SHEFFIELD LAB DIRECT TO DISC
Sheffield Labs was the pioneer in the brief revival of direct to disc recordings. The story goes that Doug Sax and Lincoln Majorga, who founded Sheffield, found some old 78 records (which were all direct to disc, since they mostly were cut before tape recorders existed, but that's another story) and were astonished by how good they sounded. They then tried recording some direct to disc records, which audiophiles of the time snapped up, and this pushed some other small recording outfits such as Crystal Clear to do their own D to Ds.
However, it didn't last for a number of reasons. First, if there were any mistakes the whole cut was blown, so musicians tended to play cautiously so as not to waste the take - hence the "great sound, so-so performance" reputation that D to D developed. Second, the groove spacing had to be varied "live" by the recording engineer to prevent grooves from cutting into each other if the musicians were playing loudly, or being spaced too wide apart during soft passages, thus wasting valuable space and limiting the duration of music that could be recorded. If the engineer made a mistake the whole side was blown. Third, since the recording went straight to the master lacquers, there were only a limited amount of records that could be generated from any take, dependent on how many record mastering machines were hooked up to the microphones. You couldn't go back and make more records for a popular title. However, the Sheffield Labs records that were released gained a reputation as some of the best sounding records ever made.
The Mastering Lab (which was the recording cutting side of the business) for which Doug Sax was the recording engineer, also did record mastering for other record labels and earned an excellent reputation on that score.
Another side to the Sheffield story that is not well publicized is an informal experiment that they did during some of the LA Philharmonic recording sessions, IIRC, where they compared digital recorders vs. analog recorders vs. direct to disc (using a blown lacquer as the direct to disc source) vw. live mike feed. This is something that very few audiophiles actually have a chance to experience. The results were written up in an issue of TAS, and the bottom line was that the digital recorder was felt to be the worst, and the direct to disc was felt by all the listeners to be closest to the live mike feed. Of note, the cartridge used in those informal experiments was the cartridge used by the Mastering Lab at that time as their standard cartridge - NOT some expensive audiophile approved moving coil, but a comparatively lowly Stanton 881S equalized (!) for flat response.
Sheffield Labs was the pioneer in the brief revival of direct to disc recordings. The story goes that Doug Sax and Lincoln Majorga, who founded Sheffield, found some old 78 records (which were all direct to disc, since they mostly were cut before tape recorders existed, but that's another story) and were astonished by how good they sounded. They then tried recording some direct to disc records, which audiophiles of the time snapped up, and this pushed some other small recording outfits such as Crystal Clear to do their own D to Ds.
However, it didn't last for a number of reasons. First, if there were any mistakes the whole cut was blown, so musicians tended to play cautiously so as not to waste the take - hence the "great sound, so-so performance" reputation that D to D developed. Second, the groove spacing had to be varied "live" by the recording engineer to prevent grooves from cutting into each other if the musicians were playing loudly, or being spaced too wide apart during soft passages, thus wasting valuable space and limiting the duration of music that could be recorded. If the engineer made a mistake the whole side was blown. Third, since the recording went straight to the master lacquers, there were only a limited amount of records that could be generated from any take, dependent on how many record mastering machines were hooked up to the microphones. You couldn't go back and make more records for a popular title. However, the Sheffield Labs records that were released gained a reputation as some of the best sounding records ever made.
The Mastering Lab (which was the recording cutting side of the business) for which Doug Sax was the recording engineer, also did record mastering for other record labels and earned an excellent reputation on that score.
Another side to the Sheffield story that is not well publicized is an informal experiment that they did during some of the LA Philharmonic recording sessions, IIRC, where they compared digital recorders vs. analog recorders vs. direct to disc (using a blown lacquer as the direct to disc source) vw. live mike feed. This is something that very few audiophiles actually have a chance to experience. The results were written up in an issue of TAS, and the bottom line was that the digital recorder was felt to be the worst, and the direct to disc was felt by all the listeners to be closest to the live mike feed. Of note, the cartridge used in those informal experiments was the cartridge used by the Mastering Lab at that time as their standard cartridge - NOT some expensive audiophile approved moving coil, but a comparatively lowly Stanton 881S equalized (!) for flat response.
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