I agree about the mood that is (usually) conveyed by the progression of an album.
I never got the idea of listening to specific cuts of a recording. I’m sure I can hear the thoughtful progression from start to finish.
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Even when a recording is comprised of individual songs, the musicians and producers have given a great deal of thought as to the order of the tracks.
Ripping tracks out of context and listening to them individually never made sense to me.
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By the way, wasn’t Random Access Memories somewhat famously recorded on analog gear? That album in particular might be one of the real outliers in the genre.
I do not believe so as Gus has a copy recorded in DSD too. Best knowledge I have is they recorded in both PCM and DSD but wound up using the PCM version.
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me thinks almost everything recorded starts with analog gear…analog microphones and their cables, most of this output goes onto analog master tape to continue the original (mostly) onto mother record (used to press vinyl records) or tape copies to sell, sometimes mic output recorded direct to the mother disk and bypass analog mixing. in ‘parallel’ fashion, typically, the analog master tape is sampled to produce digital files
infrequently the analog mics go to dsd digital recording setup…Octave Records is a leading example; the more ‘direct to dsd’ has a good future hopefully
I was just thinking I had read they had gone to tape, but I’m not sure what tricks my memory is playing - however, I do think they went with mostly real drums as they didn’t like the sound of drum machines
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Join the club
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There is very little tape used in recordings today. Most mics go into pre-amps, the mixing board, and into Protools. If you want tape you have to do a very deep dive search to find a studio using it. Studios like Paul’s with direct to DSD are rare as well.
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So old am i
Listening to master tapes on IRS-V, Studer, and Mark Levinson was sublime…this was before ProTools etc
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Heck, I have an old DAT tape somewhere around here from a demo project I worked on years ago. DAT… sheesh. I suppose I’ll never listen to that again
Yes, very little is recorded to tape.
I see no reason for purely electronic to be excluded from vinyl. Most vinyl is made from digital sources.
If you like the sound of vinyl, enjoy it with all kinds of music.
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OK, I found the article I had read about the recording of Random Access Memories - analog tape was indeed involved, but it was not the endpoint. They recorded to tape, and then pushed the recording from tape into Pro Tools and edited the files there. It looks like they experimented a bunch to see what they would like best. Its also interesting to see which studios they used - this was one very expensive album to record (relative to other modern records) with multiple heavy-hitter, and historic studios.
I’m just glad my random access memory is somewhat intact.
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@dcm the super sleuth
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Daft Punk were unquestionably musical geniuses, this is worth a watch, it’s really interesting to see how some of their samples were formed
Daft Punk’s INSANE Sampling Masterclass | Breakdown & Recreation - YouTube
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“Does vinyl make sense for electronic music?”
Of course it does!
That’s what I have all of my old Depeche Mode, The Cure, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, etc, etc on. All original releases from back in the day (mid to late 80s).
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Absolutely!
I think we have to take care not to turn around the argumentation. There’s no reason at all, not to publish any kind of music on vinyl. Those who want to listen to vinyl or only listen to vinyl, should have access to all kinds of music.
I think the trigger for the thread was the question if it makes special sense to listen to electronic music on vinyl rigs instead of digital gear.
That’s where I’d say, there’s much less reason (if at all) for pure electronic music, HipHop, house music, drum&bass, metal, techno to be heard on vinyl for a reason of superiority to digital playback or for tonality reasons (except if someone chooses bad/limited playback gear of any kind to compensate badly recorded music)
I say on vinyl, this kind of music may partly sound better than from a DAC, mostly it sounds quite the same, but from many lower quality vinyl rigs, bass potent music of those genres will sound rather worse (when listening carefully).
So imo it’s fine to listen to everything on vinyl, there just no special reason to do so for those genres in terms of sound quality advantage. Except if the vinyl rig is generally superior sounding to the digital rig because on a different quality level.
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I believe everything sounds better on vinyl, especially Electronic. They use a lot of different strategies that never sound dull to me. Especially Burnt Friedman.
Only available these days on CD. This used to be on Qobuz but now its available on the artists record label on the World Wide Web. I got it on vinyl while the getting was good. It’s out of print on vinyl now. But lots of his music is available on very, very quiet vinyl.
This is available to stream on Tidal.
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hence, my search for a dac that matches, better yet, exceeds SQ of my vinyl rig (fine richness, coherence, tonality and all the other good stuff)…which is much better than the any dacs I have auditioned (effectively all pro ESS dacs)…a better dac that is known to be better rather than presumed to be, A-B testing a must. If MSB Select package needed, so be it.
It was cheap, will be trying Topping Velvet arriving today.
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What you are searching for exists from many sources. Prices start over $20K. The DAC in the BACCH-SP adio is a steal at $24K. But then you’d have to put up with the BACCH processing as well.
I output from my Gryphon Legato Phono Preamp to the BACCH-SP. All that pure analog turns into bits. It is worthwhile but a bit weird to think about.
There are awesome DACs out there, but I can’t think of any under $25K. Go ahead, ponder how much you want it. It’s so worth doing!!! I have done it many times and it’s so rewarding!
Or wait for Ted Smith’s TSS.
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That’s really interesting. Can you say what characteristic you hear so superior in that kind of music?
Is there any processing between your DAC and the preamp that’s not between the vinyl rig and the preamp (except the phonostage)?
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