Beware poor sounding media


One of the hardest things to accept as an audiophile is an inferior sounding CD, stream, record etc. It’s too easy to personalize it as a flaw in the system.
ideally, we should accept each track on it’s own sonic merits, good or bad, and enjoy the music thereon. But, too often, it can destroy the enjoyment of a listening session and blanket the experience.

Anyone else experience this?

128x128rvpiano

Showing 4 responses by rvpiano

One example I can give is a 1964 recording of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring by Herbert Von Karajan. The recorded sound is not horrible, but primitive by today’s standards. It has none of the extreme dynamic range of modern recordings of this piece (some recordings from this period do, but not this one.) Yet, the impact is stunning by virtue of the extraordinary interpretation by Von Karajan.  You get swept away by his vision and forget there are other versions that may sonically be much more impressive.

What a pleasure it is though if you can ignore the inferior sonics and get to the performance!  
Even with bad recordings, some of the quality of your system can shine through if you let it.

Newbee,

I agree. If it’s a historic recording or a great performance, I can suspend my expectations and enjoy.

Fortunately  as with you, the great majority of tracks sound just fine.