i was thinking about a recent thread where i got in an argument with Bart about Prince's music and analog formats. Bart kept insisting that there was no way Prince music could have been "recorded for vinyl" and that the differences between the vinyl and CD masters of the album are simply because of the recording technology of the time. true, CD mastering hadn't quite gelled at the time, but there are CDs from that period that are well mastered.

quite simply, prince's music WAS recorded for vinyl. period. no argument. let me explain. here's part of what bart said in the thread after I said Prince music was recorded and mastered specifically for vinyl and analog formats:

Of course, these are the words of someone who clearly knows nothing whatsoever about recording technology. Of course, as with every vinyl album, a seperate vinyl master was created for each release on vinyl, if only by his engineers, maybe Prince had nothing to do with it, I'll even concede that point for the sake of argument. Indeed, Prince did use cassettes for testing his mixes and masters-- he used type II or type IV studio quality cassette, which are extremely high quality formats, and in some instances, as analog formats, sound slightly superior to vinyl with lower jitter. Regardless, vinyl and high-bias cassette both share the same analog harmonic distortion and their sonic characteristics are nearly identical.

Prince used analog equipment to record the music at the time and he used analog equipment to test it, period, no argument. Even much later when he was enjoying the convenience of digital recording he still used tapes to test the mixes of the music, and these impart the same harmonic distortions on the signal as vinyl. To put it simply, Prince never intended his music to be heard digitally and, at the time, its obvious that especially the early CD masters were sloppily made with little attention put into them, as they were an afterthought for Prince and his engineers.

People are always talking about the poor mastering on Prince's music-- this just isn't true, the albums pop on vinyl and cassette and even reel to reel, if you can find that. On analog, they're very well mastered. But the CD masters are poor, indeed, as they were an afterthought to the music that was recorded, mixed, and tested completely on analog formats such as tape and vinyl, both of which have the same sonic characteristics. Beyond all this, though, is the simple fact that the harmonic distortion of these formats just sounds better with funk and soul music. it ties the mix together for these styles in a very unique way, and these genres aren't suited to the digital production styles that fit, for instance, techno or industrial music. Prince didn't get into digital production until the mid to late 1980s.

If you aren't listening to Prince music on analog formats such as vinyl or cassette, you're doing yourself a disservice. At least track down or create your own rips from the vinyl versions of the albums-- listening to the CD versions is almost insulting to the music.

That's my spiel.

The medium doesn't matter, the source and mastering does.

I'm not so sure, I haven't noticed a massive difference in sound for most of the 80's vinyl, Sign O The Times is the only one i'd say sounds bad on cd. Dirty Mind and Prince also sound a little better (to me) on vinyl, but not loads. Most of them I don't hear much difference. Maybe my sound system just isn't good enough but I think the 80's CD's are mostly fine sounding.

I'd be horrified if someone decided to officially remaster them to make them 'punchier' and started mucking with the dynamics...I like the flat transfer of the CD's

Having said that, the 12" version of Kiss sounds incredible on vinyl.

[Edited 5/26/15 1:12am]

My understanding is Vinyl is capable of a embedding a higher resolution file compared to CD, not so much it was made for Vinyl. CD gives certain limits to the overall output which is why Vinyl often sounds better.

No escaping the fact that alot of Prince's music has been badly mastered over the years regardless of the format.

[Edited 5/26/15 2:34am]

fnksoul said:

My understanding is Vinyl is capable of a embedding a higher resolution file compared to CD

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Nonsense.

KingSausage said:

Do the vinyl rips of his classic albums sound that much better than the CDs? I'd love to get onto vinyl, but my wife would tear my nuts off if I started buying records and a turntable etc.

If its for sound reason you would like to get into Vinyl, I'd probabaly say unless you have a sound system of high standard you probabaly wouldnt notice an overall difference,

I collect Vinyl more for the fact I love to have physical copies of music (Rather than CD's which i never really bothered with) and pulling them out from time to time instead of listening to digital copies.

scratch said:

quite simply, prince's music WAS recorded for vinyl. period. no argument. let me explain. here's part of what bart said in the thread after I said Prince music was recorded and mastered specifically for vinyl and analog formats:

But that's nonsense. Prince used tapes to sample his recordings while driving around, and in the studio I'm sure he used the high end speakers. They weren't printing vinyl acetates and using those to check the music. Sure, they didn't so much care for technical perfection, but I cannot even fathom how they'd "record for vinyl".

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Prince's 1980s CDs sound bad/mediocre because CD mastering technology and skills simply weren't that good, because it was a young technology.

Of course, these are the words of someone who clearly knows nothing whatsoever about recording technology. Of course, as with every vinyl album, a seperate vinyl master was created for each release on vinyl,

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I know that. I'm also still waiting for you to provide any evidence of the numerous vinyl acetates Prince had pressed up to "test" his music. Lemme help you: THEY DO NOT EXIST. Sure, back in the day he'd have brought a test pressing to a club to have the DJ play it, but that's because that was part of where technology was at back then.

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Prince never intended his music to be heard digitally

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Utter nonsense. How much of Prince's post-WBR output is available on vinyl? On tape?

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and, at the time, its obvious that especially the early CD masters were sloppily made with little attention put into them, as they were an afterthought for Prince and his engineers.

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The same can be said about numerous 1980s CD masters. It's no conspiracy, it's just laziness.

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But the CD masters are poor, indeed, as they were an afterthought to the music that was recorded, mixed, and tested completely on analog formats such as tape and vinyl, both of which have the same sonic characteristics.

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Because it was a niche format at the time. Only by the late 1980s CDs broke through.

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It's a damn shame so little attention was paid to CD masters back then, but that could and should have been solved in the 1990s via a remastering program. Instead Prince behaved like a spoiled child and we're stuck with mediocre CD masters.

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Plenty of artists have seen their back catalogues remastered and vastly improved, due to a combination of improved technology and additional care. Compare early Sly & the Family Stone CDs with current versions, or look at Bob Dylan's albums which got a significant upgrade when they were remastered for SACD.

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Your entire thesis is based on nothing, because you don't have a remaster to compare it to. Which is a goddamn shame, because right now we should have had several. Even the recent HDTRacks releases seem to be sourced from a digital master WBR had done back in the early 1990s for The Hits/The B-Sides -- that's twenty-five years ago! Are you seriously claiming technology hasn't improved since then? That there isn't some additional skills amongst those who remaster recordings since then?

fnksoul said:

My understanding is Vinyl is capable of a embedding a higher resolution file compared to CD, not so much it was made for Vinyl. CD gives certain limits to the overall output which is why Vinyl often sounds better.

No escaping the fact that alot of Prince's music has been badly mastered over the years regardless of the format.

[Edited 5/26/15 2:34am]

Vinyl is analog, CDs are digital. They're completely different, but if you've heard a "bad CD" then it's probably the mastering at any given stage of the process.

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About 5-6 years ago I bought all of the Genesis remasters on CD (normal CDs, not SACD - never jumped on that bandwagon) and they sound absolutely phenomenal. I had not been a Genesis fan before, but a coworker turned me on to them and I was hooked. I am also picking up the Paul McCartney/Wings reissues as they come out. These new CDs from these bands really sound like they could've been recorded yesterday.

BartVanHemelen said:

fnksoul said:

My understanding is Vinyl is capable of a embedding a higher resolution file compared to CD

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Nonsense.

Like I say was just my understanding,

One comment I have about the OP is the whole process isn't Analog, since the 70's Analog had been converted to Digital to be converted back to analog for the Vinyl process I believe. So it its unlikely that the majority of Prince's vinyl output is truely 'Analog'

[Edited 5/26/15 4:46am]

Vinyl and CD are both approximations of sound. Just digital formats are made of 1s and 0s, so you are literally listening to a sequence of 1s and 0s. No matter the quality, you are eventually left with a number, a signifier, rather than real matter.

LikeAHornyPonyWould69 said:

Vinyl and CD are both approximations of sound. Just digital formats are made of 1s and 0s, so you are literally listening to a sequence of 1s and 0s. No matter the quality, you are eventually left with a number, a signifier, rather than real matter.

A vinyl record is not digital, it's analog. It's made from cutting various grooves in the vinyl, which are translated to actual soundwaves. You're correct that it's just an approximation of sound, albeit a very good one.

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Now, if the source material was digital that was then converted to analog, your approximation argument holds more weight but the vinyl LP will never be digital.

Se7en said:

About 5-6 years ago I bought all of the Genesis remasters on CD (normal CDs, not SACD - never jumped on that bandwagon) and they sound absolutely phenomenal. I had not been a Genesis fan before, but a coworker turned me on to them and I was hooked.

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That's what happens when artists care. Oh, guess who'll be releasing remasters & expanded editions of his solo records via Warners? And yes, not all of them were WBR releases originally.

Se7en said:

LikeAHornyPonyWould69 said:

Vinyl and CD are both approximations of sound. Just digital formats are made of 1s and 0s, so you are literally listening to a sequence of 1s and 0s. No matter the quality, you are eventually left with a number, a signifier, rather than real matter.

A vinyl record is not digital, it's analog. It's made from cutting various grooves in the vinyl, which are translated to actual soundwaves. You're correct that it's just an approximation of sound, albeit a very good one.

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Now, if the source material was digital that was then converted to analog, your approximation argument holds more weight but the vinyl LP will never be digital.

I said digital formats are 1s and 0s. I meant "no matter the quality of digital recording" you are still left with 1s and 0s. I am very aware that analog is analog and digital is digital.

bart, i agree with you sometimes. but you're just wrong about this-- i never said prince used vinyl acetates to test his mixes.

he used high-bias, studio quality cassette, which are easier to produce and sound better than acetates, but impart the same analog harmonic distortion as vinyl-- their sonic characteristics are the same. so it doesn't matter if he tested with acetate or cassette-- this just demonstrates that he mixed, mastered and intended his music to be listened to on analog formats.

i don't need remasters. i've made vinyl rips of all the albums, and they sound amazing-- the mastering on vinyl for these albums, especially purple rain and dirty mind, sound very, very good. it isn't as well produced as some other records of the period, but the harmonics really, really pop on vinyl, and on a good digital transfer from vinyl.

i would much rather prince release high-quality analog rips from high-bias cassette or reel-to-reel based on the existing tapes onto CD than produce a new digital master, which will likely be poor and based on sub-par modern mastering CD techniques that are simply too loud. the CD masters don't just sound bad because of the technology of the time-- you can't tell me every CD master from 1984 sounds as poor as 'purple rain.' the CD versions were afterthoughts to Prince, and it shows in their current incarnation.

BartVanHemelen said:

scratch said:

quite simply, prince's music WAS recorded for vinyl. period. no argument. let me explain. here's part of what bart said in the thread after I said Prince music was recorded and mastered specifically for vinyl and analog formats:

.

The same can be said about numerous 1980s CD masters. It's no conspiracy, it's just laziness.

.

But the CD masters are poor, indeed, as they were an afterthought to the music that was recorded, mixed, and tested completely on analog formats such as tape and vinyl, both of which have the same sonic characteristics.

.

Because it was a niche format at the time. Only by the late 1980s CDs broke through.

.

It's a damn shame so little attention was paid to CD masters back then, but that could and should have been solved in the 1990s via a remastering program. Instead Prince behaved like a spoiled child and we're stuck with mediocre CD masters.

.

Plenty of artists have seen their back catalogues remastered and vastly improved, due to a combination of improved technology and additional care. Compare early Sly & the Family Stone CDs with current versions, or look at Bob Dylan's albums which got a significant upgrade when they were remastered for SACD.

.

Your entire thesis is based on nothing, because you don't have a remaster to compare it to. Which is a goddamn shame, because right now we should have had several. Even the recent HDTRacks releases seem to be sourced from a digital master WBR had done back in the early 1990s for The Hits/The B-Sides -- that's twenty-five years ago! Are you seriously claiming technology hasn't improved since then? That there isn't some additional skills amongst those who remaster recordings since then?

[Edited 5/27/15 11:12am]

scratch said:

bart, i agree with you sometimes. but you're just wrong about this-- i never said prince used vinyl acetates to test his mixes.

he used high-bias, studio quality cassette, which are easier to produce and sound better than acetates, but impart the same analog harmonic distortion as vinyl-- their sonic characteristics are the same. so it doesn't matter if he tested with acetate or cassette-- this just demonstrates that he mixed, mastered and intended his music to be listened to on analog formats.

i don't need remasters. i've made vinyl rips of all the albums, and they sound amazing-- the mastering on vinyl for these albums, especially purple rain and dirty mind, sound very, very good. it isn't as well produced as some other records of the period, but the harmonics really, really pop on vinyl, and on a good digital transfer from vinyl.

i would much rather prince release high-quality analog rips from high-bias cassette or reel-to-reel based on the existing tapes onto CD than produce a new digital master, which will likely be poor and based on sub-par modern mastering CD techniques that are simply too loud. the CD masters don't just sound bad because of the technology of the time-- you can't tell me every CD master from 1984 sounds as poor as 'purple rain.' the CD versions were afterthoughts to Prince, and it shows in their current incarnation.

BartVanHemelen said:

[Edited 5/27/15 11:12am]

Scratch, I think you may just be biased to the sound you remember, the sound you grew up with..... and there's nothing wrong with that. (Even though your assertion that high-bias cassettes and vinyl have the same harmonic distortion is completely false. "Analog" itself doesn't produce harmonic distortion. Certain recording/ playback methods do. ) However, to say modern mastering techniques are "sub-par" is kinda ridiculous. Sure, most commercially released music at this time is highly compressed, but that's a choice. One listen to numerous artists that actually care about digital recording techniques will automatically show you that digital recording is actually at its pinnacle.

KingSausage said:

Do the vinyl rips of his classic albums sound that much better than the CDs? I'd love to get onto vinyl, but my wife would tear my nuts off if I started buying records and a turntable etc.

Yes - as long as you don't mind the occasional click or pop from the vinyl.

Genesia said:

analog adds noise (tape his, LP pops), digital prevents noise. digital can even perfectly add these artifcacts if you want. If the same mix of the same song sounds better in analog vs digital, it can only be because the digital version needs higher resolution or that lossey compression has degraded the digital version.

I think it's fair to say that the albums recorded up to about 1985 were intended to be heard on vinyl, and the production choices are consistent with that intent.

Vinyl is not wide open space or the most accurate possible representation of what is on the master tape. There are limits on the frequencies that can be reproduced. HOWEVER that change to the original signal is not completely bad for the sound. It has a tendency to smooth out and compress the extreme highs and lows on the source tape.

If you grew up in the vinyl era, you are used to hearing sound reproduced in a certain way. There's a floor and a ceiling on the room - that's the limits of the high and low end. Any super deep low end on the master tape will get chopped off at the floor - and some people realized, if you do that deliberately, it makes a nice, creamy low end sound on the LP. So they might load up the tape with lots of low end, expecting some would get lopped off. Or they might mix the bass extra loud, knowing that the natural midrange compression of the vinyl mastering would end up reducing it to normal level, but the listener would still "feel" that there was a lot of bass coming at them.

It's like chemistry I guess - you try to predict the effects of the reaction, and alter the inputs so you get the reaction you want.

Then in the 80s, people took those same master tapes and made CDs of them, which do, more accurately, present exactly what is on the source tape. And suddenly all those little corrections people made for records to sound good, now sound like big problems.

The answer, is for a diligent and talented mastering engineer to fix those EQ problems so you still get the sound the artist had in mind originally. Hopefully they are comparing their results to the original albums to make sure they sound pretty close to the LP sound.

Prince's entire catalog pre 1998 or so ALL needs remastering, IMO.

KlyphIsBackAgain said:

scratch said:

bart, i agree with you sometimes. but you're just wrong about this-- i never said prince used vinyl acetates to test his mixes.

he used high-bias, studio quality cassette, which are easier to produce and sound better than acetates, but impart the same analog harmonic distortion as vinyl-- their sonic characteristics are the same. so it doesn't matter if he tested with acetate or cassette-- this just demonstrates that he mixed, mastered and intended his music to be listened to on analog formats.

i don't need remasters. i've made vinyl rips of all the albums, and they sound amazing-- the mastering on vinyl for these albums, especially purple rain and dirty mind, sound very, very good. it isn't as well produced as some other records of the period, but the harmonics really, really pop on vinyl, and on a good digital transfer from vinyl.

i would much rather prince release high-quality analog rips from high-bias cassette or reel-to-reel based on the existing tapes onto CD than produce a new digital master, which will likely be poor and based on sub-par modern mastering CD techniques that are simply too loud. the CD masters don't just sound bad because of the technology of the time-- you can't tell me every CD master from 1984 sounds as poor as 'purple rain.' the CD versions were afterthoughts to Prince, and it shows in their current incarnation.

[Edited 5/27/15 11:12am]

Scratch, I think you may just be biased to the sound you remember, the sound you grew up with..... and there's nothing wrong with that. (Even though your assertion that high-bias cassettes and vinyl have the same harmonic distortion is completely false. "Analog" itself doesn't produce harmonic distortion. Certain recording/ playback methods do. ) However, to say modern mastering techniques are "sub-par" is kinda ridiculous. Sure, most commercially released music at this time is highly compressed, but that's a choice. One listen to numerous artists that actually care about digital recording techniques will automatically show you that digital recording is actually at its pinnacle.

I agree with Klyph on this. There are some bad choices being made by certain artists who want to win the loudness war, which is too bad. It's made suspicious of buying remasters - I usually try to check them out first. But they can be done well, and some people are paying attention to dynamic range again. Maybe it's a reason to support things like HDTracks or Pono... if there's a demand for audiophile releases, and a discerning audience that will pay for gold and won't pay for shite, there will be better sounding albums.