Comment by iaresee
7 years ago
> This is also why modern vinyl releases sound a lot better than digital: they are mastered differently since its assumed everyone is going to be listening on good equipment.
I'm going to disagree here. They are mastered differently because the physical limitations of the media require them to be mastered differently _and_ it just so happens that the physical limitations help limit mastering tricks in a way that produces less fatigue-inducing, brick-wall-limited mastering output.
A heavily compressed master creates huge peak-to-trough cuts in the vinyl which can cause the needle to literally jump out of the groove, even with RIAA limiting applied.
The assumption of the gear is definitely not true in any mixing or mastering experience I've had. Mastering tries to balance the final product across a range of listening devices, not some unobtainable ideal system. NS10s are kicking around because they sound like arse and make for mastering results that work well on car stereos and other "inferior" systems.
You can put brickwalled audio on a vinyl record and have it play just fine if you cut it at a lower volume. This negates the reason for mastering it that way in the first place, but it's cheaper than redoing the mastering, and many people buying vinyl only do so for the image. See:
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#My...
That's a fair point. And I totally agree on that second statement. :D
NS10s are kicking around because they're unusually good at time domain performance. For instance, they have miserable bass not only because they're small boxes and smallish drivers, but because they're an infinite baffle design, which is significantly better for time domain performance than bass reflex. The enclosures also dissipate energy quite well, and it's well established that this contributes to being able to 'translate' mixes: you get a better sense of what's actually in the track using NS10s than you might with many 'better sounding' speakers.
They spotlight midrange with a presence peak right where the ear's most sensitive, and this is in part because the woofer is actually designed more like a midrange: thin paper, conical rather than curved cross-section, both of which also contribute to 'sounding bad' tonally while delivering energy more unforgivingly.
They're not really about mastering, though, they're about mixing because if you have elements out of balance it will be screamingly, annoyingly obvious on NS10s. That's not down to their bad-soundingness, it's down to their ability to be incredibly unforgiving.
That may be true, but I've seen some vinyl mastering jobs that looked as bad as digital. I won't claim to be a mastering engineer or anything, but after comparing many vinyl releases and digital releases, it seems like there is something going on besides the physical limitations of the medium.