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For all you vinyl purists, this double album was recorded wholly
in the analog domain and mixed down onto half inch analog tape.
It was mastered in Room 7 of
Abbey Road Studios in London, using a Studer A80 playback
machine with advance heads, thus obviating the need for a digital
delay line in the program path. The output of the EMI
transfer console fed a Neumann DMM (Direct Metal Master) lathe to produce
the Copper Masters. Your vinyl copy will therefore
be true AAA (No digital processing).
Some compromises were made to get this album transferred
to vinyl at the level we wanted.
Firstly, the loud annoying bit in track 8 (Side C track 2
"The Sirens") was a problem because of the out of phase
nature of the program causing excessive vertical modulation.
The drawback of DMM is you can't go so deep as with lacquers.
The stereo width was reduced for this section.
(Its still just as annoying, but a bit more "in the middle" than
on the CD). Secondly, for those of you having huge monitors, you
might notice a slight roll off at 40Hz (throughout the record)
(if you compare with a CD)
which meant we could get a better
level on the vinyl and still only use about 70% of the disk area.
(Tracking distortion increases noticeably as you get towards
the center.)
Compact Disc
The transfer for CD was done in a separate pass and converted to
digits using a Prism Sound AD-1 (Dynamic Range Enhanced)
20 bit Analog to Digital converter.
The Digital Output was recorded on a Sonic Solutions workstation
for editing and PQ coding. The program on the CD contains all
the tape hiss present on the original analog master. There was
no noise reduction or fades to digital black.
The CD does not have the 40Hz filter or the reduced stereo imaging
in track 8.
We think you'll be better off with the vinyl, but if you don't have
a record player, then the CD will do.
