I spent some Christmas HMV vouchers and picked up The War of the Worlds on
CD for £11.99, CD96000 which I think is a UK only release. I was absolutely
gobsmacked to listen to it (my system is budget, a Trichord modified PD703
transport, dpa Little Bit Three DAC and a Creek OBHIIse driving Sennheiser
HD600 'phones). It is quite possibly the clearest and best recorded CD I've
listen to, the individual instruments are clear and separate well,
considering it was recorded in 1978 and probably mastered in the mid '80's.
The CDs are (C) 1978 the cover art 1985.

The question is why do a lot of the modern CDs sound so bad from a sound
quality side, a lot of the CD's have PC CD-ROM sections is this causing the
quality issues or is it just sloppy mastering?

--
Will Reeve

"Will Reeve" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
I spent some Christmas HMV vouchers and picked up The War of the Worlds on
CD for £11.99, CD96000 which I think is a UK only release. I was absolutely
gobsmacked to listen to it (my system is budget, a Trichord modified PD703
transport, dpa Little Bit Three DAC and a Creek OBHIIse driving Sennheiser
HD600 'phones). It is quite possibly the clearest and best recorded CD I've
listen to, the individual instruments are clear and separate well,
considering it was recorded in 1978 and probably mastered in the mid '80's.
The CDs are (C) 1978 the cover art 1985.

The question is why do a lot of the modern CDs sound so bad from a sound
quality side, a lot of the CD's have PC CD-ROM sections is this causing the
quality issues or is it just sloppy mastering?

--
Will Reeve

=================================

"sloppy mastering"

That is the answer !

In those days, people who mastered where not only
technicians, but artists who knew how to record and listen
to their work.


--
Allen Reny
http://www.a-reny.com

"Will Reeve" wrote in
:

I spent some Christmas HMV vouchers and picked up The War of the Worlds
on CD for £11.99, CD96000 which I think is a UK only release. I was
absolutely gobsmacked to listen to it (my system is budget, a Trichord
modified PD703 transport, dpa Little Bit Three DAC and a Creek OBHIIse
driving Sennheiser HD600 'phones). It is quite possibly the clearest and
best recorded CD I've listen to, the individual instruments are clear
and separate well, considering it was recorded in 1978 and probably
mastered in the mid '80's. The CDs are (C) 1978 the cover art 1985.

The question is why do a lot of the modern CDs sound so bad from a sound
quality side, a lot of the CD's have PC CD-ROM sections is this causing
the quality issues or is it just sloppy mastering?


Some of the "budget" labels in the UK made records EQd to sound terrific
on the most common (cheapest) record player of the day. The result was
that the budget LPs sounded better than the high priced LPs when played on
that gear. Of course the wealthy with their high end stereos shunned the
terrible sounding recordings but they were a minority and could well
afford the extra expense of high end recordings.

I suspect that the same was done with the CD in question.

r


--
Nothing beats the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with DLT tapes.

The question is why do a lot of the modern CDs sound so bad from a sound
quality side, a lot of the CD's have PC CD-ROM sections is this causing
the quality issues or is it just sloppy mastering?

It may not be either of these things.

With so many low budget project studios being used these days,
with poor monitoring, it may be that the CD is no worse than
the original:-)


As we have discussed before on this group, the role of
the mastering engineer, be it disc, CD, or whatever,
seems to have changed.
Previously, the objective was to make the finished product sound
as close as possible to the original allowing for the medium in
which he was working. The old saying "It takes considerable
skill to make it sound the same, but any fool can make it sound
different" is as true now at it was then.

The mastering engineer was left to his work, and responsible
only to the producer, in co-ordination with the recording engineer.

But, unfortunately these days, the master tape is so often regarded
as some kind of a "half-way" stage, instead of a finished product to
be cloned as accurately as possible.

I have often been disappointed with test CD's of projects
on which I have worked as an engineer, and always try to attend
the mastering session.

Several times a year I am ask to attend mastering sessions for recordings
with which I have not been involved, as a kind of referee:-((

Usually, each and every member of the band wants to be there too, and
at this late stage they start to discuss/request things that should have
been discussed/requested at the mix, or even during the
recording process.

The answer to your question may well be:
"Too many cooks........"

Iain

So many CDs now seem to be mixed to sound loud, which gives them an
advantage when being played in a noisy environment. So the 96dB dynamic
range of CDs gets compressed to far less and we lose a dimension to the
music. Norah Jones CD didn't do this and sounds wonderful. Really the
compression should be done by the radio/player and not at the source,
but it's rather too late now.

In article .com,
Skippy wrote:
So many CDs now seem to be mixed to sound loud, which gives them an
advantage when being played in a noisy environment. So the 96dB dynamic
range of CDs gets compressed to far less and we lose a dimension to the
music. Norah Jones CD didn't do this and sounds wonderful. Really the
compression should be done by the radio/player and not at the source,
but it's rather too late now.

Yup.

Forgetting the digital versus analogue - or valve versus SS - arguments
for the minute, I'd say the average person has access to better sound
reproduction at home via their radio or TV etc than was the case some time
ago. But both the broadcasters and recording companies now routinely
produce material with less dynamic range than then. And a lot of it sounds
positively disgusting.

--
*Laugh alone and the world thinks you're an idiot.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.