no, it really is different...

[acroyear]

Every so often I'll hit a shuffle of my mp3s that puts on some from my older cd's and therefore older rips, done by Grip on a linux box using an older edition of lame or bladeenc, and when it comes up right after one of my more recent ones using iTunes at 192-320.

and ICK it sounds horrid.

I now want to go back and re-rip the whole lot (in this case, my original single-disc Lord of the Rings soundtracks; the complete editions were done at 256).

some of the celtic stuff done back then sounds ok, but the orchestral stuff just has to go.

Comments

[thatwasjen]

So...you're not one of those "I miss the hiss and pop of LPs" guys, are you?

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

no - i'm one of those "i wish my LPs didn't have the hiss and pop". I do know that they're warmer-sounding, and if the scratches weren't an issue i certainly would prefer the sound, but a good graphic equalizer can do a lot to the digital source.

but really, I played my LPs to death and always have, so CDs are the "finally, it'll never sound scratched" thing i was seeking for ages...and well, then i discovered it's cause a scratched cd simply doesn't sound at all. oops. :)

really, there's also a lot that comes down to the recording and mixing. best of all worlds really is analog recording, then digital mixing. The former gets some of the warmth in the master, then the latter keeps the hiss down as these signals are mixed together and perpetually copied into their final form.

of course, if the cd engineer then comes and overcompresses the signal to death, that's a different issue, but its rare for that to happen in most of the genres i buy.

the one exception seems to be on recent remasters of classic-prog (genesis, for example) - the current remasters on cd have tended to be more compressed than the very clean-sounding (but quieter) masters from the mid 90s (though those FAR improved things over the original cd pressings from the 80s). i dread to wonder what the current attitude of compression will do to ELP masters over the ones I have from the early 90s.