Can a great system make a mediocre recording sound good?

@knotscott

 

 

The best you can hope for is for the system and any given recording to sound like it did when it took place...good, bad, or indifferent.

 

I agree.

Otherwise you’d need to dial in different EQ choices for different recordings, and that way OCD lies.

@clearthinker

Therefore a system could be designed that would process poor recordings to sound like good ones. But the changes made would render the performance different from the original recording.

Isn’t this also what modern TVs do?

Re-interpretate and reimagine the signal being fed into them?

When you look at some of the new OLED screens, they are indeed impressive, but you would have call them realistic.

Hyper-realistic, maybe.

@sns

Poor recordings remain poor, no help can be found for these.

Agreed.

Perhaps the best thing to do with those is ( the vast majority) is to downscale the playback equipment to something with reduced bandwidth, scale and resolution, a bit like using soft focus photography, where they may appear benign and acceptable.

Aren’t these low bandwidth, low resolution recordings always likely to sound better on equipment such as boomboxes, car stereos, jukeboxes and smartphones rather than high resolution, high bandwidth equipment that they were never designed for?

In fact, just how many producers (Joe Meeek, Jerry Wexler, Phil Spector, George Martin, Brian Wilson, Mickie Most, Brian Eno, Quincy Jones, Rick Rubin etc) even considered audiophiles in mind when they were recording?

I’d argue that when it comes to audio resolution is clearly a two edged sword, and that is precisely why some of us attach far more importance to the faithful reproduction of timbre.

All recordings benefit from this but not all systems can deliver.

@o_holter

"At the same time, my experiment indicates that you don’t need costly speakers to improve the sound. Much can be done with the speakers available. My guess is that many here at Audiogon would re-discover their LP collections (or streaming), if they worked more with the speaker positioning and other acoustic control. If you position (and maybe damp) your speakers right, you will get a richer and wider timbre. This is an overlooked dimension I think. Forget about exact flat frequency, timing, PRAT etc, - instead, go for the timbre. Not sure about this - but maybe a way forward."

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Yes, I’d also say positioning really matters. My Tannoys sounded heavy and muddy when placed on the floor. I was so disappointed that I began to doubt my sanity in buying a 1970s speaker.

After a few days, mainly to avoid the prospect of selling them on, I tried placing them on some IKEA benches that served as stands and this helped the soundstage enormously.

The last mod was to put some sorbothane under the feet and this was another jump forward in sound.

Suddenly the bass began to play notes!

So I’d say it matters, in fact with some designs it’s more or less critical.

When it comes to good timbre though things are not so clear as I've heard some quite expensive speakers sound "bleached out" and at the other end I've heard good timbre coming from some TVs and iPads etc.

[The last speakers I heard that had good timbre were the Kudos Titans].

@telemarcer

I notice the differences in recordings much more as my system improves.

Better systems tend to have wider bandwidth, but mediocre recordings don't, and here lies the problem.

Playing back recordings which favour the midrange ie most pop, on a wide bandwidth system is unlikely to lead to satisfaction. Not when the sound is getting pulled apart and brutally exposed.

Those recordings tend to sound better on systems which favour the midrange.

I suspect this is also part of the reason why small speakers like the classic LS3/5 remain so popular.

Virtually any recording will sound good on them.