[peel] Re: Say it to the rest On behalf of Zomgqashiyo

[Stuart Brooks]

And as the source material was fixed 10-20-30 years ago, AM/FM radio (ideally the latter) and the recording deck, the next link in the chain is playback – a 3-head tape deck in good condition with a playback head optimised to playing back, pitch control to avoid having to do that digitally, Dolby off unless recorded on the same deck, and azimuth adjustment to avoid the muffled AM sound. If you don’t get that right then it doesn’t matter what digital format you then use! 
Still wouldn’t like to go below 128kbps mp3 for an old AM recording / poorly ripped FM recording but for the best tapes recorded and played back on well adjusted hi-fi cassette decks I would raise that to 192 or 320.
The effective dynamic range of the early 1980s sessions and records as broadcast, even recorded from FM to cassette, is higher than most current radio output due to the advanced compression, both studio and radio station, nowadays employed as part of the Loudness War. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Fb3rWNWDA
Stuart
From: mr_maudlin 
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 10:58 PM
To: peel@yahoogroups.com 
Subject: [peel] Re: Say it to the rest On behalf of Zomgqashiyo

  
Blimey that second video was good, didn't understand much of it, but it was good. 

When I worked in a hi-fi shop in the 1980's (and when we weren't endlessly quoting that Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch about hi-fi shops) we always worked on the mantra of spend the most money on the source of the music (e.g. turntable/CD). And I think this argument about FLACS from TDK D90's recorded on your dad's Grundig music centre with a string type FM aerial blu-tacked to the wall that the cat kept playing with, is sort of the same thing. Sort of.

--- In peel@yahoogroups.com, Roger Carruthers <unity.gain@...> wrote:
>
> If ever you find yourself getting too precious about audio quality, try
> this:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ
> and thisŠ
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM
> 
> Why these were not on the reading list when I did my Masters in Sound
> Engineering, I'll never know ;-)
> Cheers
> Roger
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I get rather hacked off when people start bleating about lossless formats,
> as if it's going to make ANY difference to the sonic quality of aged
> recordings often made on cheap tapes and ripped years later on a different
> tape deck often without azimuth correction.
> 
> On a personal note, I'm not prepared to wait around for an hour at a time
> while a massive wav / flac file is uploaded to whatever file server is
> called into use. My time is more important, as is my bandwidth.
> 
> DM
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, 16 October 2013, 12:59, Stuart Brooks <stuartb@> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I¹ve always thought that the quality of the ripping (eg make sure tape heads
> and transport are in good condition, use a 3 head deck, adjust azimuth) and
> of the original source (AM/FM) were of much greater importance. There are
> quite a few ripped tapes out there that could have done with some azimuth
> tweaking and that¹s something that you can¹t fix down the line. And Dolby
> level mismatch on playback can have some seriously strange results.
> 
> If you drop much below 192kbps then the best FM recordings would start to
> sound a bit more squishy on a good system but I really doubt that any of the
> tapes we have would really benefit from wav over say a 320kpbs mp3. Once you
> drop below 128kpbs then audio becomes much more noticeably cardboardy and
> flat.
> 
> There are a few of the oldest Peel shows out there which were output as wav
> and they sound awful, due to poor tapes/decks, and a well ripped mp3 even at
> 128kpbs sounds much better.
> 
> I have kept lossless flacs of everything I¹ve ripped as no doubt one day
> there will be a Supermooo and we¹ll all have Superfast broadband and 10Tb
> discs.....
> 
> 
> From: Mark <mailto:mutetourettes@>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 12:36 PM
> To: peel@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [peel] Re: Say it to the rest On behalf of Zomgqashiyo
> 
> 
> heheh well I'm happy to upload the wav files if someone tells me where to
> stick it... 
> 
> it's an interesting debate, and I've been tempted to up the bitdepth and
> sampling rate of tapes I archive (mostly public talks etc, not radio) just
> in case some mythical future noise-reduction/restoration thingmyjig can use
> the extra bits... but I got that nice old apogee A/D converter (it's limited
> to 16/48 and under) for next to nothing and it sounds so nice that I tend to
> use it and be satisfied with that rather than save up for 24/96 gear of
> similar quality.. I haven't done much comparing of the consumer-level 24/96
> gear that I have... doesn't seem worth the extra storage space..
> 
> In this case I think it's pretty moot, as there's radio tuning/interference
> farts and whatnot... but hey...
>