When CDs first came onto the market in 1982 .......


Everyone was "blown away" with the perceived clarity of sound.

I might be wrong (hence this post) but my recollection was the major difference between a CD and it's vinyl analog was merely volume. 

CDs were mastered with an audio stream turned up to 1.2v (?) whereas all analog recordings (vinyl, tape etc.) had been mastered using an analog audio stream of 0.8v

Is this on the money or am I mistaken ... ??

ozymandias_

Showing 2 responses by chmaiwald

Some early CD just sounded horrible. I still loved them because I didn‘t listen to the sound much. As much as some remasters are bad in their own respect, in some cases they were just neccessary. I‘m glad I didn‘t have to fully go through the early stages of the medium and only joined in the early 90s.

One example:

As far as I know the dominance of streaming ended the loudness war as we knew it. Spotify, Amazon etc let their own algorythms adjust the loudness (and whatnot) after they were uploaded. That’s why we rarely have to adjust the volume when listening to streamed music. LUFS - a more psychoacoustic way of measuring perceived loudness - is what counts now. I am not an expert and can’t say how a LUFS-oriented mixing/mastering approach affects dynamics but from what I read it does not make overcompressed and turned up to the max mixes and masters as neccessary as before.