"'LPs may be nice for the audio tourist, but wax cylinders have a warmer, more natural sound.'"Way back in the day when people still argued about CDs I was visiting with a sound engineer at 525 (a very fancy video post facility down in California). His point was pretty simple: if CDs sound a bit "grainy" to you, just turn down the treble. Records, it turns, reproduce the same 22kHz signal that CDs reproduce, except when they get a scratch or a nick, they sound awful. So LPs were mastered to account for that, hence the warmer sound, which is basically just less treble, in ultra-simple terms. This audio engineer (I wish I remember his name) said that the ear fatigues more quickly at the high range of human hearing, and so turning down the treble knob also makes long term listening more pleasurable.
I've tried it, and it's kind of amazing. First, you miss the brightness of your music, especially, of course, from a CD. But after awhile it does feel warmer and your ear compensates and listens more closely to the high end.
It's actually pretty cool. Just turn down the treble, give it five minutes, and then see how it sounds. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
More recently, an audio engineer at the Pacific Northwest Audio Engineering Society said that CDs were a bit coarse and grainy in the early days because early CD players didn't have very good filters. Turning down the treble helped even more back then but the trick works even today.
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Um, it indeed does sounds warmer...
ReplyDeleteIt's quite interesting those higher sounds on music does get quite annoying, especially after over-nighter. Could be something to do with this.