Good news for all of you out there who still have a deep love of vinyl; Doug Sax, mastering engineer for Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Pink Floyd since 1983, is interviewed at length in the 2011 edition of "The Absolute Sound" Guide to Vinyl Playback.
During the interview, Sax is asked if the technology has changed in terms of his work. "As far as the LP is concerned, no. As far as what might feed the LP, yes, because now you might be feeding it from digital files, from high-resolution 192 or 96/24-bit, which supplies a very reliable and consistent source. But surprisingly the only real improvement has ostensibly been going to
DMM [Direct Metal Mastering] cutting and that's had flaws in the past — it never won audiophile support. Now, they've apparently fixed the flaws, and they have better copper. But for rock'n'roll, for high-energy music? For example, I'm going to be doing the Roger Waters albums on vinyl and they have extraordinary low end, requiring an astonishing amount of vertical modulation. We use up the full depth available on a lacquer master. You can't do anything like that on DMM. It's very thin; you can't go deep. For that kind of thing it could be an absolute joke."
As work is yet to start on them, it will be some time before there's any release information, but sounds good that Sax is taking his customary care to ensure these sound as good as they can. Our thanks to Bob Dear for letting us know.
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