The Rolling Stones – Hackney Diamonds : Will stereo high resolution be better than Dolby Atmos?

[Jean.Francois]

The Rolling Stones – Hackney Diamonds – Review – (Test: Vinyl record, Blu-ray stereo and Dolby Atmos trueHD, CD, Amazon Music UltraHD, Tidal MAX Flac and Tidal Dolby Atmos)

The Rolling Stones are back with their 24th studio album “Hackney Diamonds”, 7 years after “Blue and Lonesome”, which was a covers album, and 18 years after “A Bigger …

magicvinyldigital.net

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The master must be the same. The problem is later when it adapts to each support. If things were done right there would be hardly any sound differences, especially with these reduced DR and this kind of "noisy" music.

It's hard to know whether the master is the same or not.
If they've done a good job, there's a different master that respects the characteristics of the vinyl.
The video doesn't take everything into account, and the only conclusion is that you can't know the characteristics of the master by getting the DR from the vinyl. The video is also an example of what can't be done to cut a vinyl record: analog is not digital, it doesn't support brickwall limiters.
For a better understanding, I've made some comparisons of the impact of limiter on vinyl burning and also on magnetic tapes here.
There was no such problem when masters were made with analog tapes.
It's not that simple to want to use an analogue medium cleanly.

 

[DVDdoug]

As has been pointed out before in this forum and elsewhere, comparing vinyl releases and digital releases in terms of the crest factor is pointless. The crest factor is only really meaningful when comparing different digital versions, and even then it is not guaranteed to give accurate information about dynamics.

The same thing happens with MP3. And, the lossy download has a "better DR" than the CD.

It is not entirely impossible that the L and R channels of the downmix are also clipped but the addition of the other channels just makes it appear as though the newly created stereo signal has better dynamics and is not clipped.

I suspect that too.. It the clipped-limited peaks don't occur at the same time in the various channels the mix will "look better" with some mixed-peaks higher than others.

If they've done a good job, there's a different master that respects the characteristics of the vinyl.

But, they didn't do a "good job". Unless you want it constantly-loud or "constantly intense" and you hate all of those volume variations... They did a good job of killing the dynamics.

 

[Snoopy]

The Stones' records up to and including Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out have been reissued many years ago on CD by London Recordings. These sound very good. Better than all later remastered versions. All the records the Stones made after they broke with DECCA have in my opinion sounded much worse in terms of audio quality. Their masterpiece, Exile on Main Street, sounds almost like an amateur recording by today's standards.

Really? Always thought it sounds alright for a rock album. I have the 2011 Japanese SMH SACD . Album DR is 11. Crest factor is still a respectable 7. Same as beggars banquet (SACD) or let it bleed (2002 SACD).

Most stones releases have a crest factor of 5-7. Even the "good" ones.

 

[Jean.Francois]

The same thing happens with MP3. And, the lossy download has a "better DR" than the CD.


I suspect that too.. It the clipped-limited peaks don't occur at the same time in the various channels the mix will "look better" with some mixed-peaks higher than others.


But, they didn't do a "good job". Unless you want it constantly-loud or "constantly intense" and you hate all of those volume variations... They did a good job of killing the dynamics.

The comparison of DR or crest factor is an indicator. If you have a master with dynamics, you'll find a vinyl record with dynamics. There are many examples of this in the analyses I've made (example, same DR for analog and digital).
Today, we use tools designed for digital use, but if we apply them as they are to an analog medium, distortion is induced.
The example below shows the result of the DR after cutting as a function of the DR of the master, and shows that for low DRs, the vinyl record returns a higher DR. This does not happen if there is a minimum of dynamics.

The same phenomenon occurs with tape recordings.

 

[maty]

I have done a few tests, with foobar2000 SoX and dBpoweramp SSRC, at 24/96 and 24/48. The best sound is with dBpoweramp SSRC 24/96. FLAC 0 - 1.4.3

I have done a few tests, with foobar2000 SoX and dBpoweramp SSRC, at 24/96 and 24/48. The best sound is with dBpoweramp SSRC 24/96. I could have also done it with iZotope RX but the recording quality is not worth more effort. FLAC 0 - 1.4.3

PS: When I give the finished work I change the hour, 00:00:00 - 11:11:11 - 22:22:22

 

[goat76]

That has always been the Stones sound. To 'repair' it would be to make it something that it is not intended to be.

The intended sound should come from the sounds that were recorded and the tweaks made during the mixing stage to reach the intended and wanted overall sound of the music, that's the sound the band most likely heard in the studio's control room while making the record. What happened after that in the mastering stage of the production, the processing that made the overall sound of the record sound less dynamic and more distorted has most likely nothing to do with the artist's intentions, and their ideas of how they wanted the production to sound.

It's got nothing to do with "repairing" the sound, the production had the intended sound as the better and less squashed master to begin with, not the other way around. And for making it sound louder, well, that's why you have volume controls, and I bet you that the less squashed master will sound way better than the destroyed one when you turn it up to an equal loudness level.

 

[goat76]

I prefer plain stereo to the Atmos version, at least it somewhat resembles rock music in stereo, in atmos it's unfocused and rather annoying for more than one song, but I generally almost never prefer it for guitar music anyway.

I think the sample of the 5.1 version sounded great and not over the top, most of the instruments are mixed the same way as the regular 2-channel mix. The main vocal, the guitar, and the bass guitar are all regularly mixed to the left and right front channels with phantom-centered and hard-panned sounds, the drums are mixed to all the 3 front channels and are the only instruments coming from the center channel. The piano and the backing vocals are mixed to the left and right front channels and the surround channels and this creates a more roomy overall sound than the regular stereo mix.

As said, nothing over the top and I think it's a great surround mix and a good example of a tasty surround mix.

 

[goat76]

In this case of Hackney Diamonds, I'm pretty sure they basically used the same master for both the digital and analog vinyl releases.

That seems to be the case. It's most likely that the same master was used for both the CD and the vinyl versions, with just the regular adjustments to the vinyl version as making the bass mono and applying a highpass filter, which will make it look more dynamic in the digital analyze but will most likely sound similar to the CD version. The vinyl version is also less dynamic than the Atmos mix.

 

[Mulder]

Really? Always thought it sounds alright for a rock album. I have the 2011 Japanese SMH SACD . Album DR is 11. Crest factor is still a respectable 7. Same as beggars banquet (SACD) or let it bleed (2002 SACD).

Most stones releases have a crest factor of 5-7. Even the "good" ones.

Just got hold of an old CD release of Let it Bleed. These attachments show Gimme Shelter and Midnight Rambler from the 1986 LONDON Recording CD release of the Let It Bleed album. No clipping and rather low level. Not as hot as today. Despite being recorded over 50 years ago it sounds better than most digital records of today and much better than Rolling Stones contemporary ugly digital releases.

 

[Descartes]

Why not 9.4.6?