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To an extent, it is 'part of the charm', although some of the older recordings 'clean up' fairly well with modern remastering technologies. They will never have the liquid clarity of a well-done modern digital recording though. Reel-to--reel transports of good quality, in good condition, to do the work, are an endangered species though. Many 'remasters' are done on subpar machines. Another factor is that often what you are hearing is not sourced from the original studio master, but a several-generations-old dub- and generational loss does a number on the sound quality. I have These problems even affected how the music was played- I've noticed that a lot of the tunes on these 'vintage' recordings start and stop rather definitley ratheher than fading in or out, which may have been to avoid having the listener's attention being drawn to the unavoidable tape hiss, mostly masked at medium-to-loud levels.There are ways to eke out a little more quality from these old analog msources though.The vintage has something to do with it- recordings from the early tape era ('40's-'50's) don't sound as good as machines from, say, the 80's- the difference is easily audible due tio inprovements in the transports and electronics.A bit of a tangent, but as there are many distortions in recordings of the era you're discussingOne interesting improvement is surprisingly little known- the Plangent Process.It uses a special tape head that is much wider bandwidth than those available at the time the recordings were made- wide enough to detect the bias signal laid down on the tape.Now why would one want to do that? It's way above the range of human hearing.Heres why: The bias signal is laid down on the tape by a high frequency oscillator that is extremely stable in frequency. When the tape is played back, however, speed variations of several types are introduced- speed drift, wow, flutter. By digitizing the oriiginal source at an extremely high sample rate, the bias signal- including fluctuations in its frequency due to those faults- can be detected and used to provide a 'map' of these artifacts on the tape and tune them out almost completely.A good example is the 'Kind of Blue' sold by HDTracks. If you are a fan of this recording, you need to buy this. Period.Plangent, however, will not remove other distortions like tape saturation, modulation noise, or the other distortions these recordings are replete with- but evey litlle improvement helps, and often these recordings can end up sounding better then they have a right to- depending strongly on what generation the work is being done from.More info on Plangent:https://21f72ab1-6f23-4640-a146-4565b99a5d53.filesusr.com/ugd/2aa449_e428f2e04d794cd2b527402e0327fb6c.pdf
No problem. And there's nothing wrong with Qobuz per se; there's just no substitute for SQ in the source material and Plangent takes you a (big) step closer to the original sound, actually bettering the original master. Using the bias signal this way- impossible with vintage tape heads- is genius. It takes the listener a step closer to what everybody heard in the studio, which is the whole point of all this, right?
Thank you so much for such a great explanation. The BIG thanks goes out to the HDTracks version of Kind of Blue.........oh my. I've been listening to it on Quboz this whole time (used to have the SACD version) and it's NIGHT AND DAY different. The warmth and immediacy of this version is so much better, everything is better!Great.......I thought I was happy with Quboz but this just blew my mind.......schitt (it's allowed that way)
Help me understand... if I download the HD Tracks version of “Kind of Blue”, I guess in 192/24, it will be different than the Quboz version in 192/24?
