BlahBlahCafe - Jean-Michel Jarre forum

Vinyl sounds better than CD / digital precisely because it can't be brick walled to the same extent - the damn stylus would skip off the platter. It's better by default. A well mastered CD can sound amazing. A 24 bit Hi Res download or SACD / DVD-A mastered properly will knock any other format off the floor ...

When you digitize a vinyl with flat or compressed brick wall sound mix it will appear as more dynamic because the software detects all the pops and scratches as more details and musical information which it "thinks" belongs to the musical mix, however in reality all it is is just added vinyl noise, pops and scratches. So the vinyl kind of disguises an originally flat mix with pointier wave forms and tones down the overall sound stage a bit. What it will sound like to the human ear is an other story and a bit of a subjective evaluation. This doesn't say you couldn't compare vinyl to vinyl with similar music and brick wall vs not brick wall squashed mixes on them. I don't think there are any "magical" short cuts for more DR in the sound mix of the same sound mastering/mixed album by simply changing the format. You can't recreate something that isn't there from the beginning.
Oxygene 3 I think has got very good compositions and choices of instruments.
It deserves better then this. If it could have a more vivid, detailed, dynamic, deeper, wider and multi-dimensional sound then why shouldn't it?
You wouldn't listen to a bombastic movie soundtrack through a smartphone speaker would you?
So the best thing JMJ could do now is a DVD release with dts 5.1 surround and start all over from scratch, from the original master.
How about maybe take help from someone who really knows how to NOT brick wall squash everything or as little as possible?


(Oxy 3 hd 24bit/48 .flac)

Velodynamic wrote:Image
(Oxy 3 hd 24bit/48 .flac)

Here Oxygène part 17 :

1 = Vinyl-rip 24 bit 48 khz (DR10)
2 = Qobuz Hi-Res 24 bit 48 khz (DR5)

Vinyl seems better... and (for me too) sounds better.

But like you i'm not happy with that.

Ok I did the same thing as you with Pt 17 on the new vinyl.
This time (and just for the heck of it) I increased the line-in recording level by 10% (60 instead of 50 out of 100).
It doesn't seem to make that much of a difference, does it?

vinyl rip: 24bit / 44.1 kHz
.flac : 24bit / 48 kHz





http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/123366

Part 14

Part 15

Part 16

Part 17

Part 18

Part 19

Part 20

Still something about the vinyl also seems to be a bit "off".
If you don't equalize it to smithereens it's like listening with water in your ear canals.
I'm using my new headphones (Sennheiser Momentum 2 with cord, good reviews) and except for the bass it's as if they are connected to grand mom's old transistor radio.
It's very good music, it's just that it sounds "dead" somehow.

HunterTech wrote:I'll tell you another secret: vinyl doesn't have the same mastering issues that CD can, meaning it'll end up sounding better automatically if your digital master is brickwalled to hell.

I agree. Mastering is far more important than what the carrier/medium is. You should listen to the first CD editions (aka the Red Face Editions) of Oxygene, Equinoxe and Magnetic Fields. They're direct vinyl master transfers with Equinxe being the most obvious one: it's the only one having the "vinyl" version of Equinoxe 5!

They are regarded as the best versions as a poll on this forum showed us a few years ago.

Dr_Jones wrote:They are regarded as the best versions as a poll on this forum showed us a few years ago.

And a WAV/FLAC rip of the Winner edition would be most appreciated.

:ninja:

Finaero wrote:

Dr_Jones wrote:They are regarded as the best versions as a poll on this forum showed us a few years ago.

And a WAV/FLAC rip of the Winner edition would be most appreciated.

:ninja:

ditto!

It would have looked probably something like this, maybe even better.

This is from the 1987, 10th anniversary box.
Polygram Polydor CD Equinoxe Pt 5





(and now I'm off topic)

If you want to hear a difference between O3 on CD and vinyl my advice would be to listen to the bass sequence in Oxygene 17 that begins around 01:15 - on the vinyl version you can hear a straight sequence of eighths; on the CD version it seems as if the mastering was so aggressive that some of the bass notes are missing due to the mix "choking".

Jote wrote:If you want to hear a difference between O3 on CD and vinyl my advice would be to listen to the bass sequence in Oxygene 17 that begins around 01:15 - on the vinyl version you can hear a straight sequence of eighths; on the CD version it seems as if the mastering was so aggressive that some of the bass notes are missing due to the mix "choking".

An other example is at the middle of Part 16, it's easier to separate all the details with the vinyl. The digital version is just a big mess of compressed sound.

An other brilliant one is at the later half of Part 19 and just after the sub looping brake,
try to find the cymbal effect in the digital version if you can (I know I can't).

Velodynamic wrote:An other brilliant one is at the later half of Part 19 and just after the sub looping brake, try to find the cymbal effect in the digital version if you can (I know I can't).

You're right! I knew there was something odd about that edit - I was listening to it and was like "Wait. Is it supposed to be there?"

The cymbal effect is missing but it's not the mastering's fault. Seems to be a different mix altogether.

I purchased the red faced label of Equinoxe a while ago. Have it also ripped on my HDD, should look where exactly though.

Also where exactly in the track is the missing cymbal you're talking about? I'm not entirely sure if I have it or not.

shadow wrote:I purchased the red faced label of Equinoxe a while ago. Have it also ripped on my HDD, should look where exactly though.

Also where exactly in the track is the missing cymbal you're talking about? I'm not entirely sure if I have it or not.

03:52
04:03
04:14
04:26

Ah that sound. Yeah it's indeed missing on the digital release. No doubt that there two different masters used altogether. Same as it did with Electronica where some sounds were missing in the Air track.