Post by Claude July 7, 2013 (61 of 147)
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I think the mastering engineer is much more important than the A/D converter brand.
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Post by RWetmore July 7, 2013 (62 of 147)
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samayoeruorandajin said:
I'm sure you'll all let us know the results.
Yes, of course. I suspect it is not the Grimm though.
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Claude said:
I think the mastering engineer is much more important than the A/D converter brand.
Engineers working with tapes admit that the Grimm AD1 is the only DSD64 converter capable of doing analog justice, so why play the role of apologist? Personally I simply can't afford to be one, and won't splash out $29.99 on an SACD I can get for $7, unless the company releasing it proves that they made every effort to make the new release definitive
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Post by RWetmore July 7, 2013 (64 of 147)
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audioholik said:
Engineers working with tapes admit that the Grimm AD1 is the only DSD64 converter capable of doing analog justice, so why play the role of apologist? Personally I simply can't afford to be one, and won't splash out $29.99 on an SACD I can get for $7, unless the company releasing it proves that they made every effort to make the new release definitive.
LOL. Well said.
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audioholik said:
Engineers working with tapes admit that the Grimm AD1 is the only DSD64 converter capable of doing analog justice...
One engineer has been quoted as saying so. The rest of them out there in the world? Tastes vary, but most prefer other gear, or consider it a nonissue.
Would you get new gear every time there is a new consumer fad in the air? One, moreover, that's being pushed basically by two people on a dilettante site filled with weirdos? I think the profs know better.
And I would not hold "analog-like" as the gold standard for anything. Way too limited for my tastes in this day and age, it was good 35 years ago.
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Polarius T said:
One engineer has been quoted as saying so. The rest of them out there in the world? Tastes vary, but most prefer other gear, or consider it a nonissue.
Steve Hoffman has been quoted as saying that the converter *killed* his previous DSD converter, Kevin Gray, that it was a game changer for the format, or something to that effect, and Bruce Brown (who compared all DSD converters in his tape archiving facility) that it got the closest to analog from them all. Are these pros weirdoes, or maybe dilettantes, Polarius Troll?
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Post by RWetmore July 7, 2013 (67 of 147)
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audioholik said:
Steve Hoffman has been quoted as saying that the converter *killed* his previous DSD converter, Kevin Gray, that it was a game changer for the format, or something to that effect, and Bruce Brown (who compared all DSD converters in his tape archiving facility) that it got the closest to analog from them all. Are these pros weirdoes, or maybe dilettantes, Polarius Troll?
There are a lot who are saying this, but - much to my bewilderment, some who are not. I believe Gus Skinas is one who likes the Grimm for A/D, but has said it's not his first choice. Baffles me completely, but appears to be what he really thinks.
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I think a lot of the RCA Living Stereo SACDs will be selling rather quickly once these come out, especially if there's not much difference in sound.
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RWetmore said:
There are a lot who are saying this, but - much to my bewilderment, some who are not. I believe Gus Skinas is one who likes the Grimm for A/D, but has said it's not his first choice. Baffles me completely, but appears to be what he really thinks.
Just a couple of quick comments from the gallery-
1) The entirety of the RCA Living stereo series was mastered by Myself and the digital restoration work was done by a pair of my colleagues, Philipp Nedel and Dirk Sobotka. For better or worse, I alone was responsible for all the transfers and mastering.
2) Anybody that thinks that differences between two top tier AD converter has a major impact on the final product of these remasters is deluding themselves. I have access to converters from all the major players in the market and while I have my favorites, I could make a fine product with any of them. The differences between all these converters amounts to about .01% of the final sound.
3) The real art in this process is the playback of the tape. I suspect that AP had the benefit of a lot of my restoration work on these tapes repairing thousands bad gooey splices the same way that I benefited from the work done by the RCA engineers a decade earlier. . Even this is simple compared with calibrating the machine for playback with tapes that were made with non standard equalization and masters that were spliced together from different sessions session tapes with different calibrations. All this to say that without the aid of the two people that that knew the catalog and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the tape vault many of these masters could not have been done correctly. The hardest thing in the whole process was getting the correct masters from the vault with the correct tones with which to align the machine.
4) Analog tape playback has come a long way in the past 50 years. Anybody that thinks that these tapes are best served being played back on a machine that is the equivalent of '57 Buick should really re-evaluate what the goals are. Ampex 300 and 350's were good machines in their day, but they are relics of the past.
I'll now don my asbestos suit.
All the best,
Mark Donahue
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mpdonahue said:
The entirety of the RCA Living stereo series was mastered by Myself...
Pfft. As though that makes you qualified to speak up about this. Didn't you know that random people posting anonymously on the internet are the ultimate experts on each and every subject?
I suppose next you'll be claiming that Pierre Boulez understands music better than the concertgoer who stands up and shouts "Bravo!" after each and every movement of a symphony.
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