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Thread: Remasters and Audiophoolery?

  1. Back To Top    #31

    Re: Remasters and Audiophoolery?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockinridgeline View Post
    Thanks for the info Erin! I had been in the habit of buying anything new on HD tracks but had found that some of the "remasters" sounded worse than the original CD on the home system. The loudness wars site helped to confirm my suspicions and saves some money. HD tracks needs to do a better job.

    You're welcome, man. Glad you found it helpful and useful. I wish HDtracks was more selective about what they put on their site. But ultimately I think what they're doing is akin to what the music industry is doing with Hi-Res: putting out everything and trying to convince people that Hi-Res is indeed superior to make a buck. Even when you have cases where you're much better off going with a copy of the original disc.
    -- SQ is great, but sometimes nostalgia is greater. --


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  2. Back To Top    #32
    Noob Salami's Avatar
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    Re: Remasters and Audiophoolery?

    Erin I read this thread way back when but I just started listening to Michael Jackson in the last 6 months. I wound up buying new versions of Thriller and Bad because it was all I could find and they were only like $7 each new.

    My question is about Thriller. The 38112 pressing you have, have you been able to compare it to any of the HD Tracks versions?

    I am wondering if it is on par or better than the version you have. If so i am thinking of getting the HD Tracks version instead of trying to track down the pressing you have.

  3. Back To Top    #33

    Re: Remasters and Audiophoolery?

    Hey, Rich. I haven't listened to the HD Tracks version of Thriller yet. Personally, I'm just not a fan of Hi-Res audio for a number of reasons; partly because I'm lazy (I use Apple products and they don't natively support hi-res and I don't feel like dealing with a fragmented collection/playback method) and partly because most of what I would buy in Hi-Res, based on genre, is just remastered garbage or upsampled from the original and a total waste of money. I'd rather spend my money on older originals or *proper* remasters and rip them myself. In fact, I've recently gotten a couple really good albums: Duran Duran's "Decade" from Japan (incredible mix - the staging and layering is awesome - and mastering on this one) and the MFSL remaster of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" which I've not gotten to really sit down with yet but am excited about.




    But I'm glad you asked because I meant to post this a looooong time ago and completely forgot to share... And seriously, I hope everyone reading this thread pays attention to what I'm about to say because this is legit information that a LOT of people are not aware of...

    Something to consider when purchasing and ripping old albums for your digital audio collection is pre-emphasis and de-emphasis. In short, some CDs through the late 80's/early 90's were made with a boosted top end, called "pre-emphasis". This was done basically to counteract the falling response of the limited resolution in the day. Thriller was one of them. And a lot of the albums from Japan were apparently made with pre-emphasis as well.

    You can find a great article written about pre-emphasis here:
    http://www.audioxpress.com/assets/up...s/galo3025.pdf

    And here is a graphic of what the pre-emphasis boost is and correlating de-emphasis curve needs to be:



    Why this matters:
    As you can see from the image above, if you were to rip a digital version of a song or an album which contains pre-emphasis without the pre-emphasis removed, what you'd wind up with is a very bright version of the album. Look at that curve... let's use 1khz as a reference, saying it has about 0dB boost. At 5khz the signal is +5dB and at 10khz it's +7dB. Yowza! So it reasons what you hear would absolutely sound different than a version you've bought from HDTracks (where the pre-emphasis is not there, hopefully). Therefore, in a listening comparison an unknowing person would proclaim an audible difference. The difference is real certainly due to the pre-emphasis from their ripped album. However, once you remove the pre-emphasis* you'd likely find no difference in sound... or no appreciable difference, since undoing pre-emphasis isn't perfect.

    * If you use Audacity you can use a tool to de-emphasize. I've read that iTunes will automatically detect pre-emphasis and rip accordingly. I use XLD/xACT on Mac. Here's a somewhat recent thread if you want to dig in to ripping a pre-emphasized CD correctly:
    Ripping CDs with Pre-emphasis Properly | Steve Hoffman Music Forums
    Here's another one:
    https://www.computeraudiophile.com/f...-emphasis-mac/


    FWIW, I have my original Thriller release ripped in both fashions; original pre-emphasis and de-emphasis. A/B'ing back and forth is night and day. With the pre-emphasis the tracks are MUCH brighter. It sounds very unnatural but to the regular listener they may like it more simply due to the increased treble but after a few tracks, it begins to wear on you.

    I recommend if you do like I do ... buying old CDs and ripping them to your digital audio collection ... always run them through a program with pre-emphasis detection and then rip accordingly. I learned this information after I was about 5 or so CDs in to my 'vintage CD buying'. Hopefully me posting this will save you the headache (literally and figuratively) of having overly bright rips and then having to go back and re-rip them all once you discover why.
    -- SQ is great, but sometimes nostalgia is greater. --


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  4. Back To Top    #34
    Noob Salami's Avatar
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    Re: Remasters and Audiophoolery?

    Quote Originally Posted by erinh View Post
    I recommend if you do like I do ... buying old CDs and ripping them to your digital audio collection ... always run them through a program with pre-emphasis detection and then rip accordingly. I learned this information after I was about 5 or so CDs in to my 'vintage CD buying'. Hopefully me posting this will save you the headache (literally and figuratively) of having overly bright rips and then having to go back and re-rip them all once you discover why.

    Thanks for all of the info!! I haven't been buying anything yet but I have ripped about 200 CD's of what I already have.
    I will go ahead and read more about pre-emphasis, very good info to know. Some of the info I have read in the last few day mentions about pre-emphasis but I did not know what it was.

    I'm not sure I want to go down the Hi-Rez route but I have been trying to find the version of Thriller you have and it seems a bit hard to find (and make sure I get the correct version). I came across the HD Tracks version on http://dr.loudness-war.info/ and it doesn't appear to be crushed like the version I have. It has better DR than the version you have so I thought maybe it might be a good alternative.


    Looks like I have a lot more reading to do.

  5. Back To Top    #35
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    Re: Remasters and Audiophoolery?



    Bout a quarter of a century ago ^^^^
    Viewing Smilies , you trying to access privileged system?¤Somewhere 0ut There¤}]

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