"JustMe" wrote in message
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"Spiderant" wrote in message
news:xQUod.317587$nl.7866@pd7tw3no...
"JustMe" wrote in message
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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.

I keep my old turntable because I have records that aren't available on CD
("Time Fades Away", Jascha Heifetz playing Beethoven's Kreutzer, etc.). I'd
like to think that once the CDs are available, I'll give my records and
turntable away to the Salvation Army. But the other day I got the urge to
listen to Kraftwerk's "Radio Activity" and got totally sucked into the
music. This seems to happen a lot more than when I listen to CDs. It feels
to me that the music coming off of vinyl has more presence, even though I'm
convinced that CDs offer greater detail with a lot less noise. Although I
hate to admit it (I've invested a lot of money in CDs), I just find that I'm
just getting off on the music coming from my records a more often than the
music from my CDs. When I'm playing records, I just want to turn up the
volume. When I'm playing CDs, it seems like I'm trying too hard to enjoy
the music.

As an example, I have two versions of Glen Gould playing Bach's Goldberg
Variations. The first few times I played the vinyl version, I kept turning
it down because I was freaked out by a strange voice I kept hearing. I
thought that there was someone else in the apartment with me. It turned out
to be Glen Gould humming along with his playing. When I listen to the CD
version of the same recording, I can hear his humming, but it doesn't seem
separate from the music in the same way. The details are there, but the
sense of presence is missing. Similarly, when playing Yes's "Close to the
Edge," there's a part when Rick Wakeman begins a terrific organ/synh solo
and, if you listen carefully, you can hear someone in the background
prompting him on: "Yeah. Oh yeah." It's on the "remastered" CD as well,
but just doesn't sound separate from the music. And I get the urge to turn
up the record, whereas I get the urge to turn down the CD.

It is actually very disheartening. I'm going to pick up Neil Young's
Greatest Hits with the bonus DVD and try and do some A/B comparisons to see
if the DVD version is, as Neil suggests, better. But will I sense his
presence as much as on my vinyl versions (of the same songs), I somehow
don't think so.

Keep it lit,

Roland Goetz.