A Question About Vinyl

Wyvern998

This is a question regarding the source recordings for modern vinyl records.

Most modern music is dynamically compressed to hell and mixed down to 16bit/44KHz finals. This is what is recorded on a CD that you buy at the store. My question is, is this the same mix that is used on a vinyl record?
A vinyl copy of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon printed in 1978 wouldn't have the compression of a CD printed today. But, if I were to, say, get a vinyl copy of Radiohead's OK Computer would I be getting the same mix that is used on the CD?

What I'm asking is, basically, is the final production recording of a modern album different on vinyl record compared to a CD?

Alpine

Alan Cross wrote:

Over the last twenty years, the trend has been to make that default force greater and greater and greater. Cool, huh? Nothing like playing your music really, really loud, right.

Well, not really. The only way you can increase the default volume on a cd is to compress the music. Using special electronics, the music is squeezed tighter together.

The effect is that there’s less difference between the naturally quiet bits and the naturally loud bits. Everything is cranked up as high as things will allow, and everything sounds louder.

If you want to be technical about it, cds can be up to 20 decibels louder than 5 or 10 or 15 years ago. Cool, right? Again, no. This means we don’t hear the music exactly as it was recorded.

The music can be loud, but it also can be distorted. The original textures of the song disappear. Distortion, even the most subtle kind, can be fatiguing and off-putting.

But the people who order this believe that the louder the cd, the more it will stand out and the more successful it will be. However, there’s no shred of proof that this is actually the case. Yet record labels continue to do it.

The net result can be that a cd released in 1987 (before the emphasis on loudness set in) can actually sound better and fuller and richer than a cd that was released in 2007. Try it sometime with a decent stereo. You’ll see what I mean.

All this also explains why when you rip music to your digital music player; songs come out of the ear buds at different volumes even though you never touch the volume control. The only way to fix that is to use the “volume levelling” or “normalizing” controls in the software.

Edit: In retrospect, this wasn't exactly what you were asking for. I would infer from this though that a vinyl record recorded pre-early 80's would be much less compressed than something newer.

kitch

As far as I know, they have to be separate mixes.

Pheezer

Wyvern998 wrote: »

This is a question regarding the source recordings for modern vinyl records.

Most modern music is dynamically compressed to hell and mixed down to 16bit/44KHz finals. This is what is recorded on a CD that you buy at the store. My question is, is this the same mix that is used on a vinyl record?
A vinyl copy of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon printed in 1978 wouldn't have the compression of a CD printed today. But, if I were to, say, get a vinyl copy of Radiohead's OK Computer would I be getting the same mix that is used on the CD?

What I'm asking is, basically, is the final production recording of a modern album different on vinyl record compared to a CD?

Yes, completely different. Most often they're not even mastered by the same people and sometimes not even in the same place.

Pheezer

Alpine wrote: »

Edit: In retrospect, this wasn't exactly what you were asking for. I would infer from this though that a vinyl record recorded pre-early 80's would be much less compressed than something newer.

No, not necessarily at all. The correct conclusion is that CDs are more compressed than old vinyl records were. This does not necessarily imply that vinyl recording techniques have changed.

Mashalot

Also, a recording done in a reasonably professional studio won't be mixed to 16bit 44.1.

Generally that conversion 'll be done by a mastering engineer who's given either much higher quality files or, more rarely these days, tape.

With a lot of independent stuff there's really no way of knowing how something was mixed / mastered without asking the people who did it, with major label stuff... you should probably assume they're going back to the higher quality mixes and remastering from them specifically for vinyl. There's also probably still a fair degree of compression, probably not as bad as the CD though. Mastering preserving good dynamic mixing has been a casualty of the Walkman / Discman / Ipod era. Everything needs to seem upfront listening through those crappy earbuds surrounded by street noise, etc. or consumers get their panties in a bunch. Retarded.

edit: going back to the 1st post, the mix will most likely be the same the mastering most likely won't. Once a mix is printed it's rarely gone back to, except as source fodder for remixes, radio edits, etc.