Some of us have systems that are very revealing of not so good recordings.Some of us have sensitive hearing or (me) hyperacusis(spelling?) so that overblown frequencies make us cringe.For me I can enjoy certain music on lower resolution devices but never on my rig at home"shudder!"
Are todays digital recordings engineered to sound best on a smartphones?
I finally found some new hard rock that I like. Greta Van Fleet. I found them on YouTube and they sounded awesome on my LG V30 and some modified Grado SR60s. On boy I thought how they would sound on my 50k system. Strolling through Wal-Mart I saw both their albums and got them. I enthusiastically slid the disc in my SA-10. RIGHT BEFORE MY EARS I had one of my most anticlimactic disappointing musical experiences. It sounded flat and compressed with the vocal mix farther in the background. Pretty much uninvolving. If I had heard the CD first on a decent home system I wouldn’t have bought it. I will try my headphones into the SA-10 and see how it goes. Is YouTube streaming hi-rez I wonder???