ABBA Gold Anomalies - CD vs Record demo

A quick demo showing the headroom and dynamic range of the ABBA mixes on each format. I wonder which will win. Audio gremlins caught me out with the recording here gang. Will try to resume normal service soon.

Hello to the Cassette Master, who may like to see the Sony Minidisc Recorder I use!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• ABBA
• Gold
• Dancing
• Queen
• Mamma
• Mia
• Anomalies
• Anomaly
• CD
• vinyl
• record
• recording

[Filipjensen]

I think the reason the Tretow remasters sound overly bright may be that they were in fact eq'ed for vinyl. I don't have a copy of ABBA Gold on vinyl but if this sounds as it should, then you have the answer there.

[MarkPMus]

@Filipjensen I think ABBA Gold vinyls are rarer than hens' teeth. At the time there was not the demand for vinyl that there is today. They would have eq'ed the vinyl and CD separately I am sure. It may have been that the trend for CD's at the time was slightly brighter than today. Also it would have been a way of getting the songs to sound good on the radio without resorting to the crass loudness war techniques that are so prevalent today.

[trhisdone]

who is ABBA ?

[MarkPMus]

ABBA was a very famous swedish pop group from about 1972-1982. Their music was revived recently with the Mamma Mia film and musical - the best selling film and musical on the planet. If you missed the publicity etc... you were probably on holiday. On Mars or somewhere LOL!

[garagecrap]

I've pulled out my old record player today. You guys would not believe the superb sound quality compare to CD. It's so full and crispy - well apart from the dust off course but tha's a part of it too.

[MarkPMus]

Well clean a few records and notice the improvement, Garagecrap!

[padawan23]

@trhisdone Who is ABBA? Ha ha, my God I'm getting old!

[mozpiano2]

@escillon1 ABBA is managed by Universal Music Group, not Sony.

[mozpiano2]

Love to see this comparison comparing a dynamic CD version (which exists) and the original 1970's LP (not the dynamically compressed 2007 The Album LP for example)

[escillon1]

have you ever looked at the old sleeves of abba records(vinyl) you should notice that it states "epic".ok,now some years ago,sony bought the epic label and also the rights to muck about with any recordings issued on the old label.hence meatloaf,abba,and elo amongst many others fell victim to sonys newly developed "hypercompression"(look it up on wikipedia)that is part of the reason all sony re-masters sound crap..it just squeezes the life out of the original recordings.go buy early cd releases.

[freqazoidiac]

Althought your A/B comparison is accurate, the actual test has a major flaw.

I see you playing this through your MD player/recorder. What is the pre-amp source ? That's very important for Dynamic range description. Some preamps have hot or terribly low levels with their phono preamp section. Depends on the circuitry. You have to depend on a flat source of input and then test through sensitive equipment, or even your Mac can show great results. Cheers

[freqazoidiac]

The fact a well mastered LP can go up past 35,000 cycles, and a CD is

clipped at 22,000 cycles, it's not hard to scientifically rule CD's as a loser.

They are a handy format though! I enjoyed that Mini disc format for field recording 10 years ago. If Cd's could be MD then all would be good..but they abandoned that idea. Oh, to get the most out of your LP's, make sure you get a quality cartridge/needle and don't pay more than $500 for the turntable. A technics 1200 mk series is perfect.

[jongkongmas]

LOL!!! Thank god I'm not leaving the planet on my holiday...