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mpdonahue said:
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.
Which is to say that all that Steve Hoffman is really doing is playing tape back through his machines and that he really doesn't do any real remastering (i.e., the grunt work). I can believe it because I think a lot of Hoffman's work is overrated.
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Post by stvnharr July 7, 2013 (72 of 147)
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mpdonahue said:
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.
All the best,
Mark Donahue
Mark,
Thank you for posting this. Much appreciated.
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Post by RWetmore July 7, 2013 (73 of 147)
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mpdonahue said:
3) The real art in this process is the playback of the tape.
I never said or have ever thought otherwise. That you seem to think this is what we are saying tells me you don't understand what we are saying in regards to the Grimm converter's role in the process. It is not a means to end in anyway at all.
I'm sorry but if you cannot hear the difference between say Meitner 4th gen and the AD1, then I just don't think you have very discerning ears. The 'softening' and 'rounding' of the sound is distortion of the original sound source plain and simple (i.e. a direct artifact of the DSD A/D process). It doesn't matter how good the tape put together and playback process is, it will be there in the final result if such a converter is used.
We don't want it there (in any form), and as best I can tell with my ears, when the Grimm AD1 is used it is completely absent.
BTW, the distortion I'm referring to has been well documented in the literature. See various papers by Stanley Lipshitz, etc. in regards to DSD A/D.
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Post by RWetmore July 7, 2013 (74 of 147)
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Let me clarify my position on this:
If the tape put together and playback process is poor and the Grimm is used for A/D, the final result will still be poor (i.e. not improved in the slightest).
If the tape put together and playback process is excellent and another 'top' converter other than the Grimm is used, the final result will still be very good to excellent - just not quite as true and accurate to the original tape as the Grimm would be.
I hope this clarifies the issue, as it seems far too many are interpreting us as somehow saying the Grimm is a means to end of some sort. It is most definitely not.
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RWetmore said:
Let me clarify my position on this:
If the tape put together and playback process is poor and the Grimm is used for A/D, the final result will still be poor (i.e. not improved in the slightest).
If the tape put together and playback process is excellent and another 'top' converter other than the Grimm is used, the final result will still be very good to excellent - just not quite as true and accurate to the original tape as the Grimm would be.
What I am saying is that I could tell you whatever I want, but realistically a quarter turn of a calibration pot or +/-.2db level difference has a bigger impact on the master that you hear than the converter used does. The funny thing is that most of the people that do this for a living don't have any religion in this subject. These are all just tools that we use to get work done.
To be honest, can you tell me which converters in the living stereo series were used? There were 4 different converters used and one of them was a very early version the Grimm AD1 loaned to us from Eelco. Listen to the discs and see if you can tell me which is which. I made the masters and going back I can't tell which converter I used without looking it up.
All the best,
-mark
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Post by Lunna July 7, 2013 (76 of 147)
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Mark, in case you read this -do you know how many of the RCA Living Stereo Reissues were actually made? 5000? More? They are still so readily available that I'm guessing far more than the Mercury Living Presence SACDs. I've never found this information despite much time trying to do so on the net. Thanks!
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Post by Lunna July 7, 2013 (77 of 147)
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samayoeruorandajin said:
Which is to say that all that Steve Hoffman is really doing is playing tape back through his machines and that he really doesn't do any real remastering (i.e., the grunt work). I can believe it because I think a lot of Hoffman's work is overrated.
It's interesting - I splurged and got the Laura Nyro Gold Disc, and I have the original RBCDs, and to be honest, I think I prefer the latter. In fact, I seem to notice less overloading on them than on the gold disc. But what do I know? He does run an interesting website, I must admit.
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Lunna said:
It's interesting - I splurged and got the Laura Nyro Gold Disc, and I have the original RBCDs, and to be honest, I think I prefer the latter. In fact, I seem to notice less overloading on them than on the gold disc. But what do I know? He does run an interesting website, I must admit.
And I got the Crosby Stills Nash Gold disc. Not sure how much better it is than previous remasterings really.
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Post by RWetmore July 7, 2013 (79 of 147)
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mpdonahue said:
What I am saying is that I could tell you whatever I want, but realistically a quarter turn of a calibration pot or +/-.2db level difference has a bigger impact on the master that you hear than the converter used does. The funny thing is that most of the people that do this for a living don't have any religion in this subject. These are all just tools that we use to get work done.
To be honest, can you tell me which converters in the living stereo series were used? There were 4 different converters used and one of them was a very early version the Grimm AD1 loaned to us from Eelco. Listen to the discs and see if you can tell me which is which. I made the masters and going back I can't tell which converter I used without looking it up.
Were any of them done with the Meitner IV? I was not aware the Grimm AD1 was used on any of them. Was it a prototype or the actual AD1 released to the market? I own quite a few, though I don't know if any I have were done with the Grimm. If you can give me an unidentified list of say 4, with one being done with the Grimm AD1, I think there is good chance I could pick it out.
Though really the most scientifically valid way to do this is take the same tape played through the same machine - one transferred via the Grimm and another via some other converter, and then blind test the playback of each. If I don't have two transfers from the same source and don't know what the original playback source sounds like, it doesn't really seem to be a valid comparison scientifically.
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Post by RWetmore July 7, 2013 (80 of 147)
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BTW, Mark, we are not alone in this assessment. As pointed out, other engineers have meticulously tested and compared various converters and they think there is a significant difference between the AD1 and the competition. That is, they think the AD1 is truest to the original source - be it an analog tape or a live mic feed.
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