The Things They Do To Records!

The Things They Do to Records.

I purchased a few more records of the Classical genre this week. One of the records is a five record set featuring '150' Classical pieces in total. Playing the first record for the first time was interesting as I thought that the audio quality was terrible, with little apparent bass and generally marginal audio quality! It wasn't that until after playing one side of the first record that I realized that my speakers were 'out of phase' as I had just been listening to my FM tuner earlier and did not reverse phase, as I use the 'OOPS' configuration when playing vinyl and that explained the lack of bass! So the audio quality actually wasn't too bad, but they have put a lot of music on each side and the sound quality has been 'slightly' compromised as a result, but it's not too bad all things considered!

Next, to the music itself. Similar to some pop compilations I have, there has been judicious 'editing' of many of the music tracks. Thankfully this has been done quite tastefully so things don't sound too abrupt, still I have to say that hearing Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' 'faded out' halfway though the first movement was hard to take! However, at least one person in this household (my mother) actually doesn't mind the fadeouts and edits, simply because she perceives the album is a music 'primer' of sorts, and some of the tracks if short enough, make it through without any 'trimming'. In fact my mother enjoys this album, with the great variety of different composers on each side despite the 'trimming' more than other albums I've bought in recent times. When I questioned her about the track 'trimming', she replied that yes, she was aware of it, but it didn't detract from the listening experience. Mmmmmmmm!

Her comments got me thinking about related things like the distracting effects of things like scratches, surface noise, distortion and other 'defects', and I realized that many of my favourite records have many of these 'defects' yet essentially, they likewise don't adversely affect my listening enjoyment! A couple of albums immediately come to mind that illustrate this. I have a second hand copy of Credence Clearwater Revival's album 'Cosmo's Factory' which was obviously played with a heavy stylus as many of the tracks show obvious groove damage and audible distortion, and despite having most of the tracks on the album on CD, I rarely play the CD. 'Ramble Tamble' and 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' to my ears, still sound better on an imperfect vinyl, however a good wash when I first acquired the album did help improve the sound quality somewhat! That's a pretty good album actually, one of CCR's best efforts, in my opinion!

One of my Beatles albums is a similar story. Despite considerable record 'warping' and scratches, hearing 'Strawberry Fields Forever' on vinyl is magical, yet the CD version leaves me cold! I guess as an extension of this kind of thinking, people often ask me if I put vinyl onto CD and/or use noise removal software. Well, no I don't and to be honest, I wouldn't even consider it. I just play records, that's it! I guess there is an element of absolute 'warts and all' truthfulness in my thinking, but in any case I can't really see much value in this kind of 'restoration' except to correct gross problems in the original recording, and then only as a very last resort.

I've only had very limited practical personal experience with noise removal software and only on others systems, but I have plenty of CD's where digital 'de-noising' and other clean ups techniques have been used and whilst they may be quiet and clean, they have the kind of sonic 'blandness' that reminds of me of biting into cardboard. Yuk! Give me vinyl anytime ! More to come! Felix.