ANALOG vs DIGITAL - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

The people at Reference
Recordings have been talking
about a return to vinyl for
years. However this venerable
record company made its enviable
reputation with top-grade LPs, then
with HDCD and more recently SACD.
Clearly, only quality vinyl would do. And
earlier attempts to return to the pressing
plant yielded disappointing results.
There were problems with both existing
cutting suites and pressing plants.
Now, RR vinyl is finally back, and the
quality…well, the first sample that came
into our hands is among the very best
available. More in detail in a moment.
Reference Recordings has been
around for decades, and although Keith
O. Johnson wasn’t there at the very start,
he has been the guiding genius behind
RR during nearly all its existence. The
story of how he got started in recording
is legendary.
Nuts&Bolts
RR Reinvents
Vinyl
In his first year of college he built
a three-channel audio recorder for a
science fair, actually hand-winding the
head coils (he came in second). Needing
some music to demonstrate it, he got
permission to record at a local jazz club.
He knew so little about jazz that he didn’t
recognize the name of the evening’s
star, Red Norvo. His recording remains
available under the title The Forward Look
(RR-7). When he went job-hunting after
college, he applied at Ampex and was told
about the wonderful new three-channel
stereo recorder they had developed. He
pulled a tape from his briefcase, and it
played perfectly on Ampex’s “unique”
new recorder.
Johnson went to work for Fairchild
rather than Ampex, but made recordings
for such companies as Klavier…and of
course Reference Recordings, where
he has been ever since. His college-era
recorder followed, and was used in
countless recording sessions. When you
see the mention “pure analog” on an RR
LP, you know it was made with Keith’s
three-track machine.
Of course even RR eventually had
to release music on CD, though we
were disappointed with the resulting
sound. So was Keith, who began work,
with the help of digital wizard Michael
“Pflash” Pflaumer, on a CD that would
be improved but remain backward
compatible, HDCD. We have written
extensively about HDCD, still used by
RR itself and by several other producers.
It used compression and volume limiting
to allow the music to be encoded with
more bits than a conventional CD. A log
of operations was embedded at very low
level in the dithering signal, so that a
decoder could undo the compression and
limiting during playback. The HDCD
system was eventually purchased by
Microsoft, and its technology incorporated
into the Windows Media codec.
Still, vinyl is back in a big way, and it
seemed inevitable that RR would, sooner
or later, return to the analog medium.
First, a number of problems would have
to be solved.
The cutting lathe used is from
Neumann, but it has been extensively
reworked by mastering engineer Paul
Stubblebine and by Keith himself (Paul
and Keith are shown together in the
photo on the next page). The lathe was
simplified, leaving out any circuitry not
actually needed to get the job done.
There are just three amplification
devices per channel. The mechanical
system was modified to avoid stresses
and undesirable motion of the elements.
Cutting was done at half speed, as is
common for audiophile LPs.
We know that some older master
tapes have not aged well (see Not Made to
Last in UHF No. 90), but the Stravinsky
analog tape, from 1996, had survived
largely unscathed. Using Keith’s trusty
three-channel recorder, the music was
transferred to 24-bit 176.4 kHz digital.
Now we know that will startle the
purists, who — for possibly understandable
reasons — have considered digital
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 31