fair and put this in context, he also speaks well of DVD-Audio,
but
it's clear that NY is one artist who sees vinyl as the source which is
closest to a "true replica".


I've just been listening to a CD of Neil Young's Tonight's the Night, an
album I'm very familiar with. I listened to it through my Sennheiser HD
580
headphones using a Musical Fidelity X Cans V3 headphone amp and a
Cambridge
Audio D500 CD player. Although I tried to enjoy the music, I couldn't
help
thinking how much it was grating my 46 year old ears. I heard greater
detail then I remember, including laughter in the opening track amongst
other things. But I kept wanting to turn the volume down when it grated,
and up when I felt I just wasn't hearing enough. There was a hard edge to
the music that really bothered me.

On the weekend I played an old scratchy vinyl version of Tonight's the
Night
on my 20 year old Technics turntable (with it's original needle) and, even
though it skipped (once), popped and crackled, I just ended up wanting to
turn it up and up.

I was about to concede that, regardless of its imperfections, vinyl just
sounded so much better.

But then I put on a CD of Neils' newer (and underrated) Sleeps With
Angels,
and it sounded wonderful. No hard edges. No grating.

I also have a CD of Benjamin Britten's Cello Symphony with Mstislav
Rostropovich (Decca 425 100-2), which was recorded in 1964. Although
there
is a certain amount of tape hiss, of my 1200 + CDs (mostly classical),
this
is one of my favorites sonically and emotionally.

All I can conclude from my own experiences is that it's not the medium
that's important, but the way the music is mastered. If Neil Young (as
well
as countless other artists and their works--Yes's Close to the Edge comes
immediately to mind) would have remastered his works for a
vinyl-conditioned
audience by upping the bass and darker tones a bit, I'm certain that he
wouldn't be yearning for the warmth of vinyl today. Most of his earlier
CDs
sound like crap.

BTW I wouldn't be listening to mostly classical today if not for the doors
that Neil Young's and Frank Zappa's abstract guitar jams opened up for me.

Keep it lit,

Roland Goetz.

I agree about production in that it has a massive influence on the
sound-quality of a recording. It may well be that the older production was
deliberately hard-edged, or that today he takes advantage of superior
techniques.

His voice can sound quite sharp and tracks like Southern Man seem to have
this emphasised with distortion added to his vocal., which serves to
reinforce the song's sentiment. Don't Let it Bring You Down has none of the
same edge, none of the distortion on his voice and employs an acoustic
rather than an electric guitar-lead arrangement. As a result his voice
sounds sweeter and the track sounds less "edgy".
Given that these are from the same album, it seems pretty clear that these
are deliberate production choices and that the hard edge in this case was
quite deliberate.

I don't hold with the idea that vinyl is "warm". Vinyl can sound bright,
dry, sharp etc. For me the difference is one of "projection". The sound to
my ears is more "out of the box" - it delivers greater dimension and
presence and it involves me more in the music, compared with CD which seems
flatter and lacks the same involvement.

Why that should be and what it is that causes these perceptions, I don't
know but I am not the only one and, as long as that remains the case, I
shall chose vinyl over CD.