Mastering engineer Adam Gonsalves cuts lacquers for vinyl records in his Southeast Portland studio with a 1960s Scully lathe and other audio gear. David Greenwald/The Oregonian
Fighting the loudness wars: Digital music engineering, particularly for radio-bound music, is often marred by a volume arms race, which leads to fatiguing, hyper-compressed songs that squish out the dynamics and textures that give recordings their depth and vitality. Vinyl’s volume is dependent on the length of its sides and depth of its grooves, which means an album mastered specifically for the format may have more room to breathe than its strained digital counterpart. The longer an album, the quieter it gets: Gonsalves played me Interpol’s lengthy debut album and a 12-inch Billy Idol single, and the decibel difference — without any distortion creeping in — was remarkable.
That warm vinyl sound: “I think this is what people like about it: it pins very closely to the way that human beings hear music organically,” Gonsalves said. “It’s very mid-range-y and very warm,” a sound that flatters the fuzzy guitars of rock ‘n’ roll.
The bad
“All-analog” doesn’t always happen: Many modern vinyl records are produced from digital masters, either recordings made natively in software such as Pro Tools or converted from tape before being sent along for mass production. When I visited Gonsalves, he was working on My Brightest Diamond’s new album — from his computer. But analog-to-digital conversion (and vice versa) has come along quite a bit since the birth of the CD, and Gonsalves says he asks for high-definition, 24-bit files to master from if digital’s the option.
Still, as artists and labels hop on the vinyl trend, some new vinyl releases may be mastered from CD-quality audio, not the high-resolution formats audiophiles and folks like Neil Young adore. Is a CD-quality album going to sound more accurate on vinyl than a CD? Nope. But it will sound more vinyl-y, if that’s your preference.
“There’s basically nothing you can do to make an hour-long album on one record sound good,” Gonsalves said. Vinyl’s capable of a lot, but only if the grooves are wide enough for the needle to track them properly. A longer album means skinnier grooves, a quieter sound and more noise. Likewise, the ear-rattling sounds of dubstep weren’t really meant for your turntable. “If you had taken Skrillex into Motown Studios, they would’ve said, ‘It’s uncuttable!’” Gonsalves said, thanks to the strain the high-energy music would put on the needle’s journey.
Vinyl can struggle with highs and lows: High-pitched frequencies (drum cymbals, hi-hats) and sibilance (think “s” sounds) can cause the ugly crackle of distortion, while deep bass panned between the left and right channels can knock around the needle. “It should basically be in mono,” Gonsalves said. Otherwise, “that’s a hard path for a needle to trace.”
The beginning of an album side sounds better than the end: As the album’s circumference shrinks toward the middle, the needle speed changes and it can’t follow every millimeter of the groove. If the song that closes side A or B is a complicated one — say, one with a busy harmonica solo — it may well sound less than hi-fi. That’s why those double-LPs are worth the extra flipping.
Via http://www.oregonlive.com/music/index.ssf/2014/11/does_vinyl_really_sound_better.html
