Why are CDs digitized from master tapes?

[Haselsh1]

Yeah, I own a CD of Peter and the Wolf featuring Brian Eno and it has been taken from vinyl.

[paulf-2007]

Alex,

I have 15 IPS 2 track "master" tapes for number of albums inc Sgt Pepper's, Ziggy and Kind of Blue. LP is not as good as the original tape, as it has to be compressed (RIAA) to allow the amplitude of the music in the grooves to fit onto the 12 inch disc. Also, records are played at constant angular velocity (i.e. 33.3 or 45 rpm), which means that the length of grove tracked in one second is much shorter at the inner grooves than at the outer grooves. On the contrary, tape goes across the heads at a constant linear velocity, and the end of the album sounds just as good as the beginning.

If you make a straight unity gain copy of the tape onto CD, the CD also sounds great. The problem is that some engineers will alter the sound, when mastering for digital to take into account the fact that most people listen to music on their phones. The ambient noise level on a train or bus is significant, and so the quiet bits are amplified to make them louder. This reduces the dynamic range of the music, as you can't increaser the signal on the truly loud bits on a digital recording system. Hence a normal digital file or CD can sound compressed.

Charlie

nail head, end of thread, poetry.