Good video. One of my masters was mixed at Abbey Road. A professional crew. Peter Cobbin, an expat Aussie, worked with me many times before he moved to the UK.
@gotham61 Well I said "where possible" - of course Furtwängler is in mono. In this case you would use the mono mixdown tape that hasn't been processed for LP production.
The first thing I noticed was the over use of compression. Loud does not equal good sounding. Also, not super impressed with the bit rates etc chosen... Crap like this is why I HATE remastered discs. I have never heard a remaster that failed to sound much worse than the original. Sure it may be louder. And yes, the engineer may have made the incidental audio effects stand out more. But in the process, the actual music and composition always seems to suffer.
I'll bet they didn't add as much as you think. This guy's obviously on the ball. Just because the waveform looks bigger doesn't mean it's been compressed.
what he show to us was a Crescendo, so it's the moment where the sound is loud as possible, and the tube preamp they used for the tape and the microphone also add a lot of distortion, a pleasant distortion but noticable to the global sound quality. It's not as clean as today mosfet and fet mic pre, on digital and analog console.
You are so right . What were they thinking? I have liked some of the non SACD ART remasters but this is plain stupid. Why do PCM at 24/ 96 then back to DSD, Could it be they cant use the EMI EQ with DSD direct? I don't get it.
@mozpiano2 Did you even watch the video? Listen again from 14.00, where he describes how the tape used for the reissue was NOT the edited and EQed tape used for disc cutting, but a second tape recorded simultaneously. Again, with these recordings there is no such thing as a separate "mixdown tape," even a mono one. Everything was mixed live during the performance and recorded onto a single track.
Don't sanitise the audio with Cedar noise reduction and compression, leave it alone. Just convert the source material to either DSD or 24-192 and leave it alone.
2, Why can't DSD be used for archival purpose? Sony Classical did just that. The entire Yo Yo Ma RBCD box, I believe, are remastered in DSD. 3, If they absolutely need 24/96 how tough is it to transcode to 24/96 once its in DSD?
@mozpiano2 Good luck finding a "stereo" mixdown tape of anything Furtwangler recorded. Furtwangler was never recorded in stereo. While monoed bass is a good argument for not using a disc cutting tape for a stereo release, it doesn't apply with a mono release.
Many people missing the point I feel. SACD technology is applied for the SACD which is a consumer format for releasing high definition audio.....correct? Now we have recently learned that CD & SACD are being dropped by all the major labels, the 24bit 96bit PCM transfer was made for archival purposes. Therefore Abbey Road can return to the vault for the 1:1 transfer file (24/96) to reprocess & encode whatever way they wish for the next doomed poxy digital format Sony bestow upon us.
Usually, they set the amp at the volume with the best defined sound. After that, it's not about amplifiers anymore, they're streching the whole sound in order to make it louder, thus destroying many details. If you ever compare original albums to remastered ones and play them at the same volume, the originals will usually sound better. One sure example: Megadeth
Tut, tut tut, then you sir, of all people should know better than mock the reason for the 24/96 transfer. The point of it was was to create an un-molested 1:1 transfer from the Studer to a 24/96k file for the EMI archive. That way if the tape perishes even further, the A/D capture of today is the closest they have before additional signal processing. DSD exists for getting it to SACD. Well, that format has now died & gone away. But EMI at anytime can encode for the next bullshit consumer format.
Too much talk about process. Need more comments from those who actually bought and listened to the entire set. I find the results very satisfying and worth the money spent and I don't have an inexpensive system. Lots of new life in these wonderful performances to me. Sit back and get lost in the performance.
As an English man I would like to apologize to those who buy this. The waveform shows clearly that the DYNAMIC RANGE has been obliterated. Signal into vintage eq too hot I suspect.
If the end product is for SACD (which uses the native DSD digital format), then clearly the optimal AD conversion is Analog -> DSD ... not Analog to 96 kHz 24bit.
This is impressive. I was amazed when you brought out the tape and had it right there, in your hands. Does your work ever impress you? That is, to hold something like a Furtwangler master and think, "Actually, this - in a very real way - IS Furtwangler." I've done a documentary film about him and this sort of thing fascinates me. Thank you very much more sharing this with us!
One of the oldest analogue tape recordings in the world - is it just me or doesn't anyone else can't believe he actually holds the tape in front of him as he's speaking to camera and is touching the side of the tape on the deck.
1, You realize he said in the beginning this remastering project is specifically done for Japan SACD releases right? So why not do it in DSD? (btw, that flies in the face of your claim that SACD is dead. Need more evidence? Witness the Gieseking, Klemperer etc. that just hit the streets which AFAIK are the FIRST EVER SACD releases by EMI themselves not to mention all new releases by Chandos, BIS, Pentatone are hybrid SACDs. If SACD is dead why does EMI choose to hop on board at this time?
I'm sorry, but you do NOT use the LP cutting tape, but the stereo mixdown tape (ie a generation before LP cutting tape). In fact, ALL respectable remastering engineers use stereo mixdown tapes where possible (Steve Hoffman being an example) - no decent and experienced audio engineer would preference the LP tape over the stereo mixdown!!!!
@ingodidoubt No - the DVDs have just gone into production. Also, a few hundred hundred copyright restrictions makes it doubtful that my film will be seen on the internet anytime soon - this will change. Stay tuned.
From the Cakewalk Forum. If he had spoken precisely he might say, "in the analog world if you are running [playback] faster [than it was recorded at] the pitch goes up. If you are running [playback] slower [than it was recorded at] the pitch goes down" but there is no doubt in my mind that he knew exactly what he meant. He simply confused the context of his explanation and made a mistake.
You don't have to be repulsed. The meaning of 'sampling frequency' between PCM(CD) and PWM(SACD) is very different. In PCM, for each cycle you have a bunch of bits which represents the height of pulse. But in PWM, you only have an on-off signal (1bit) for each cycle. So in calculation, PCM 96kHz 24bit have information density of about 2.3Mbit/sec (96,000 x 24) which is not very much inferior to 2.8224Mbit/sec of SACD, meaning the sound quality should not be very much inferior......
I completely agree with you. As a record producer with over 35-years in my profession I would gone directly from the master tapes, after all the artifacts had been removed, to a properly EQ'd DSD cutting master. 24/96 completely negates the benefits of SACD.
Having said all that, however, whether one can hear the difference between DSD and 24/96 is debatable. But one thing is for sure. The egregious dynamic compression employed by this dude as can be seen clearly from the difference between the upper and lower waveform KILLS the music and is a much bigger cause of concern than whether this is remastered in DSD or PCM.
the problem is the COST of these SACDs/ only available from Japan, they are $43.00 per SINGLE CD in the US. Ridiculous price, not going to pay for the engineering costs. Maybe the Japanese buying public can afford that price but EMI needs to come up with a better pricing structure if it wants to recoup the costs and open a new high-end audio market for historical product.
