[ProAudio] FeralA - Recordings released encoded with Dolby A

[Bill Whitlock]

I've been reading this thread with great interest - and admittedly cringed at the talk of using A encoding as an "effect" - but I can attest to the ignorance about multi-band "companding" by many mastering engineers.  I was manager of electronic development engineering at Capitol from 1981-1988 and, toward the end saw the mastering people grappling with the differences between mastering for vinyl and cassettes and the "new" CD - lots of opinions and very little science about reference and peak levels. I was never directly involved in the mastering process. Most of my work was developing improved record electronics for 64x cassette duplication (Capitol "XDR" brand) in the factories, including our own implementation of B&O's HX Pro.  In 1988, in our development lab, we were recording cassettes at 64x directly from digital masters (they were amazing first-gen analog).  Anyway, because I understood the physics of magnetic recording, as well as the companding processes of Dolby A and B, I often got called into disputes about reference levels and "Dolby tones" - and the importance of machine calibration tapes of accurately-known fluxivity (185 vs 250 nWb is a big deal).  And, for what it's worth, I had pretty good ears back in those days and could never hear the effects of Dolby A if the signal chain was properly calibrated and set-up.  Therefore, I can completely understand the Dolby staff "eye roll" and agree with Bob.  
Bill WhitlockAES Life FellowIEEE Life SeniorWhitlock ConsultingVentura, CAOffice (805) 755-5018


-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Olhsson via ProAudio <proaudio at bach.pgm.com>
To: proaudio at bach.pgm.com <proaudio at bach.pgm.com>
Sent: Sun, Feb 9, 2020 11:51 am
Subject: Re: [ProAudio] FeralA - Recordings released encoded with Dolby A

#yiv5360207976 #yiv5360207976 -- _filtered {} _filtered {} #yiv5360207976 #yiv5360207976 p.yiv5360207976MsoNormal, #yiv5360207976 li.yiv5360207976MsoNormal, #yiv5360207976 div.yiv5360207976MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:sans-serif;} #yiv5360207976 a:link, #yiv5360207976 span.yiv5360207976MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;} #yiv5360207976 .yiv5360207976MsoChpDefault {} _filtered {} #yiv5360207976 div.yiv5360207976WordSection1 {} #yiv5360207976 A problem was that Dolby A was designed for 185 nWb. record levels and assumed tape hiss would be present to mask the artifacts. Elevated Dolby levels were a bad sounding mistake. I asked someone from Dolby about this at an AES show. He rolled his eyes and said “Yes, most Americans get it wrong.” A huge proportion of British pop and classical records during the late ‘60s and ‘70s used properly aligned Dolby.  Bob Olhsson 615-562-4346  From: Richard L. Hess via ProAudio
…Working with John on this has pointed out to me how much damage Dolby A coding/decoding did to a recording. Back in the day, my purist recording friend, Don Ososke from San Francisco never used Dolby as he hated what it did to the music. I tried some dbx and found it horrid, but I needed some NR on the choir recordings I was doing, so I sprung for a pair of 361s and used them, but I'm really glad we have that behind us now.  _______________________________________________
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