Here at PTA, we see plenty of actually cool audio gear equipment, however we actually haven’t accomplished an excessive amount of “branded merch” exterior of some (fairly superior) T-shirts. So when our mates Fern/Roby recommended one thing […]
Tag Archives: LP
Here at PTA, we see a whole lot of actually cool audio gear equipment, however we actually haven’t achieved an excessive amount of “branded merch” outdoors of some (fairly superior) T-shirts. So when our mates Fern/Roby prompt one thing […]
Michael Fremer, accompanied by Lee Scoggins, dropped into world renown Randy’s Records in Salt Lake City, Utah. Definitely not his first go to, and certainly not his final, Fremer peruses Randy’s collections while sharing a couple of ideas, records, and insider tales. Enjoy!
The put up Crate Diggin’ w/ Michael Fremer at Randy’s Records appeared first on The Absolute Sound.
Clearaudio Charisma V2 Cartridge
$2000
Promoted as founder Peter Suchy’s “moving-magnet masterpiece,” the Charisma V2 confirms in the listening that this claim is no exaggeration. With a mass-loaded, low-resonance, ebony-wood body, Charisma employs top-notch features like the same boron cantilever and double-polished Gyger S stylus found in the legendary Goldfinger Statement mc. But it’s the raw musicality of Charisma that had me spinning LPs like a demented DJ. Naturalistic and detailed, Charisma offers up classic midrange bloom and image stability, plus a full palette of tonal colors, dynamic electricity, and top-end sweetness. As with its vaunted moving-coil brethren, it resolves even finer gradations of light and air in the upper octaves, all the while maintaining a neutral balance. There are no tonal dead spots, and tracking is unshakably excellent. Costly moving coils tend to grab all the headlines in high-end circles, but their low output generally requires pricey step-up devices, which means your wallet takes an additional hit. However, with its real-world output of 3.6mV, a Charisma means you’re likely good-to-go with an existing phonostage. Charisma…either you’ve got it or you don’t. This cartridge has got it.
The post 2022 Golden Ear: Clearaudio Charisma V2 Cartridge appeared first on The Absolute Sound.
Inspired by the movies Ryan Davis grew up watching with soundtracks by James Horner, Thomas Newman, and Jóhann Jóhannsson, ‘Through The Mirror Glass’ is Ryan’s first full-length foray into cinematic electronic music.
The album’s second single, ‘Waialeale’, takes inspiration and samples from an island in Hawaii. Its micro-climate means clouds get stuck between the volcanoes and mountains, creating the most humid place on earth. As the track opens, you can hear the island breathing, and the tinkering piano and spaced-out synths are an extension of the magic the island holds.
Ryan Davis teamed up with Anjunadeep for the first time in 2016 with a series of EPs showcasing the melodic, down-tempo side of his artistry. He’d long wanted to create a full-length project for Anjuna, so when Above & Beyond launched Reflections in 2022, Davis knew he’d found the perfect home for his next album. “With electronic music, I have access to a never-ending palette of sounds,” Davis says. “This album has been inside me for ages, but computers just weren’t good enough. I didn’t know how to arrange notes to create an orchestra or to record a violin, but now Spitfire Audio has built these incredible samples. I have BBC One’s orchestra at my fingertips.”
Ultimately, Ryan Davis hopes ‘Through The Mirror Glass’ will act as a sonic space to reflect and hold fragile memories.
“The mirror glass is a way to look at yourself. And simultaneously look behind you, at what’s brought you to this point.” – Ryan Davis
‘Through The Mirror Glass’ is out on the 5th of December on Reflections. You can Pre-order/Buy the album HERE.
The post Ryan Davis shares the second single from his upcoming twelve-track album, ‘Through The Mirror Glass’ appeared first on Decoded Magazine.
A fresh scandal has cropped up in the contentious little world of high-end audio—and it’s cropped up in a place you wouldn’t expect. Turns out that Mobile Fidelity, the world-famous company that has long claimed to source its celebrated LP reissues from verified “original masters,” has actually been using digital copies of those original mastertapes rather than the tapes themselves (or first-gen copies) to master its One-Step LPs. Where record lovers thought they were buying all-analog vinyl (“AAA,” to use the old SPARS code), they were actually being sold digitally duplicated and mastered recordings (“ADA”)—and at premium prices. To make matters worse, it appears the digital wool wasn’t just pulled over the eyes of One-Step buyers; MoFi has been doing this very same thing (or something like it) on many of its “Original Master” releases for better than a decade.
I don’t know—and won’t know until MoFi comes out with the complete source list it has promised—exactly which of its reissues were digitally copied and mastered prior to the One-Steps, but I do know, per our Michael Fremer, that anything sourced from Sony/Columbia (e.g., Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Santana, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk—to name a few) was likely digitally processed, since Sony was unwilling to send its original mastertapes to MoFi’s Sebastopol, CA, facility for production.
This is an embarrassing mess, and MoFi needs to fix it.
Of course, calling its products “Original Master Recordings” isn’t a fib. The company was working from verified original analog mastertapes (or at least the closest things its engineers could find to the original masters); it was just copying them (or many of them) to hi-res digital files—and didn’t say so. Until the company recently changed its wording online and in its archives, I couldn’t find anything in MoFi’s literature, dating back to before the turn of the millennium, that suggests a “digital step” in the mastering process. Indeed, Mobile Fidelity’s publicity has, I think, deliberately left the impression that everything is accomplished in the analog domain. Any way you look at it, this was not full disclosure.
However, there is an important proviso to the MoFi story—at least there is for listeners like me. To wit, I have liked and continue to like many recordings pressed to vinyl that were not just mastered but also recorded digitally. (Take Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, or Diana Krall’s Turn Up the Quiet, or Hans Theessink’s Jedermann Remixed—The Soundtrack, among numerous examples.) Though I’ve tended to prefer all-analog recordings, I’ve never been an “AAA” purist. If a record sounds great—and a whole bunch of audiophile LPs that were recorded, mixed, and mastered digitally do—I couldn’t care less about its provenance. There is a magic about vinyl playback that can bring even the most primitive digital (or analog) recording quite a bit closer to the sound and pleasure of the real thing.
So…the only bone I have to pick with MoFi isn’t about the way it masters its LPs. It’s about the less than forthright way it has advertised and promoted them. If MoFi is as convinced of the sonic superiority of digital duplication and mastering as Jim Davis claims it is (once again, see pp. 20 and 22), why conceal the fact?
My bottom line is this: After MoFi spent decades keeping the LP alive and kicking—releasing many, many sonic triumphs over that span (including several of the One-Steps)—it would be worse than ungrateful of audiophiles not to show some charity here. If the company continues to come clean about what it’s done (and on July 27, 2022, Davis took a big first step in that direction [see p. 18], publicly apologizing for MoFi’s “vagueness” about its mastering chain, pledging future transparency about the provenance of its products, and promising to “backfill source information on previous releases,” which it has already started to do), I, for one, am willing to let the matter drop. As I said, when recordings sound as good as many MoFi LPs, it makes little difference how they were mastered.
The post From the Editor: The Mofi Mess appeared first on The Absolute Sound.
JV and RH: Why did you decide to master from DSD files rather than from analog mastertapes, as you used to do? What are the advantages of mastering from files vis-a-via mastering from tape, and what (if any) are the limitations?
Jim Davis: Some record label tape vaults changed policy regarding shipment of mastertapes. At that point our only option for those recordings was to go to the mastertapes. Once we were able to access these masters, the dilemma was how can we best retrieve the information from the master? We experimented with making analog copies from the master. Various tape stocks (½**, 1**) and speeds (15ips, 30ips) were tried but rejected. There was no way to overcome the noise-floor disadvantages of copying from one analog tape to another. When we tried DSD, it was immediately clear this was a vastly superior method for maximizing information retrieval. Developed as an archival format, DSD is sonically transparent, with a very low noise floor. Combined with the painstaking transfer process described below, the capture is a virtual snapshot of the master, revealing detail and nuance at a level that conventional methods could not. Counterintuitively, this capture yields, in our evaluation, superior sonics compared to a cut that is direct from the analog tape to the lathe.
The process of achieving these captures at a remote studio location is expensive and time consuming. We ship our proprietary gear, including our Tim D’Paravicini-modified Studer A80 tape machine, to the studio, rent studio time, and fly and lodge our engineer for several weeks at a time. The process of making a DSD capture using our techniques takes a day or more alone for each tape. These are long and exhausting days, and I’m proud of the hard work Mofi engineers put into each project and of the results they consistently achieve. I’m not aware of any other audiophile record label that puts that time and expense into each release.
Beyond the additional time, effort, and expense, I’m not aware of any sonic limitations of using this process.
Exactly when (what year and titles) did MFSL start mastering from DSD files?
The first MFSL title mastered from a DSD file was Tony Bennett I Left My Heart in San Francisco, which was released in 2011. Over time, we mastered progressively more titles using the DSD archival capture step. Sourcing-information for all Mofi vinyl titles is being added to the Mofi website daily, and a complete discography will be posted on the site.
Are any Mofi LPs still mastered from tape, or are they all mastered from DSD files?
The last title we captured and cut from the mastertape without a DSD step was David Crosby If I Could Only Remember My Name. It was released in 2022 but was captured in early 2020. All other releases since early 2020 use a DSD step in the mastering unless the original recording is a digital source. Going forward all releases sourced from analog masters will utilize a DSD step.
Could you clarify the precise process and signal chain for cutting a lacquer, from the analog mastertape to the cutting lathe?
Starting with the original tape and using our custom Tim D’Paravicini Studer A80, our engineers do a rundown of the recording, noting azimuth-alignment-settings for each splice and edit. Once there has been a thorough evaluation of the tape, the engineer captures the first song or up to the first edit. At each splice point he realigns the azimuth. This precision alignment is crucial to maximizing information retrieval from the tape. These tapes could have been recorded at different studios on different tape machines, and it is vital to mirror these machines by continually aligning azimuth. After the capture, the DSD file is evaluated in Sebastopol and returned to the analog domain. Using a Tim D’Paravicini analog EQ, the engineer makes his equalization adjustments. EQ is not done in the digital domain. This signal is then fed into the lathe cutterhead, which is driven by Tim D’Paravicini tube amplifiers.
In a conventional analog-to-lathe cut, the engineer needs to make all his adjustments, including azimuth alignment, on the fly. Azimuth alignment is a micro adjustment, and there is no way to nail it precisely while cutting on the fly. And this is a move that needs to be done at each splice, regardless of how short the duration.
Why are some titles cut from DSD64 and others from DSD256?
Any title cut from DSD64 was captured from 2011 to January 2014, using the Meitner A/D. When better technology became available, we upgraded to the Merging Technologies Horus A/D which captures in DSD256. We continually experiment with new processes, technologies, gear, materials, and vinyl formulas to obtain the best sonic results. If an advance in technology comes along, we plan to be the first to evaluate and adopt it if it provides a sonic benefit.
Why does MoFi limit the number of copies it produces, particularly when you can cut as many lacquers as you want when you are cutting from a DSD file, and wear on the precious original mastertape isn’t an issue?
Like many things in the more-complicated-than-it-appears music business, limits on production runs can be based on numerous factors, such as licensing agreements, paper management (jackets, boxes, etc.), and even material shortages. As some may be aware, the only factory in the U.S. producing lacquer blanks burned down several years ago. In the case of our One-Step releases, we based our limits on our estimates of demand. When we decided on a limit of 2500 copies for our first One-Step release, Santana Abraxas, we had no idea how many $100 records we could sell. Since that release we have consistently increased the limits of each release based on estimated demand. One principal misconception of the lacquer-cutting process is that with a DSD file we can just push play and cut a lacquer and be done. That is simply not the case. There are many additional steps between the DSD capture and before a record is complete. To cut the lacquer, the DSD signal is fed into an analog EQ. This analog domain equalization is done by our cutting engineer for each and every cut. Once the lacquer is plated and stampers made, test pressings need to be pressed, QC’d, and approved. This process is repeated for every set of lacquers. Since only one set of stampers can be made from each One-Step cut, you can see that producing ever larger quantities of these records requires a considerable amount of time and work. In addition to mastering costs, decisions need to be made on packaging well before the release date. At some point, given our large backlog of future One-Step releases, we need to move on the next title. Regarding limits on regular vinyl titles, we set them based on our estimates of demand. Many of these limits were set prior to the pandemic, which completely blew all demand estimates out of the water.
Regarding wear on tapes, we have an obligation to help preserve what are sacred documents of our musical history. These moments were captured on a now-fragile physical medium. Mastertapes are a finite resource. We are privileged to not only be stewards of these recordings for a short while but also to be a conduit during that time, to present them in what we feel is their best light.
The revelation that MoFi cuts from digital masters has suggested to many that the advantages of a purely analog chain are imaginary. How do you reply to that line of thinking?
That’s a debate that has and may continue to go on for years. I can only speak for our process. We did extensive evaluations of all aspects of the mastering process and found that using our proprietary gear with these steps yields the best sonic results. In the end it’s up to each individual listener to make his or her own decision as to what sounds best. We feel the excellent reviews from so many of our customers and the press support our point of view. For that, we are grateful.
The post MoFi President Jim Davis Addresses the Digital LP-Mastering Controversy appeared first on The Absolute Sound.
Highly acclaimed jazz pianist, composer and singer Patricia Barber will be launching a new collection of jazz standards entitled Clique, on August 6th. In the meanwhile you can listen to the lead single “This Town” […]
Hollywood, CA (July 22, 2020)—A new box set of four classic studio LPs and four legendary live albums by the Grateful Dead from Vinyl Me Please was cut fully analog by mastering engineer Chris Bellman working with the original quarter-inch stereo master tapes at Bernie Grundman Mastering.
“It’s Triple-A analog all the way,” says Bellman of the newly remastered 14-LP VMP Anthology: The Story of the Grateful Dead. “There is no digital stage whatsoever.”
Working from the original quarter-inch stereo master analog tapes, Bellman explains, “Quality by and large was very good. Some of the splices were a little bit dicey, so I had to reconstruct some splicing. But that’s relatively easy, just time consuming. You have to pull it apart, clean the tape, and then just redo the splice with fresh splicing tape. They’re all mixed down to quarter-inch, 15 i.p.s., some cases Dolby A, some cases, non-Dolby. And actually, there’s one project that was 30 i.p.s., Terrapin Station.”
Creating the 432-Track ‘Woodstock 50’ Box Set
Bringing the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound Back to Life
Albums included in the box set are Workingman’s Dead (1970), American Beauty (1970), Live/Dead (1969), Europe ’72 (1972), Wake of the Flood (1973), Terrapin Station (1977), Reckoning (1981) and Without a Net (1990). Bellman cut all the titles fully analog except Without a Net, which was sourced from the original master digital audio. The anthology was pressed on high quality 180g colored vinyl at Quality Record Pressing (QRP) in Salina, KS.
“My basic process for doing reissues of any kind, as well as these, is that I like to hear what it was when first released,” Bellman explains. “In this case, it was vinyl. So VMP gave me all eight albums on vinyl, the earliest pressings they could find, and I referenced our remastering with those. I put up the tape and I play them roughly parallel and kind of dial it back into the tape. And then I go back, and I turn the record off and I just kind of listen again and try to see what I could do to improve the transfer, faithful to the original.
Bellman adds, “I would say that the playback electronics has much improved, especially over the past 50 years. We can pull off a lot more information off of these tapes, in spite of the fact that they’re 50-plus years old. We can get a lot more resolution off the tape, which lends to a better end vinyl product.”
Bernie Grundman Mastering • www.berniegrundmanmastering.com