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The Absolute Sound
Issue 236   October 2013
The Ultimate Format?
Editorial By Robert Harley

   

TAS Issue 236   October 2013  There's been much recent discussion about the glories of analog tape — all of it justified. Anyone who's heard mastertapes at shows (or at length in their reference system, as Jonathan Valin has) will attest to their significant advantages compared with LP. But there's another format that not only vies with analog tape as the ne plus ultra of sources, but in many ways might just exceed tape's performance.

That format is the direct-to-disc LP. Granted, very few performances have been captured by cutting the master lacquer in real time as the musicians perform. But in those rare instances where everything converges perfectly at a direct-to-disc session, the results are transcendental.

Before the widespread introduction of tape in the late 1940s and early 50's (the first taped radio broadcast was Bing Crosby's radio show in October, 1948), all recording was direct-to-disc (albeit in lower fidelity). Tape allowed musicians to record one song at a time, and to edit segments of performances together. The invention of tape also separated the recording and mastering stages, opening the door to mastering as an additional creative step. Overnight, direct-to-disc recording became a quaint anachronism.

But in 1968, mastering engineer Doug Sax and his musical partner Lincoln Mayorga (along with Sax's equipment-designer brother, Sherwood Sax) resurrected direct-to-disc recording for the LP Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Colleagues. They wanted to capture Mayorga's piano with the utmost fidelity. By eliminating the tape machine from the signal path, they avoided the tape format's sonic degradation as well as a tape machine's electronics. Tape's shortcomings include speed instability (particularly audible on piano), self-erasure of high-frequencies, a non-linear hysteresis curve, print-through, and myriad other problems.

Distinguished Colleagues not only demonstrated the sonic superiority of recording directly to the master lacquer, it also launched the iconic Sheffield Lab label. But recording direct-to-disc isn't for the faint of heart. The musicians must perform the entire LP side as a continuous performance with no mistakes. Then the engineer is required to mix on the fly to two channels, with no opportunity to go back and make adjustments to the balance (or equalization). Then the cutting engineer has one shot to get the signal from the recording console into the groove with no flaws.

Lacquer cutting is vastly more difficult in a direct-to-disc session than cutting a disc from tape. In conventional disc mastering, a second playback head, called the "preview head," reads the signal before the actual playback head and automatically widens the groove-spacing during dynamic passages or those with high levels of low bass, and compresses the groove-spacing during quiet passages. The direct-to-disc cutting engineer has no such assistance; he must anticipate dynamic swings and manually adjust the groove-spacing as the music is being performed. If he acts too late, the grooves could crash and ruin the take. If he sets the overall pitch too wide, he'll run out of room toward the inner radius. Remember that everything — musical performance, mix, lacquer cutting — must simultaneously be perfect.

I thought about this process after hearing, for the first time, a direct-to-disc version of an LP I've been listening to for the past 30 years. The record is Secret of the Andes by Victor Feldman. The version I owned was cut from an analog mastertape, but the session was also recorded direct-to-disc and released on the Nautilus label. The cut-from-tape LP has stunning sonics, which is not surprising since it was engineered by the great Alan Sides (that's also his fabulous work on the incomparable 88 Basie Street). I've used Secret of the Andes in equipment evaluation for decades, and also own the JVC XRCD version (in which it is paired with Feldman's Soft Shoulder and renamed Audiophile). I recently found on eBay an unopened direct-to-disc copy of Secret and snapped it up. On its arrival I opened the loose plastic wrap for the first time since its manufacture 30 years ago, and put it on the Basis Inspiration 'table. I was utterly shocked by how much information was missing on the LP that had been cut from an analog master. The direct-to-disc was vastly more dynamic; transient information was both faster and had greater impact. The sense of air and bloom around images outlines was palpable, and the direct-to-disc had a startling immediacy. I could go on and on cataloging the direct-to-disc's superiority, but let's just say it was a dramatic and wholesale improvement. The difference between the two LPs was the elimination of a tape generation.

It's ironic that in the second decade of the 21st Century the best-sounding format extant just might be one that was essentially abandoned more than 70 years ago.

 

 

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