HDTracks Recommendations

[Mozart]

Highly recommend The Ray Brown Trio: "Live At The Loa - Summer Wind" for Jazz fans..

[linnrd]

(2012-01-11 23:46)Mozart Wrote:  Highly recommend The Ray Brown Trio: "Live At The Loa - Summer Wind" for Jazz fans..

+1. That's the album that had my older amps shut down when playing "It Don't Mean A Thing" at "live listening levels". It has a fond place in my memories because it was what directly led me to the system I currently
am living with.

[benhugh]

I would recommend
Tutu - Miles Davis
Kamakiriad - Donald Fagen

I do have one related query; I saw that The Nightfly (Donald Fagen) is available as a 24 bit, 44.1KHz download. I am old enough to remember the excitement of its original vinyl release where much was made of the digital recording (rather brittle sounding on vinyl). The recording was on a 3M machine that I believe was 16 bit, 50KHz. So the question is, what will the hi-res offer me over my rip of the CD? I can't see how it can, but would be delighted to be wrong (the piano on Ruby Baby is one of my favourite pieces of music).

Thanks

[Mozart]

(2012-01-12 10:44)benhugh Wrote:  I would recommend
Tutu - Miles Davis
Kamakiriad - Donald Fagen

I do have one related query; I saw that The Nightfly (Donald Fagen) is available as a 24 bit, 44.1KHz download. I am old enough to remember the excitement of its original vinyl release where much was made of the digital recording (rather brittle sounding on vinyl). The recording was on a 3M machine that I believe was 16 bit, 50KHz. So the question is, what will the hi-res offer me over my rip of the CD? I can't see how it can, but would be delighted to be wrong (the piano on Ruby Baby is one of my favourite pieces of music).

Thanks

I have the DVD Audio which is 24/48 resolution. I believe that is what the Studio Master was recorded at though I do remember someone claiming (on this forum I think) that the Studio Master was only recorded at 16/44.1.

Anyway the DVD Audio surround is absolutely superb. One of my favourite DVDA's. The stereo is excellent as well although I much prefer the surround mix as it has an amazing soundstage, lovely solid bass and clean clear highs. I also have it on the recently released SACD which is just as good. I highly recommend these.
As for the HDTracks download I don't know but I can only assume it is same stereo mix as the DVDA.

One thing to note is the HDTracks have a number of hi-res recordings with the wrong resolution information. E.G. Bjork is actually 24/96 and not 24/44.1 as stated on the web site.

[Briain]

Hi

That's an interesting fact and thus also a very good question! Assuming it was recorded as a 16 bit multi-track file, then the obvious answer would be none, however, if it has also been remastered, that would have been done on a higher resolution system, and as a part of that remastering process, the word length would also have been increased to better capture the additional level information generated from any changes.

To think of this in one way, if you assume they only had a 16 bit file to start with, then they decided to changed the levels of an instrument (or add more reverb to something, etc, etc) as part of the remastering process, the more 'modern' studio equipment would increase the word length to correctly represent the resultant signal (it will probably extend to 48 bits inside the kit) and it would eventually be dithered back down to 24 bits to make the final new file (or even to 16 bits to make a 'remastered' CD). So assuming that is what they've done, you're not gaining anything over the original, but you are not loosing anything via the remastering process.

It's an interesting thought as there are actually two issues to ponder. If you assume (for the sake of argument) the remastering changes have make it 'sound' better, then there are now new 'levels' of information that have been created from that process, and that 'new' information is actually at 24 bit resolution. That latter argument could be used to claim that you're not only not loosing anything from the remastering process, but that actually genuinely gaining higher resolution on the changes that they've made; it could be considered as new high resolution information calculated from changes to the previous lower resolution information. It really is a totally bizarre thought when you ponder it in that way.

Digital is best grasped when you think of a rough analogy with money, where value represents the volume level of the instrument: If you have two piles of money, one of £1.50 and the other of £1.51, then halve both of them (halve their 'levels'), you'd then get one of £0.75 and another of £0.755. The new half penny represents your need to increase the monetary resolution, but As there are no half pennies, you would have to round it off to £0.75 (or £0.76) before you could pay someone. This missing 0.5p represents the loss of information you'd get by not increasing the word length (so that analogy repents not loosing anything from the original).

Looking at it slightly differently, the more interesting thing is that by increasing the word length, you can now have a pile of money at £0.750 (you could think of that as an unchanged flute note; it was £0.75 before remastering and is now £0.750 after the remaster) and another pile of money that was £0.75 before the remaster, but is now £0.755 after it (think of that as a guitar note with extra reverb now added to it), and when you think of it in that way, you have now added additional information and are able to represent it by having the higher resolution money units (by having 24 bits) as shown below:

Before:
Bass track = 1.50
Flute track = 0.75
Guitar track = 0.75

After:
Bass track = 1.500
Flute track = 0.750
Guitar track = 0.755

I use the example of adding some reverb to a guitar, but the same issue occurs by adding some gain to a symbol, or by tilting the frequency response to make a voice more crisp; all these things would generate additional remastering information and thus that additional information could now be 'saved' as 24 bit files.

It's a fun thing to bend your head round

Of course, the key thing is to forget about all the above, and as a totally unrelated question, ask yourself whether original music needed remastered in the first place. That's a pretty key question and I guess you'd only find that out be hearing it and seeing if it's better or not.

Bri

[benhugh]

(2012-01-12 10:44)benhugh Wrote:  I do have one related query; I saw that The Nightfly (Donald Fagen) is available as a 24 bit, 44.1KHz download. I am old enough to remember the excitement of its original vinyl release where much was made of the digital recording (rather brittle sounding on vinyl). The recording was on a 3M machine that I believe was 16 bit, 50KHz. So the question is, what will the hi-res offer me over my rip of the CD? I can't see how it can, but would be delighted to be wrong (the piano on Ruby Baby is one of my favourite pieces of music).

Thanks

Found this which murks up the water nicely. So a Studer analogue recorder was beaten by a 16 bit 3M digital machine which separated 4 of the bits from the other 12. The mind boggles...

From rogernichols.com

3M Digital Mastering System
The Ry Cooder Bop Till You Drop album was the first digitally recorded pop album. It was recorded on the 3M 32-track digital recorder at Amigo studios in North Hollywood California. We booked the Village Recorder in 1981 to cut tracks for Nightfly and decided to try the 3M digital machine. We ran a Studer A-80 24-track analog machine in parallel with the 3M for the test. After the band laid down a take we performed an a-b-c listening test. The analog and digital machines were played back in sync while the band played along live. We could compare the analog machine, the digital machine, and the live band. The closest sound to the live band was the 3M digital machine. We re-aligned the Studer and gave it one more chance. The 3M was the clear winner. We rolled the Studer out into the street, (just kidding) and did the rest of the recording on the 3M 32-track machine. When it came time to mix, we mixed to the 3M 4-track machine.


The 3M 32-track used 1” digital tape and the 4-track used 1/2” digital tape. They both ran at 45 ips. I guess 3M wanted to sell you lots of tape. The digital audio was recorded at 50kHz 16bits. There were no 16bit converters in 1981, so the 3M system used a 12 bit Burr-Brown converter and 4bits of an 8bit converter as gain-ranging to produce the 16bit results. The “brick wall” analog filters on the 3M machine hand-wound coils and took up most of a circuit board. They sounded good.
The biggest drawback to the 3M system was the minimal error correction. After a couple of months working on the same piece of tape, the error count started to rise above the correctable level. There were adjustments on the front of the machine to fine tune the decoding of the data recorded on tape. You could adjust each track for the least amount of correctable errors and then transfer the tape digitally to another 3M machine. You now had a clean error-free tape to work on for a couple of months.

[Briain]

I wonder if they were missing the bits that you have described in the last 5 words of your signature?