![]() The smaller you want your files, the more they have to be compressed. In order to keep file sizes small, and give you room for more songs on your digital playback device, these files are compressed from higher resolution digital files, then decompressed as you listen. Assuming your vinyl playback system is in decent shape, they are on average the worst-sounding format available. Why? Well, these days compressed digital files are the modern equivalent of cassette tape in terms of quality. The question of which one sounds the closest to the artist’s intent lies in how the final mixes were mastered.ĭespite the popularity of mp3s and other compressed digital files, mastering engineers very rarely attempt to optimize an artist’s final masters for that format. aiff), and CDs (which are also a form of digital audio). These days there are 4 common ways we listen to music: Vinyl, compressed digital files (mp3, aac, FLAC files), high-resolution digital files (.wav. So now that we know the history, and have some idea what mastering involves, we can look at our current situation. But most important to our discussion, mastering engineers make sonic decisions to maximize the sonic potential of each format. The mastering engineer will also make sure all of the songs on an album playback at a similar volume to one another, so you don’t have to adjust your player’s volume between each song. Then they can say, ‘Cut 4 sounds a little dull in comparison to Cut 3,” and we’ll go back in and make an adjustment.” In addition, mastering is the stage at which the sequence of songs is finalized, fade-ins and outs are tweaked, as is the time between each song. Once we’ve got it to the consumer format,” says Robert, “we give the client a reference print to take home and listen. As you would on your stereo except in much more detail. “It’s also your last chance to tweak the sound of your product in the overall aspect,” says Grammy award-winning mastering engineer Robert Hadley, “Adjust high end, or low end. The original job of the mastering engineer was to transfer the audio from the recording format (analog reels of tape in the old days), to a consumer format (vinyl, cassette, CD). That meant a whole new approach to the final step of the recording process: Mastering.įor those who don’t know, mastering is the last stop a recording makes before heading to the printing plant, or the web, for public consumption. Vinyl was no longer the king of the record store. The free market had spoken again, and the recording industry listened. (A situation that would continue for various reasons until the early 2000s.) But in the consumer world, CDs staged a takeover.ġ988 marked the first year that compact discs out-sold vinyl. The second was that recording studios continued to use analog equipment, and they discovered that despite the promise of digital audio technology, early digital recording systems in fact did not sound better than the old analog tape machines they’d been using for decades. ![]() Suddenly the evils of cassette tape hiss, and vinyl pop and crackle would be a thing of the past! Digital playback would save us all from unwanted noise in our recordings! A great plan, however, there were still two problems: The first was that vinyl continued to out-sell CDs for some time, which meant that it still ruled the audio roost. That all started to change with the advent of the compact disc. And that’s the format that recording professionals cared about. If you were serious about your sound you listened to vinyl. All of that to say while vinyl and cassette ruled the day commercially in the ’70s and ’80s, there was no debate as to which format sounded better. ![]() But if you didn’t have a deck that took advantage of them, or you didn’t know how they worked, your cassette most likely sounded WORSE than it would have without any of the fancy technology. Slow tape speed and the small tape width meant there was a tremendous amount of “tape hiss.” Various tape formulations and schemes for noise reduction were developed to combat the problem. The free market spoke, and the convenient little cassette won the day. Between those two, 8-track actually was the superior sounding format, but both tapes and the players were technically unreliable. The advent of 8-track and cassette tapes was the first time a format other than vinyl gained a foothold with the buying public. The first time multiple formats with differing sounds were seriously available to consumers was in the 1970s. The answer requires a quick trip down memory lane, and a look at the dark art of mastering. AIFF), how do I know which one sounds closest to what the artist originally intended?Ī: This question has been with us ever since recorded music became available in multiple formats. Q.: With so many different formats of recorded music to choose from (mp3, vinyl, CD, AAC, FLAC.
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