On first listen, I liked the tunes. Nothing really stood out as a single but these are solid rock tunes that should satisfy Tom Petty fans.<\/p>\n
Sunday morning, Ryan stopped by the AIX Records table and we played the disc in my Oppo through the Smyth Realiser. Initially, I presented the internal musical loop provided by Symth. I soloed each of the \u201cvirtual\u201d speakers and he immediately picked up on the \u201cover the shoulder\u201d presentation of the left and right speakers. Then I played the disc and let him cruise through a number of the tracks. The sound was definitely coming from out of his head but he commented, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t sound that different than the stereo mix\u201d. <\/p>\n
I put the headphones on and listened for a few minutes and had to agree. The sound of his 5.1 mixes didn\u2019t actually spread the sound of the individual instruments around the speaker array. I\u2019m sure he worked the stereo mix before crafting the surround mix because it\u2019s very similar in overall sound and localization of instruments. The drums are spread across the front as they traditionally are in the stereo mix\u2026and they remain spread across the front of the surround mix. It seems as though they are pulled off the front wall but only by a small amount. The rest of the mix is likewise less aggressive in the use of space than I would done but there are no \u201ctraditional\u201d surround mixing formulas in place, which means every mixing engineer is free to do whatever they want with the additional channels.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re expecting to be immersed in a well defined, new presentation of the tracks in the 5.1 versions, you\u2019ll be disappointed. I know I prefer aggressive surround mixes and felt let down by the 5.1 that heard through the phones. Again, I can\u2019t wait until I crank up the project in my own room\u2026although I don\u2019t honestly think it will change that much.<\/p>\n
The producer\u2019s note doesn\u2019t really satisfy my requirements for \u201cfull and accurate disclosure\u201d with regards to the information about high-resolution audio. The mention of \u201c256 times more resolution that a CD\u201d is the first bump I ran into. Yes, moving from 16-bits to 24-bits offers 8-more bits or 256 times more amplitude values per sample but you only get the \u201cfull dynamic range, from the softest to the loudest sounds\u201d if they are actually present in the music. The Tom Petty songs don\u2019t have more than 16-bits worth of dynamic range\u2026I doubt whether they exceed 4-bits.<\/p>\n
This specification is already sticky enough without confusing the issue further with irrelevant numbers and comparison etc. I’m comfortable allowing artists, engineers, and producers to do anything they want within the high-resolution format…even ignore the benefits if they so choose. They can still call it high-resolution because the adopted the specifications but for creative reasons moved on.<\/p>\n
The Tom Petty record was recorded at 48 kHz\/24-bit on Ryan’s Pro Tools rig after it had digitally traversed from the “stage” area where they like to play to the control room according to Ryan. I asked him specifically about this because I wanted to know why he wouldn’t have chosen 96 kHz.<\/p>\n
Welcome to confusing world of non-audiophile high-resolution audio recordings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On first listen, I liked the tunes. Nothing really stood out as a single but these are solid rock tunes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[657,50,40,172,57,242,779,783,725,785,1032,70,640,26,639,651,769,42,298,251,645,1035,638,637,227,643,787,768,781,169,276,780,250,784,347,786,782,659,673,658,660],"class_list":["post-3583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dr_aixs_posts","tag-advanced-resolution","tag-aix-records","tag-analog-vs-digital","tag-audio-resolution","tag-audio-specifications","tag-audiophile-mastering","tag-autotune","tag-avatar-studio","tag-blu-ray-discs","tag-digital-walkman","tag-dvd_audio","tag-hd-downloads","tag-hd-music","tag-hd-audio","tag-hi-res-audio","tag-hi-res-audio-logo","tag-hi-res-logo","tag-high-resolution-audio","tag-high-res-music","tag-high-resolution","tag-high-resolution-audio-experience","tag-highresaudio","tag-hires-audio","tag-hires-music","tag-hra","tag-hra-listening-experience","tag-hypnotic-eye","tag-jas","tag-lady-gaga","tag-mark-waldrep","tag-mastering","tag-melodyne","tag-sony","tag-sony-nwz-a17","tag-spectragram","tag-tom-petty","tag-tony-bennett","tag-uhd-audio","tag-ultra-hd","tag-ultra-hd-audio","tag-ultra-high-definition-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3585,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583\/revisions\/3585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}