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"Because of [CD's] high resolution it can reveal limitations of the source tape" umm... really?

post #1 of 4
9/24/11 at 1:48pm
Thread Starter 

So now that I got a system mostly in place and EAC configured how I want I've been going through and re-ripping all my cd's to flac.  Was doing Metallica's Master of Puppets (freedb even caught that it was the '95 remaster) i noticed this paragraph on the back:

 

 

Quote:
The music on this Compact Disc was originally recorded on analog equipment. We have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the sound of the original recording. Because of its high resolution, however, the Compact Disc can reveal limitations of the source tape.

 

I thought CDs were the limitation, not analog?  Perhaps because the source was from what sounds like a wheel to wheel it doesn't have the resolution of vinyl.  Any thoughts?

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post #2 of 4
9/24/11 at 2:15pm

Digital is theoretically a perfect copy of the original. It's not, but it's much better than vinyl. See this thread.

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post #3 of 4
9/25/11 at 6:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by vrillusions View Post

I thought CDs were the limitation, not analog?  Perhaps because the source was from what sounds like a wheel to wheel it doesn't have the resolution of vinyl.  Any thoughts?


A lot of audiophiles think this way, I'm not exactly sure why but here's my guess: Analogue tape and vinyl have a lot of distortions and non-linearities compared to CD. However, some of these distortions, like tape saturation and HF roll off for example, can be quite pleasing to the ear, even though they represent inaccuracies. This fact seems to have mislead some audiophiles into believing that analogue tape and vinyl are some how more accurate or higher resolution than digital (which doesn't suffer from these types of distortion). Sure, some CDs sound bad but that is because they have been mixed and/or mastered poorly, not because vinyl or tape has more resolution or is more accurate.

G
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post #4 of 4
9/26/11 at 10:55am

Maybe they just mean, we have recorded the original onto CD without doing anything else, so you may hear some background noise.

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