I like your question! I also bought a vinyl copy of The Truth for posterity as I love it that much, but I haven't played it because I don't own a turntable--heh.

>

I also wonder about the claim that vinyl generally sounds better than digital recordings. I mean, even with any weaknesses inherent in the 1s and 0s encoding versus vibrations engraved in the record groove, wouldn't a little tweaking of equalization smooth out the sound difference to one's ears?

My opinion is that they both feature a lot of really bad songs. The title track is the worst song he's written next to Arms of Orion.

Has anyone ever actually confirmed if the vinyl pressing was specifically mastered for vinyl?

or is it simply a rip of the CD master?

Germanegro said:

I like your question! I also bought a vinyl copy of The Truth for posterity as I love it that much, but I haven't played it because I don't own a turntable--heh.

>

I also wonder about the claim that vinyl generally sounds better than digital recordings. I mean, even with any weaknesses inherent in the 1s and 0s encoding versus vibrations engraved in the record groove, wouldn't a little tweaking of equalization smooth out the sound difference to one's ears?

Do these streaming sites even EQ?

The main reason I avoid streaming like the plague is assumedly EQ went the way of the dodo to modern digital replay methods... but is this a correct assumption? Dynamic EQ, not "pop preset" or whatever...

Anyway, the "vinyl is better than digital" argument is usually relating to instances where the vinyl is cut from analog masters and the digital re-release is from multi-generation or aged dubs or copies. You start dealing in modern age represses and the issue often becomes the opposite where the vinyl represses are using digital masters or in cases more often than not using compressed mp3 masters (!). Third Man Records for instance is infamous in certain circles for constantly pressing 192kbps mp3s to vinyl... No EQ will fix a difference in original source material.

[Edited 2/20/23 1:37am]

These certainly are great points to consider--what material source is being used for a vinyl pressing. Your quality of vinyl isn't guaranteed by the medium alone, for sure. I hope that this Sony Legacy edition has an original--tape or digital-- master source.

>

As far as streaming is concerned, I haven't made an aural examination of the service. I'm against the principle of its business model and avoid it like the plague by that factor alone.

It's just wild to me how some people avoid streaming. The convience of it alone makes it worth my time. Nevermind not having to store at my house big old vinyl records and even CD's or cassettes. I moved on from Vinyl in the 80's and have no desire to return to it. I have friends who buy and buy vinyl and happily listen to them on their turntables. Good for them but I'm a streaming man. There maybe some loss of quality with streaming but not enough to make me return to physical media.

I also like the conveniece of having my own physical and digital libraries to avoid the "convenience" of needing to tap into an internet source to hear my desired music. If you're 24/7/365 internet-connected, I can see yr point, tho'.

>

I do give some limited streaming its props, though, as a great discovery source for new sounds. That's its highest consumer function, IMO.

lonestar9 said:

It's just wild to me how some people avoid streaming. The convience of it alone makes it worth my time. Nevermind not having to store at my house big old vinyl records and even CD's or cassettes. I moved on from Vinyl in the 80's and have no desire to return to it. I have friends who buy and buy vinyl and happily listen to them on their turntables. Good for them but I'm a streaming man. There maybe some loss of quality with streaming but not enough to make me return to physical media.

You're skipping a couple generations of media formats there. It didn't go from record crates to streaming. It went records, then cassettes, then CDs, then Napster, then people starting to rip their own collections in lossless formats, then streaming.

I ripped all my CDs to FLAC back in like 2007 or something, and have only dealt in FLAC or V0 VBR mp3 conversions from said FLACs since then.

Personally for me this method is most convenient. Two-to-three clicks and I get what I'm looking for, arranged and sorted how I want them arranged and sorted.

For instance I keep my Prince MP3 folder easily accessible, so if I need to reference a track it's almost instant, no searching, no whining about what is or isn't available on streaming, it's just there. Similarly, although I'm well aware 99.9999% of Prince fans only care about tracks where he was the lead singer R&B quintessential studmuffin posterboy spread-eagle on the LP cover, I care about every song Prince ever wrote. The literally hundreds of songs he "gave away" to proteges or other artists are rarely streaming, and I would find absolutely nothing convenient about having to bounce around YouTube trying to find a cassette-sounding copy of say The Family album, which I just attempted to search on Spotify and it clearly has no idea wtf I'm talking about. The Mayte album isn't even on YouTube.

My way everything is arranged chronologically, so if I want to put on "Screams of Passion" followed by "Cybersingle" then The Undertaker I can do so almost instantly. Not even going to try to hammer that out on Spotify, because it's a completely inconvenient resource that does nothing for what I want to accomplish.

Likewise, maybe it's the obscuro albums I gravitate toward, but literally every other time I've attempted streaming for whatever reason is either mislabeled or has digital track skips in the files like when you used to download 128kbps mp3s from Kazaa in 2003. This tells me a lot of these websites are using transcoded files probably literally downloaded from Kazaa in 2003, because they can't find the masters or are lazy bastards or a little of both.

Esham's Bruce Wayne: Gothom City 1987 literally has the wrong track names on every streaming site, like these douchebags couldn't even check their work. Even now, I'd rather track down the original CD and rip it myself, because then at least I'm 100% sure the album is a quality digital conversion with accurate tracklisting.


And you still haven't told me if they got a dynamic EQ at any of these streaming sites. Reason #1,275 I wouldn't use that shit. Prince fans sit around clamoring for remasters, "these CDs are in desperate need of a remastering," uh no, his 80s CDs are great, beautiful tape transfers, you just need to fix the EQ a bit so they aren't so trebely. They're flat transfers from the vinyl masters, which are mastered that way because vinyl playback naturally adds more low-range and decreases treble, so fix the EQ a bit and those things are still better than the SDE remasters.

Plus all the captain obvious stuff not streaming, just throw a dart anywhere on the web. I'm a moderate Smashing Pumpkins fan, at least of their work from 1995-2000ish, and neither James Iha's solo album or Billy Corgan's solo album are streaming anywhere. This is unacceptable, and merely one example of many.

Literally nothing convenient about streaming with all these factors considered, for me anyway.

[Edited 2/21/23 18:16pm]

[Edited 2/21/23 18:16pm]

WhisperingDandelions said:

lonestar9 said:

It's just wild to me how some people avoid streaming. The convience of it alone makes it worth my time. Nevermind not having to store at my house big old vinyl records and even CD's or cassettes. I moved on from Vinyl in the 80's and have no desire to return to it. I have friends who buy and buy vinyl and happily listen to them on their turntables. Good for them but I'm a streaming man. There maybe some loss of quality with streaming but not enough to make me return to physical media.

You're skipping a couple generations of media formats there. It didn't go from record crates to streaming. It went records, then cassettes, then CDs, then Napster, then people starting to rip their own collections in lossless formats, then streaming.

I ripped all my CDs to FLAC back in like 2007 or something, and have only dealt in FLAC or V0 VBR mp3 conversions from said FLACs since then.

Personally for me this method is most convenient. Two-to-three clicks and I get what I'm looking for, arranged and sorted how I want them arranged and sorted.

For instance I keep my Prince MP3 folder easily accessible, so if I need to reference a track it's almost instant, no searching, no whining about what is or isn't available on streaming, it's just there. Similarly, although I'm well aware 99.9999% of Prince fans only care about tracks where he was the lead singer R&B quintessential studmuffin posterboy spread-eagle on the LP cover, I care about every song Prince ever wrote. The literally hundreds of songs he "gave away" to proteges or other artists are rarely streaming, and I would find absolutely nothing convenient about having to bounce around YouTube trying to find a cassette-sounding copy of say The Family album, which I just attempted to search on Spotify and it clearly has no idea wtf I'm talking about. The Mayte album isn't even on YouTube.

My way everything is arranged chronologically, so if I want to put on "Screams of Passion" followed by "Cybersingle" then The Undertaker I can do so almost instantly. Not even going to try to hammer that out on Spotify, because it's a completely inconvenient resource that does nothing for what I want to accomplish.

Likewise, maybe it's the obscuro albums I gravitate toward, but literally every other time I've attempted streaming for whatever reason is either mislabeled or has digital track skips in the files like when you used to download 128kbps mp3s from Kazaa in 2003. This tells me a lot of these websites are using transcoded files probably literally downloaded from Kazaa in 2003, because they can't find the masters or are lazy bastards or a little of both.

Esham's Bruce Wayne: Gothom City 1987 literally has the wrong track names on every streaming site, like these douchebags couldn't even check their work. Even now, I'd rather track down the original CD and rip it myself, because then at least I'm 100% sure the album is a quality digital conversion with accurate tracklisting.


And you still haven't told me if they got a dynamic EQ at any of these streaming sites. Reason #1,275 I wouldn't use that shit. Prince fans sit around clamoring for remasters, "these CDs are in desperate need of a remastering," uh no, his 80s CDs are great, beautiful tape transfers, you just need to fix the EQ a bit so they aren't so trebely. They're flat transfers from the vinyl masters, which are mastered that way because vinyl playback naturally adds more low-range and decreases treble, so fix the EQ a bit and those things are still better than the SDE remasters.

Plus all the captain obvious stuff not streaming, just throw a dart anywhere on the web. I'm a moderate Smashing Pumpkins fan, at least of their work from 1995-2000ish, and neither James Iha's solo album or Billy Corgan's solo album are streaming anywhere. This is unacceptable, and merely one example of many.

Literally nothing convenient about streaming with all these factors considered, for me anyway.

[Edited 2/21/23 18:16pm]

[Edited 2/21/23 18:16pm]

I don't think fixing the EQ a bit is going to help the original SOTT CDs. That hiss when you have to max out the volume to be able to hear the music properly isn't going anywhere.

WhisperingDandelions said:

Third Man Records for instance is infamous in certain circles for constantly pressing 192kbps mp3s to vinyl... No EQ will fix a difference in original source material.

[Edited 2/20/23 1:37am]

Do you have a source for that?

cant imagine third man doing that. that would totally ruin their brand.

Raevene said:

shame he didnt get behind the truth album more.

i think it would have been a good career curve that he needed at that time in his career.

I was hoping someone would have answered the question - how does the vinyl sound? I always found the CD to be SUPER LOUD and harsh in some places. I love the title cut but he really boosted the volume on his playing and, is it me or, was he really rough on the strings?

Anyway, I would love to hear this remixed...yes...remixed not just remastered. I wish that damn clock ticking was much lower in the mix...I wish someone could somehow make this sound less brutish at times. I love a lot of it...3rd Eye is a total gem which I only discovered long after his passed. I'd of course heard it in 1998 but didn't totally get it until much later.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

shame he didnt get behind the truth album more.

i think it would have been a good career curve that he needed at that time in his career.

I think the story back then was that MTV was keeping asking him to do a MTV unplugged session (he alsmost did in 91-92 for Diamonds and Pearls) but scheduling was in the way so he did The Truth instead.
I really love the album and I think if he promoted it and released it as a separate album it would have more impact and critical reception.

JorisE73 said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

shame he didnt get behind the truth album more.

i think it would have been a good career curve that he needed at that time in his career.

I think the story back then was that MTV was keeping asking him to do a MTV unplugged session (he alsmost did in 91-92 for Diamonds and Pearls) but scheduling was in the way so he did The Truth instead.
I really love the album and I think if he promoted it and released it as a separate album it would have more impact and critical reception.

I heard, he ultimately would not do it b/c 1. he could not own it 2. they wouldn't come to Paisley...

JoeyCococo said:

I was hoping someone would have answered the question - how does the vinyl sound? I always found the CD to be SUPER LOUD and harsh in some places. I love the title cut but he really boosted the volume on his playing and, is it me or, was he really rough on the strings?

Anyway, I would love to hear this remixed...yes...remixed not just remastered. I wish that damn clock ticking was much lower in the mix...I wish someone could somehow make this sound less brutish at times. I love a lot of it...3rd Eye is a total gem which I only discovered long after his passed. I'd of course heard it in 1998 but didn't totally get it until much later.

3rd Eye immediately grabbed me and become one of my all time favorites.

Originally I was pretty indifferent to Don't Play Me, but now it's my second favorite song on the album.

JoeyCococo said:

I was hoping someone would have answered the question - how does the vinyl sound? I always found the CD to be SUPER LOUD and harsh in some places. I love the title cut but he really boosted the volume on his playing and, is it me or, was he really rough on the strings?

Anyway, I would love to hear this remixed...yes...remixed not just remastered. I wish that damn clock ticking was much lower in the mix...I wish someone could somehow make this sound less brutish at times. I love a lot of it...3rd Eye is a total gem which I only discovered long after his passed. I'd of course heard it in 1998 but didn't totally get it until much later.

I've never actually seen this discussed before and never verbalised it myself - there is definitely a harshness to the sound on some of those songs.

Germanegro said:

As to the above, regarding the strings sound, perhaps miking could have cotributed to this natural "roughness" in the mix. That adds 2 the intimacy IMO. As far as the sound-effect projection like the fade-up portions of the ticking clock, those are artistic choices and I often find it funny to read about audiophiles' sensitive remarks about those, lol. > One of these days I'm going to play this record and hear for myself how it goes on the vinyl!

No one with normal hearing can tell me, that ticking clock is not too loud...it's crazy.

Anyway, I don't want anyone to remix his stuff....normally. However, there are times where I think he could have used or listened to the engineer (more).

rockford said:

My opinion is that they both feature a lot of really bad songs. The title track is the worst song he's written next to Arms of Orion.

My favorite album! Same for Arms Of Orion. I like it.

So there ya go.

To stay on topic :

First and foremost is the importance of your sound system.

[Edited 3/3/23 22:44pm]