Bad recordings and high end audio

alexberger-

Hi @millercarbon ,

A great post!
I’m agreed with you 100%.

Thanks. But I’m at 11k. Could you narrow it down a little? ;)
blue-magoo-

Led Zeppelin sounded best on my 8 track player in my car when I was 20. I recently bought a new vinyl version and it sounds terrible.

8 track is the worst format ever. Even so, if you "recently bought a new vinyl version and it sounds terrible" don’t blame the recording. Don’t blame the vinyl. Blame the recent version pressing.

Vinyl records are incredibly individual items. No two ever exactly the same. Even among the first original pressing run there are better and worse examples. There even is a whole business devoted to finding the very best sounding copies and selling them at seemingly insanely jacked up prices. They would never be able to do this if the records didn’t sound equally insanely good. So there is that much difference copy to copy.

But you didn’t buy one of those original vintage pressings. You bought a "recent version". Nobody even knows what that means! It could be you got something remastered. More likely you got one of the crap junk pressings knocked off to fill the growing demand of newbies seeking vinyl. Being new they think they are all the same, because you know CD are all the same. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So it is entirely possible you got something where they grabbed whatever generation worn out tape they could find cheap, knocked off a few plates and pressed some dreck. Don’t feel bad, I bought one like this myself one time years ago. Entirely possible what you got really does sound worse than 8 track.

@gumbedamit,
"Frogman: I respectfully disagree with your statement of a bad recordings sounding better on a good system vs, a bad system. Good/Great systems reveal just how poorly a a recording was created or how well. Garbage In. Garbage out. Lesser systems don’t have the resolving power, thus colorizing the noise making it sound better..."

I used to believe this. It certainly seemed to make sense. For a very long time, quite a few years I think, this idea held up pretty good.

The last couple years now it has become increasingly obvious this is bunk. What happens instead is sometimes things we think are improvements really are not that well balanced. When we change something and some recordings sound better while others do not we blame the "bad" recordings. When in fact what really happened is we made an unbalanced "improvement".

I have written about this before. I have plenty of records I was sure were dull dead, lifeless, insipid poorly done recordings. All the Linda Ronstadt recordings with Nelson Riddle, her voice was good and that was about it. Some cuts like Round Midnight just laid there. When I play them now it is stunning how full of life they are. Round Midnight is tense with drama. Instruments were sort of buried in the mix to the point I was sure this congealed sort of sound had to be endemic to the recording. Now every thread shines and sparkles. The sax on some of them is absolutely soaring!

But at the same time there are recordings I was sure were "hot" or hyper detailed with a hard edge or glare that was fatiguing, and again I was sure these were part and parcel of the recording. Wrong. Now they sound terrific, no glare, no fatigue. It wasn’t the recording after all.

Jim James’ guitar solo on Kansas City is so distorted it was hard at first to make out the notes. Now I play it and wonder how it was it ever sounded so hopelessly distorted. Has to be real genuine balanced improvements are now letting me hear both the distortion and the fundamental tone just as the artist intended.

Now at this point I will ask those who think "revealing" means revealing flaws to stop and think about this. These two outcomes would seem to be mutually exclusive, would they not? If the system "makes" the damp dull recording sound more dynamic and detailed, then surely it would also make the dynamic sparkly recording too hot? But yet it does not. Or if it makes the hot record sound smoother then surely it would make the dull one even duller. Would it not?

It would. But yet it does not. Therefore the premise is false.

The only way this makes sense is the definition of what is "good" or "better" in a system is wrong. A truly good system does not "make" the recording anything. In other words the flaws you are hearing are maybe not so much in the recording as you think.

There is an awful lot going on here that people are missing. Allow me to enlighten you.  

Recording: this is the master tape. People are saying a recording sounds this or that when all they know is how their copy of a record sounds on whatever they heard it on. This is the point of the Mike Lavigne story. That tape was right off the master. That Led Zep recording is a monster. Anyone saying otherwise should be clear what they are talking about.   

Bass: Led Zep does indeed have some low bass. It is just that back in the day the focus was recording the music. The music wasn't low frequency driven. The recording techniques were however perfectly capable of capturing what really low bass there was. So it is there, but the way they recorded it is not the way you remember from hearing it blasted over and over again on crap stereo.  

Tone controls: These are antithetical to high end audio. See above. It is tone controls more than anything else that created this false belief in how recordings sound. Tone controls don't work the way people think. They don't correct frequency response or make up for hearing. Every singer, every musical instrument has it's own characteristic fundamental tone. This fundamental tone is accompanied by a whole spectrum of upper harmonics called timbre. Tone controls wreak havoc on this relationship, destroying realism and the uniqueness of each instrument in the process. Tone controls are an abomination.  

Tone controls are however great for people with no real aspirations to achieve high fidelity sound quality. 

It is not hard, unless you make it hard. Experts here lined up to help! Audio has improved so much in 25 years you can throw a rock and hit something better. Even the Maggies. But then we get into the making it hard part. If you buy speakers that are highly sensitive and easy to drive this is such a huge advantage you cannot believe. This opens the door to very affordable yet incredibly high quality sound like a Raven Blackhawk. If you want a speaker that sounds every bit as good as a Maggie, and then some, AND is super easy to drive, listen to this guy. https://youtu.be/7RxRTFx6Cd0?t=342 Bear in mind he loves Maggies.

I was at Mike Lavigne’s a week ago. Mike has master tapes (dubbed, obiously, not original) and played Led Zeppelin. Rest assured, this is NOT a "horrible" recording!   

It is insanely good. There was at one point a particularly incredible guitar screech that made me gasp. Takes a lot to make me gasp. From behind I heard Mike, "As God intended it." Indeed. That is the kind of recording this is. 

Every time I think my expectations of in-store sales are as low as they can go something comes along makes me lower the bar yet again.

If you enjoy driving around being a pita to people who clearly have other better things to do, and who more likely than not will spew nothing but blather, all in order to limit yourself to what few random components happen to be in your area, well then, knock yourself out.

Hope you enjoy it. Hope it works for you.

Myself, I know if I did that then I would have NONE of what I have today. NONE. Not one single thing. Instead I would have nothing but dreck. Absolute dreck.

This is my insight. Stop wasting time with people who do nothing but waste your time. Stop limiting yourself to what few things happen to be nearby. Stop paying retail. Focus on direct sales manufacturers like Tekton, Raven, Decware, Bottlehead, Townshend, Origin Live, etc. Focus on reviews. Within reviews, focus on listening impressions. Within listening impressions focus on emotional involvement. Within emotional involvement look for non-audiophile types who are moved to tears- or experienced audiophiles who say they are done looking now that they have this. Whatever "this" may be. Now you have hit the motherlode. And all without leaving home. Been doing it this way going on 15 years now. Only way to fly.