Bad recordings and high end audio

@daydream check in with Mark at Reno Hi-Fi , big Pass dealer w demo and trade in gear galore…

Well with Vandersteen 7, Treo CT, Quad ESL -63, etc…listening fatigue is the least of my worries.

I would like to build a room for the MBL 101, with certain more 2D recordings, they can be magical….

@dgibans those New Pass amps are out of my budget but I am keeping and eye out for used stuff. Thank you! 

I am 61 so I am trying to not even start that round about. I plan on retiring soon and am guessing I will not have the funds for a ton of constant upgrades. I have a pretty wide range of music I listen to. Seems like I get on jags and will be stuck on genre for a while. I love female vocals. Acoustic instruments. Horns ect. I guess I was really surprised when I started and went to  2 shops in a row and when they ask me if there was anything else I wanted to hear, I thought for a second and went through the music files in my head. I came up with Led Zeppelin lol. When they told me no  because there was only poor recording my thought was “ what happens if I want to listen to Led Zeppelin at home.”  That took me so off guard so then I turned to this awesome forum for help, vent and guidance. I have gotten priceless insights from you and everyone here so much so that I am kind of glad I ran into back to back Led Zeppelin haters lol. Thats a joke I know it was more then Led Zeppelin 😀 wait or maybe not lol .

I haven't really compared versions but when I listened through tidal and my system it sounded pretty good. that being said.  you will enjoy your maggies. I had them and paired them with Pass Int-250 and added Rel subs. Sounded great.  Can't remember what your budget is but you might also be able to find used. Happy listening!

@mikekollar,
"That is exactly right; case in point for me. Never really listened or cared much for Steely Dan. For decades,was just sort of ehh, catchy tune, whats next. But now..... holy crap, these recordings are unbelievable. love Steely Dan. Yes a great stystem will change your listening tastes. I have amongst others, a play list of female vocals and another of acoustic guitar stuff. Amazing. Would have never listened to any of it until upgraing 4 years ago"



Ok, we know Dan placed great emphasis on sound recording quality but your post, more than anything else, seems to highlight the dangers of listening to the system ahead of the music.

Here’s hoping you don’t eventually end up with a music collection akin to what’s heard at most HiFi Shows.


@tomic601,so many speakers, so few lives…ha

There’s even a term for this now. With so much choice the modern consumer is often bewildered and ultimately defeated by ’decision fatigue’ into making a poor decision. In a similar way a chess master might spend ages deciding upon a move only to end up playing an otherwise obvious blunder.

Factor in listening fatigue and you can appreciate just how hard life can become for the beleaguered 21st century audiophile as they vainly seek to disembark from the upgrade roundabout.

@sgreg1 and @mikekollar I think you are both right and looking am forward to this aspect of a new system. I mist admit I currently feel the same was about Steely Dan that you describe so I better pick my system out carefully lol. Thank you. 

That is exactly right; case in point for me. Never really listened or cared much for Steely Dan. For decades,was just sort of ehh, catchy tune, whats next. But now..... holy crap, these recordings are unbelievable. love Steely Dan. Yes a great stystem will change your listening tastes. I have amongst others, a play list of female vocals and another of acoustic guitar stuff. Amazing. Would have never listened to any of it until upgraing 4 years ago

We all have this same experience when we move up the food chain with our gear. You will play a recording that you have listened to and enjoyed for decades even your go to songs that just made your day. You will play on the reference system and ask what the heck is wrong this is not what I have heard all theses years. Reference systems will expose bad recording times 10. This does not mean you still can’t enjoy them but just know they will sound different. Then you will play a recording that you have heard in the past that you were just ok with, familiar with but not in your listening rotation that will blow your mind. If like me you will first enjoy the new music and then start questioning what have you been missing all these years. You will discover new music that will change your listening habits and replace the old goto’s. Still enjoy the not so good recordings but look forward to the new world you are entering. Always remember that in the end it is all about one thing the music. Enjoy the music and the journey.

Well for what its worth, I love my Legacy focus xd speakers. 4 way design with 2 12 inch woofers in each to 16h, 2 midrange and 2 ribbon tweeters. the reviews were all correct in the end. great speakers. they better be at 16k

tomic, tomic....Too Many Things in general, one life is quite enough, thanx...*L*

Eternal life is a curse fer chure...look what it did to God...;)

Everybody blames you, responsible for everything, always calling you at inopportune times....

Sooo true. Thank you for remembering that I had listening set up for today!! 

so many speakers, so few lives…ha

@tomic601 i do love the sound of the maggies however today was the first time I thought the boxes were disappearing a bit even though every one was a box speaker.

Sooo today I heard Sonus Faber that were similarly priced to the Magnepan 3.7i. Also heard Focal Kanta 2. These were around 10 k , I enjoyed my visit there. They have Macintosh stuff which is the first time I have seen or heard this. They also have audio research which I heard with the Maggies ( among other brands). I thought the Focal sound great. i wonder how they would do in my Med sized room. I found another place about an hour away that carried Goldenear speakers and listened to the triton ref. I really enjoyed this sound. All different sounding and I  like certain aspects of each one. Yes, most of these speakers I heard today are much more dynamics, I knew they would from the comments and some research.They are very helpful at paragon. In a couple weeks I will be taking a Friday-Sat trip to Chicago. I also have the number for the Atlanta store to visit when I gong here in Nov. had a fun day! Do I have it figured out … NOOOO lol.

How was your trip to Paragon ?

Thank you everyone for the huge amount of comments. This was my first real reach out and everyone has been so helpful.i learned a ton!  I am once again going to filter through the comments. So appreciate each one of you!

I agree with Stuartk619. I have combined a circa 1995 Bryston 3B amp with a rare New York Audio Minuet in A hybrid tube preamp. The reason I did this is to get the best of both worlds. The Bryston of that time-period is an awesome power amp, but can be a little "bright". The New York Audio Minuet in A  tamed down the brightness without any apparent degradation in musicality. The Minuet in A is a legend...it is still considered a top-shelf preamp after all these years, But they are hard to find as most owners do not want to part with them. But you probably find one in great condition for $800 or so. I am a real fan of hybrid tube preamps combined with high-end solid state amps. A match made in heaven. But there seems to be lot more hybrid tube preamps on the market now so you have other choices, But for me, I'm sticking with Minuet in A.

To get the best recorded Led Zeppelin sound, get the Celebration Day Blu-ray that includes 2 cds of the same performance. You have not heard Led Zeppelin sound like this!

…and part of my patronage to a particular artist and recording studio is near yearly sponsorship of the LP version of the album they put out. As a consequence, I am quite familiar w the high rez file, the half track 15 ips master and what comes off the LP ( from a super experienced LA based mastering engineer )…. they are night and day different…

fun

Protection copy of what master ? in the case of early Zep most likely the mastering for cutting a lacquer with the goal of being able to play on the average turntable of the day and maybe on a Delco AM/FM car radio of the day, low low bar for bass reproduction indeed. Anybody remember a Delco tweeter in the 70’s ? ah hem…. no.
Not really practical to build much of a music collection w legit or bootleg copies of protection tapes, i have two half track machines, ask me how i know. 

This thread has gone on long enough, but I'm nevertheless inclined to make a couple of comments.

First: the notion that good recordings sound great, bad recordings bad, on a fine system. These undefined terms ("great," "bad," etc.) are a problem. A fine system is exciting almost regardless of the content it's reproducing. There's a presence to the presentation, a depth to the bass, a sparkle to the highs, that's a visceral thrill regardless of what's being played. But, that said, a fine system of course reveals the limitations of poor recordings. It doesn't necessarily make them sound "bad"; on the contrary, it often makes them sound better than they deserve to sound, IMO. But: it brings out subtleties and detail and soundstage specificity in good recordings that a lesser system just can't reproduce at all.

The lesson: the quality of the original recording is probably the second most important element in audiophiliac satisfaction (the audio system itself being first). There are many great recordings, especially in the "classical" realm in digital formats (including SACD). Recordings that not only reproduce the timbre of instruments as they actually sound, but that manage to create an illusion of spatial precision that can far exceed that of a live performance. Those recordings, played on superlative systems, is what this "hobby" is all about.

Led Zeppelin? Yeah, even relatively poorly remastered versions are viscerally exciting played loud on a good system (hell, admit it: they're exciting played loud in one's car). That's not to deny that there are better and worse versions; I own a clean copy of the Robert Ludwig pressing of LZII, and it is something. But, hey; they're all Led Zeppelin, and as such, they have their limitations AS MUSIC. There are many, many things to be appreciated in music that a Zep fan has no idea of. Sorry, but the exquisite chamber music moments in Haydn symphonies, or in the inner movements of Mozart symphonies, or, or, or...no Zeppelin track can compare to.

Now, as to Millercarbon's rant against tone controls. No room is perfect. No mastering is exactly like a different one of the same performance (there are even differences between CD and SACD masterings of the same original tape). Tone controls are no panacea, and passing a signal through a potentiometer does, of course, degrade it to some small extent. But tone controls, used judiciously and with skill, can partially compensate for problematic room acoustics, for a speaker's tendency to be overly bright, for a recording's intrinsic flaws, and for many other problems. Why would one not want to have that sort of control over the general acoustic profile of recorded music? Even if you don't know what you're doing, tone controls can be a plus; you can partially tailor the music to your tastes, even if those tastes are contrary to what the recording engineer or original performer wanted.

I never was able to do much with tone controls. Although when I was a youngster I had a graphic equalizer and then a parametric equalizer I will now admit at 61 years old I had no idea what I was doing with them lol. I understood what you were saying with the master tape story. Thank you again Miller.

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. 

@mikekollar, "Back in Black", a great Rock tune, is AC/DC....

And that last comment by dodgealum1 is exactly right. In my earlier comment about comparing Radio head and def leppard recordings to led zep, I should have mentioned this: compare those recordings to "when the levee breaks". You know that the opening drum beat on this song should have kicked base ass. but it doesn’t. You know the deep base is there but no matter what you do, there is no way to pull it out as its just not on the recording. Even worse, when the harmonica and guitars kick in, the drum beat falls off even more. terrible, awfull, criminal recording engineering. Again, the greatest rock band of all time absolutely blew it on their recordings forever. what a colossal loss.

I think these two songs are one of the best to demo a system.  They are also very high quality recordings.

1.  Nasty by Vincent Ingala
2.  Little Person by Michael Wollny

I have a vivid memory from my newbie days bringing a Zep LP to a speaker demo and wondering aloud why the pair I was interested in had no bass. The store owner answered “because this recording has no deep bass” which surprised and shocked me. Then he put on a different recoding that actually had well recorded deep bass and I realized he was right.

When I was a budding audiophile in the '70s I bought a pair of Stax SR5 electrostatic headphones to upgrade from my Sennheiser HD414s.  Great records of the day, like "Catch Bull", or "Workingman's" sounded awesome, but what really got me was how amazing they made my collection of Chess "Real Folk Blues" mono blues records sound.  These are NOT HiFi by any stretch.  Howling Wolf was right in my head, as vivid as can be.  The electrostat's lack of distortion freed the music to express itself.  That's when I learned that a system that sounds awful with lesser recordings really isn't that great. 
Maggie 3.7is are excellent...just focus on an electronic combo that has tube musicality and high current amplification...best accomplished with a tube preamp and a SS amp (even class D can work).  

Daydream, I'm a big Maggie fan and love the 3.6/3.7s. But I'm not sure if that would be the right speaker for you. You'll have to pull them out 6 feet into the room and they will need lots of power, I'm thinking 250wpc minimum. You'll also want to add a subwoofer for some added weight. I can't recommend a speaker for you, I know what I like, but in your case and your desire to listen to older stuff, I'm thinking something efficient and a nice tube amp. Good luck with your shopping. 

I think a small part of this is from audiophiles who get wowed by overly bright speakers (i.e. detailed).  Current Dali being a great exemplar of this.  Bright recording + bright speakers = misery.  Then of course there was the era of really bad digital drums at the start of the CD era.

Another part is fear of tone controls. Trying to establish some sort of cultural purity by never turning to them when you need to.

Honestly recordings over the ages have varied a great deal in their target market and expected audio systems to play them on.

My best advice is get a middle of the road speaker system not too bright not too much bass.  Use tone controls.  Get good room treatment that has a good mix of diffusion absorption and bass traps.  You'll find yourself listening a lot more and when you need to tweak it, so be it.

when you have enjoyed this hobby and music for a long time, I think you come to understand that different source materials are poor/average/good/great, just like the music itself....no system is going to make a poor recording sound great, no more than a great system is going to make lousy music sound great.  We all have our favorite music  and our favorite recordings, and hopefully we have those really special ones that check both favorite columns....I know I am guilty for buying a few LPs over the years that  I read rave reviews of , listened to them once, and never again.  On the other hand, some of my absolute favorites I dont see others mention....but isnt this all part of the fun?

Is 14x20 a big enough room for Maggies?  

You could try hybrid integrated, some use tube pre with Class D.

PS i stream Led Zep 24 bit and it's not as bad as some make it sound.  Some versions have questionable instrument placement but guitar and voice are OK sounding, especially acoustic.  Sorry Jimmy.

If you liked the Dyneaudio you might want to consider Dali as well. I just received a pair of Opticon 8 and though I haven't had the time since to spend time on positioning I am very happy!

I don’t have the experience on a lot of different systems or components to recommend what might pair up well with your Maggie’s but I will comment on Led Zeppelin. I have very early pressings of Led Zep I and II and when I want to hear something really loud they are many times in the stack of records that I line up. I have a combination of PS Audio, Clearaudio and Vandersteen in my system and have never thought those Led Zep pressings were anything less than fantastic. Maybe my system is the right combination for those records but on songs like Whole Lotta Love, The Lemon Song, and I Can’t Quit You Babe it sounds like John Bonham is in the house!

native dsd they sell the best recordings and not only dsd!! Than you can hear how important is a good sound engineer. 
Phill Collins the most bad recordings ever produced.

"They call it Mello Cello (...quite rightsly...)..." ;)

Funny.

Up, off, 'n oy vay.....
A pleasant weekend to all, J

...all the subtlety of an 10# sledge on a full soda can....

Now is much improved...and more subject to scrutiny....

Ones' background in that era, halcyon or no....colors our current perception of what we now hear....;)

"....I took a whole lotta drugs...*eeeuuuuu*...
I felt a whole lotta bugs...*eeeuu*'..."
*drum echoland...* (more cymbal, pleze....)
 
We -had- to have been There.....we were....

...it just doesn't sound the same, now....:(

There was a lot of LP's issued then that now.....*dry fart*
...well, that about sez it....

@Mikekollar- Among all the copies of LZ 1 I have, including the 45 rpm Classic, the second Japanese press is my go to, is not terribly expensive (haven't checked lately) and if you can find a Japanese dealer that has a DHL Express account, a copy could be in your hands in a week. Just my take after having listened to quite a few copies of the first album. 

Led zeppelin is my favorite rock band of all times. I was in high school when the bulk of their albums came out. Me and 4 other friends did what we thought was the first ever air guitar gig in front of a large crowd. We had professional band speakers that filled a high school gym and in front of 3 different high schools we performedan air guitar of Led Zeppelins "How Many More Times". Drums, vocals, guitars, the works. We practiced for weeks before putting on the show at our high school assembly. By the end of the song, the crowd was clapping along with the song. It was crazy...... So I know where you are coming from.

Fast forward to 2019. Sold by K-horn knock offs and decided to get serious. All new equipment. Pre amp, power amp, dirac correction, streamer all wired into a lovely set of Legacy Audio Focus XD's. Those alone are around 16k. I have a fabulous system and with that comes critical listening and a system that has no mercy for lousy recordings. Unfortunately, Led Zeppelin falls into that category. I never listen to any of it on this system. Sounds awful and I wound never embarrass myself by waltzing into a high end shop and ask to listen to Led Zeppelin..... and yes, it is heartbreaking as the performances are forever stuck in lousy recording pergatory. What a loss. To bad Jimmy page didn't have enough sense to have demanded a recording engineer that knew what the hell he was doing. So, you are not missing something. When you get your new speakers, put on "Dancing Days" then after that, put on "Creep" by Radio Head or Def Leppard "Back in Black" and you will immediately understand why the greatest rock band of all times f'ing blew it!

There are needledrops of the 1st vinyl pressings of the first 5 Led Zeppelin albums available on the internet as downloadable files if you poke around, or as actual redbook cds from several purveyors of "import" products from Japan. Both sound light years better than any of the official cds, remastered or not. There is an openness, crunch and presence from them that simply doesn't exist on subsequent releases.

Same holds true for Adele's last album and Metallica's Death Magnetic - there are well balanced versions that you can find online that beat the "official" versions hands down.

*L* The only palette I have is in a graphics program....

"They call it Mello Cello (...quite rightsly...)..." ;)

I'm more involved in 'proper placement' than ultimate sonic perfection...which is subject to a whole lotta' personal perfs....

I'm trying to put the vocalist into your lap...
...now, whether the said vocalist is or isn't of the same 'variety' as you is...
...isn't of any concern of mine. *L*

well IF you have a Cello Palette, at a I hate it firesale price,  i know of a line of buyers….

gerrie....ROI (Return On Investment)....

Easier to lipstick a pig... 

...the pig doesn't care beyond the application of the color...
...the product will just be attractive enough to create sufficient Return.

Buyer, of course and always, has to be en garde'....;)

A bad recording is a bad recording i had the maggies 3.6 with the cello duet etc etc for me it keep still bad. For me is the big guestion why they throw all this crap  recordings at the market? When the cd is recordered they listen also on the end is there nobody who say’s we cannot sell this product. And fire the sound engineer because. Why there are so very good recordings and more bad recordings? With the current technology it must be happend anymore. And the people who are writing they van make from a bad recording with there equipment a good recording dream on. A friend of mine had the .20 with 4 cello performance the suit etc etc 300k the whole equipment and bad was bad.
Sorry for mine writing i am from the Netherlands.

Yes! Go haunt dealers....take a thumb drive with the familiar in it.
Chicago, Atlanta, new source....it’s all the same street....

Make them play more by your rules than theirs....respectfully, of course. ;)

Have Fun, as it ought to be.

👍, J

The only rush is your desires. ;)

yes ! call Alan at HiFi Buys in Atlanta. Good dudes for sure w great sounding rooms. Give him a call.

This is our Lab helping audition amplifiers at his store….


https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/3803#&gid=1&pid=6

@tomic601 Chicago is only 4 hours away. Inthink that is a sound idea.. i know audio shows were mentioned earlier. I will look a few up and see if there are any near me. I am heading to Atlanta in November.