Does it bother you?

Thanked him for what?

Great thread, its refreshing to hear from someone with a non-audiophile music-industry background. Let's face it: although we appreciate great music, we also like our toys.

You could draw an analogy with watch-collectors. Aren't those mechanical movements cool?

Does anyone remember the thread from a few years back by a guy, I think his name was Carlos? He was a recording engineer with a temper and of coarse owned all the best gear. I remember photos of a big disheveled room fool of equipment. He got toasted. I remember he threatened to quit posting and several members thanked him.

Very different thread but fun memory. Keep your eye on the prize cakes. I'd love to listen to the stuff you put together. Any recommendations?

To answer the original question,we are hearing a more highly resolving version of the "moment you captured in time."And no it doesn't bother me if the recording is of poor quality if you were able to capture the emotion and magic of that moment.I especially like hearing mistakes(dropped drumsticks,etc.)Makes things feel real.

Judsauce, you GET IT. Thanks, man.

Doesn't bother me at all. Some recordings are just bad. Because of the equipment used by some recording studios and equipment used by the artist themselves. Some (most) are not audiophiles and are not interested at all in the detailed sound quality. They just want to get their music out there for the masses. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. For the ones more interested in not only quality music, but quality music recording and music reproduction, they take more time and money to invest in the proper techniques, equipment and personnel. You get what you pay for. Most (not all, so don't jump on me) younger people don't care at all about audiophile quality recordings. Their mp3s are just fine to them. And since many of their recordings are terrible anyway, they are just rocking to the distorted music and are happy anyway. For me, even some of my older cds really sound terrible on better equipment. The music is great, but the recordings really are bad. Oh well. But there are some out there that really do know what they are doing recording and recording equipment wise, and they take pride in the quality of their work. but it is a business first and foremost and making money is the primary concern for many. Not all though.

enjoy

Some of the prior stuff the Beatles did was superior to Abbey Road so I don't get the 'something beautiful' analogy. It's the only Beatles recording that makes me yearn for fidelity every time I play it. No doubt because it's their peak production. Even so, information I used to think was simply not there actually is. It's all there, hiding behind the noise. The right gear will reveal it.

Yes, emotions comes through loud and clear on even crappy recordings. Listen to anything by Robert Johnson, Louis Armstrong from the 20s, or most any mid thru late period Rolling Stones.

Trent,

First off, your postings are spot-on. And your descriptions and wording and perceptions are also spot on. If I were recording again, I'd want you to be my engineer AND producer.

I remember a recording session long ago when I was both performer and songwriter. We rehearsed the song once, then after about 2 more run-throughs we took a break. The other musicians started goofing off, and I sensed the magic waning. I remember saying, "come on guys, knock it off; we're peaking. Let's keep the magic." We started recording and did like 5 takes to tape. We had lost the "magic", it became "work" and sounded flat. Our rehearsals were all buy-takes and they never made it to tape! A good producer would have sensed this and hit the record button from the start. No amount of golden cable or wire holders or vibe rocks could make us sound good. 95% musicianship, 5% technology. Never more evident that day.

Regarding your original question; No, it doesn't bother me one bit. Case in point; play the LP "12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus" (sp?) by the band Spirit (recorded late 60's, I think.) All analogue, probably recorded in similar fashion that you described, to a big fat 2" master tape. That album SMOKES! Great musicianship, great songwriting and a great sounding mix. You had mentioned in an earlier post that, in the 60's, there was markedly more THD and noise and a lot of other bad things that affect the signal. This LP is an example of your theory that talent trumps bad technology.

Thanks for such a great post.

"True enough but if it is a crappy recording quality does the emotion, power, fragility come through?"

In general, for me as long as I do not hear any unpleasant noise or distortions that should not be there in the first place, it works for me.

As an analogy, abstract art ie Monet is a highly distorted reproduction. It's the distortions itself that make for the unique artistic experience.

On the other hand, for example, any noise or distortion in my TV picture tends to negatively affect my enjoyment.

What makes an album transcendent is emotion, power, fragility... For very little money and effort,

True enough but if it is a crappy recording quality does the emotion, power, fragility come through?

Trentp ++1

I view most recording engineers as a person just doing a job with very little(if any) passion(think of Homer Simpson sleeping on the job) regarding sound quality.

That couldn't be further from the truth. Read any recording engineer's trade mag... recording engineers are obsessed with sound quality, and getting raw emotion to turn into electricity on magnetic storage. Check out 'Sound on Sound' or 'Tape Op' to hear the language of the recording studio. You'll find there's almost zero overlap in terminology or focus. An engineer who claimed a digital cable "improved pace" would be laughed out of the control room before never being called for work again. Even the top manufacturers of recording equipment are quite resolute in saying that all digital interconnects are the same as long as they complete the circuit. Can you imagine an audiophile company saying the same?

The difference is, we put the obsession into tangible improvements. Yes, I absolutely could get a 1% increase in fidelity if I changed out the resistors in all of my equipment for Vishay Dale, and if avoided the DB25 interconnects and kept short signal paths. I could absolutely do it. But why spend my time on that if I can get a 50% increase in performance quality by getting the singer riled up and reminding him why he wrote the song, or picking up a coffee for the drummer who's feeling left out again? That kind of thing pays dividends.

The obsessive-compulsive stuff pays off very little in the end and, in my opinion, doesn't make an album more listenable. What makes an album transcendent is emotion, power, fragility... For very little money and effort, we can get to 99% perfect fidelity. It's the final 1% that costs millions and adds very little.

I never listened to Abbey Road and thought, "Man, if only they'd recorded this through 24-bit 192Khz A/D converters along unidirectional silver mic cables. Then they'd be on to something." No, all that distortion, 50hz hum, tape hiss, and background noise adds up to something beautiful.

One thing I notice is that a lot of world music CDs I hear produced outside the US has surprisingly good sound quality. I've heard some recent reggae compilations that I would have to assume were produced in Jaimaica that will knock your socks off. A lot of Putumayo CD tracks are very well recorded. So maybe there is some hope for better sound in a "global economy".

Mapman +1 great point!

"there is no competition to make sonically superior music so there is no reason to spend any money doing it."

That is an excellent point!

Fact is most get much better sound quality overall these days via even portable devices and headphones than ever in the past. Plus mobility and mobile applications including entertainment is where it is at these days. Nothing there really to push high end home audio anywhere much beyond where it already is as a niche. Plus most people can't afford a lot of high end audio stuff. So we should be happy that sound quality of modern recordings is as good as it is, which overall I would say may also still be the best as a whole overall than ever as well.

Its a business and business needs competition, apparently there is no competition to make sonically superior music so there is no reason to spend any money doing it.

"If we're not using any of this stuff to record the albums, then what are you hearing when you do use it?"

We're correcting your poor recording from sounding worse in our homes.

Seriously though, why should you bother? 99.9% of music listeners listen on their car stereo. I'm sure the decision to use old crap is out of your hands. It's just too bad so few studios try to do better. It's kind of like having a choice between McDonalds and nothing. There is no Eleven Madison Park or even Ruth's Chris.

You guys could be helping out the entire industry. Musicians would sell more music. Hi fi manufacturers would sell more gear. Auto manufacturers would have more stereo options available and I'd be happier. Instead, we have little or no choice but to buy from the industry that doesn't care about their craft.

Too bad, eh.

No it doesn't bother me. That's why we have Sheffield Labs/Reference Recordings/Chesky or even more mainstream labels like Chandos/Concord Jazz or even Telarc that consistently offer above average sound quality. I view most recording engineers as a person just doing a job with very little(if any) passion(think of Homer Simpson sleeping on the job) regarding sound quality.

Trentpancakes - in answer to your original quation - Doesn't bother me at all.

When I want to "listen" to quality music I put on a TACET recording - the engineers there are as OC as audiophiles - e.g. Das Mikrofon II, side two, has samples from 24 different microphones. OC or what? :-)

Don't listen to that side at all, but the rest of their recordings are amazing.

Alternately there's the JETON label that also goes farther than most at capturing the best possible audio signal with the best technology available.

Deutche Gramafon also goes the extra mile.

As for the rest - well as one other poster said - we are on the reproduction end and our goal is to get as close to the original master recording as we can, regardless of the effort put into (or not) getting it there in the first place

Can't fault us for that can you? :-)

obviously, the recording process introduces distortion, and a reduction in the accuracy of timbre. you are at the mercy of the recording process when you purchase a cd or lp.

the recording and speaker are the two variables that still need the most qualitative improvement.

Yes, and Newton was better than Einstein and Jobs as well. :)

You're right, they were.

Ricardo, Of course you are correct. But even a cheap violin can drive you to tears when played by a master. A violin is after all, a violin. The basic electronic amplifier circuit is unchanged since it's inception. For all intents and purposes, it is what it is. Same goes for the rest of the gear. The weaker the link, the greater the strides that have been made. But in the end, the actual measureable differences/improvements are relatively small.

Oh...and the musicians were better! IMHO

Great thread - my take is even if the recording is poor you still have to go through another stage to hear it and that is the home audio system....why not have it spec'ed the best you can?

I listen to mostly rock anyway so I am doomed! LOL! But I will say the best sounding rock albums (Vinyl that is, hate it when people call CD's albums...Yuk!) in my collection are from the 60's and particularly the 70's.

A friend of mine records and mixes live jazz in the USA an Europe. He told me that he's oftentimes afraid to plug in his equipment because the clubs are in such poor repair. I said "junk in... junk out". Long story short, he purchased a BPC conditioner and was happier than a pig in mud with the results.

":Audiophile is owner of a “good taste” and “knowledge”.

Well said! You hit the nail on the head! Those are the two main ingredients. Also, maybe just a bit of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, at least on occasion :^)

Lots of hobbies thrive on good taste and knowledge. Technology has always fascinated me. Reproduction of music with the quality possible today is a technology enabled miracle as I see it. It has always fascinated me as a curious mix of science and technology with art. Figuring out how it all works and where the boundaries may lie in of itself is a fascinating thing. Then there is all good music and its effects. It has its quircks like most things, but I would love to see more young people get into this stuff. Gotta keep it real though. That can be a challenge sometimes.

Then what do you think it is? Do you think it was because they used more audiophile-grade equipment in the '50s? Silvered wires, cables on stilts, dampening stones, and things like that?

Purer, simpler signal paths. They didn't over-engineer the recordings back then like they do today. Just look at all the crap you listed the signal passing through now. Back in those days, they recorded using the KISS method, Keep It Simple Stupid.

Trentpancakes,

You haven't spoken of the processing which occurs to suit the producer and or talent.

Look at my system and you won't see any strange tweaks.

This is getting laughable. Your system is full of technology that was originally tweaky. The most obvious are the speaker cables. Not all that long ago the question of wire making a sonic difference was hotly debated between those who are the technically inclined non believers and those who are the proof is in the pudding so give it a try folks.

Spent many years doing audio in television, so much of what you state is right on point. Which is why I myself am very dubious when it comes to tweaks and special items concerning audio.
Glenfihi

Same here. Plus, I'm a natural born skeptic.
Look at my system and you won't see any strange tweaks. Still. I do enjoy the conversation here.

Amazing sound music from your gear in your room is the outcome of a good gear and many talent people involved in its production. It’s a chain of good events and gear. It’s the result of good taste and knowledge. It’s a miracle made real. How this chain is given? I think there are six important points:

a) Talent and knowledge of the musicians
b) Hi quality technology record equipment
c) Talent and knowledge of the mixer engineer
d) Hi quality technology gear in your room
e) People who has “good taste” and knowledge to appreciate the Art of music are audiophiles.

Beautiful music and good musicians stay in the mind of generations. The next 300 years people will listen Beethoven, Mozart, Doors, Pink Floyd, Enigma, Placido Domingo, Dave Bruveck, Smashing Pumkings and many others artists. I am sure that people in 200 years will listen the 9a Symphony and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; there is no doubt of that.

Talent and knowledge musicians in the present days demand professional recordings. If you can give better sound recording with a clip and nuts, that’s great. When you have talent musicians in the present days they are going to demand the best records. They are not going to accept clip and nuts.

When the musicians are not professionals, they do not take care of the recording work. They will not notice clip and nuts in their records. And of course they will not stand out. Bad musicians with bad records are going to disappear in time. Nobody remember them.

Audiophile is owner of a “good taste” and “knowledge”. Common people can not notice the difference between a Steinway & Sons and Yamaha or Stradivarius in a concert hall in orchestra and any cheap violin on street. It’s the same with gear. Must of the people can not encounter difference between good gear and clip and nuts doing noise. Many people say “you should not spend money on sound quality gear. Look with this 100 pesos you can buy a radio FM and listen music” I think I am sure you have one of these in your house. I am sure you can not note any difference between Mozart and Beethoven. I am sure you do not have any musical education, good taste, music knowledge. I am sure you do not have any interest in music. That is the reason you think it’s the same to listen music in a cheap gear than any other Hi End quality gear.

Excuse me if my English is not so good but it’s not my principal language.

Many audiophiles treat music as if it was fragile, carefully passing it to speakers over kilo-buck elevated wires and through a dozen other danger spots that could break it. But music is incredibly resilient. Pump it through ninety miles of air and to a transistor radio, and it's still captivating and foot-stomping joy. It can be made more enjoyable at the playback end, but we can easily lavish useless "everything matters" obsession on its care and feeding, which is no different than other obsessions.

As flawed as the recording process may or may not be, it produces something with lots of low-level information. The playback system has to be significantly better in all regards, or else losses will occur in the playback.

Regarding distortion, many of the analogue distortions are pleasing to the ear, which is why many listeners prefer old analogue recordings to modern digital recordings.

Spent many years doing audio in television, so much of what you state is right on point. Which is why I myself am very dubious when it comes to tweaks and special items concerning audio.

Trent, you're the one that doesn't get it. We're on the playback side, you're on the recording side. Regardless of what you've done, we're just doing our best to capture it, whether good or bad. It's our best attempt at recreating a real performance. It's all we can blindly do. We are at your mercy. Those trying to 'improve' it are the ones who are out to lunch.

But it still doesn't explain how audiophile listeners only seem to find extreme positives when they listen to traditional studio recordings on expensive stereos.

How do you come to this statement. The bulk of recordings that have "extreme positives" are a small minority. I'd say that far less than 10% of my collection is audiophile quality recordings, with the bulk coming from small specialty labels that are obsessed with sound quality.

The rest of the recordings have lots of issues but I don't post about how my system lets me hear the issues.

In fact there are far to many recordings that are so bad I can only listen to them as backround music.

Well, there are many things that go on in high end audio world that leave it vulnerable to criticism.

My estimate is what you read on a site like this is about 50% information and 50% misinformation or noise. 100% information and 100% misinformation or noise in some cases, though that is rare. Lots of propaganda mixed in as well. Maybe not bad really. Might even have what is called our national "news" media these days beat. Standards are on the decline overall these days, you know.

The only thing that might concern me is if Trent tried an alarm clock with a dot on it and heard something different (the alarm maybe??) :)

I would be concerned, too! I would definitely love to see the results of double-blind ABX testing with devices like the Clever Little Clock and "Proton Alignment" products. I suspect the must difficult part of the test would be getting manufacturer consent.

The only thing that might concern me is if Trent tried an alarm clock with a dot on it and heard something different (the alarm maybe??) :)

I am no golden ears, but I was trained as a classical musician and have been working on and with audio gear for over a generation. And I can tell you, from personal experience, Carnegie Hall in NYC does not venture far from the above stated signal path.

Performances and talent are the real gifts of music. The rest is noise. I often ask: “When did you last listen to an acoustic only performance?” Many classical fans have and do. There is no point of reference for most of the music folks listen to.

Speaking of studios, they listen for different things than we do. They are working not enjoying a turn of melody or soulful rendering. Many of the wine tasting style terms I hear do not enter that world. They are professional listeners and are working hard to keep it accurate and clean, with minimum fatigue when they are doing a 16 hour soundtrack session. A very different set of criteria for listening.

Art. Music is an art. That is what counts.

Trent, I hear what you are saying. Obviously there are good and bad performances just as there are good and bad recordings. Best for both to be good whatever that entails or means to each. Hard to argue with that.

Part of the preferences and opinions expressed frequently on this site is likely a result of member demographics. I have never seen any metrics indicating, but from experience I suspect most here are older rather than younger and nostalgia plays a major role in an individual's preferences.

I think you're underestimating audiophiles. The more resolving your playback system the more you'll hear tape edits, mismatched overdubs, vocal soundbooths with added reverb, gates opening/closing, HVAC noise, etc. One of the landmark pieces of audiophile criticism was the dissection of "The Look Of Love" track from the "Casino Royale" soundtrack.

Part of the evolution of the audiophile mentality has been a move away from systems that tell you what's on the recording, both good and bad, towards systems that prettify whatever signal they are being fed. There are valid reasons for this shift. Does it really make much sense to spend $50k on a system that makes half your record collection sound bad?

Many recordings made in the 50s were better sounding for many reasons. Basically the technology required a simpler recording path. Since you couldn't go crazy with multi-track overdubs you actually had to have musicians who could actually play together. Without elaborate EQs and effects you eliminated superfluous wiring and had to pay serious attention to microphone selection and setup. Simply put, since you couldn't fix it in the mix, the engineers back then had to know how to record properly for good sound. And even though they didn't measure that well, tube German mics feeding custom tube mixers into tube tape machines can sound oh so sweet.

The original assertion was: "many small ensemble jazz recordings in the late 1950's and early 1960's sound better (more realistic, so to speak)--- often by a wide margin --- then most recordings of today."

...which I still maintain the musicianship played a large part in. They were capturing a moment in time, in the middle of a musical revolution of sorts, with musicians that were riding a creative wave that had yet to be explored, in a studio environment that was at that time rare. To think that it wouldn't come across as a creative explosion on tape is putting too much faith in machines over man. It's the same reason psychedelic music sounds so vital and alive when you're listening to a recording from 1966. You're capturing young musicians in the eye of a creative storm, and a social movement. It's why we decorate recording studios the way that we do. It's why we want musicians to record in the same room, with every instrument bleeding into all the other mics. We want that eye contact, we want the vibe, we want emotion on tape.

5% more emotion on tape will improve the quality of the recording immeasurably over a 500% increase in fidelity. This is one of the reasons why we don't obsess too terribly much about the cables (besides the fact that our ears don't hear it). There are much easier ways to improve the quality of the album, and the results are far more tangible. Just record better performances.

" Almost every piece of equipment in the chain was a tube device that added multiple odd and even-order harmonics (which is actually perceived as pleasing to the ear, although it is, by definition, distortion)."

That rings true. ALso consistent with the notions that some forms of distortion can be pleasant and others not. I do think that the tube gear used at the time, for better or for worse, has a lot to do with the unique sound of early recordings prior to when transistors took over. As does the more pervasive focus on sound quality back then and whatever went into achieving it. OFten that was a simpler approach, like in many MErcury Living PResence Recordings, or as is found in certain more modern CD labels even, like Mapleshade and Dorian.

But it wasn't that the performers were just better back then as was initially asserted. We've identified why that was a silly assertion as to why the recordings sounded the way they do. Personally, those early recordings have a unique character and tonality as a whole that I find to be pleasing, even on newer digital CD releases, especially those that are mastered well.

To answer the OPs original question, no, in most cases it does not bother me. I do not find most modern recordings as objectionable as I suspect many here might. TO me each is a unique piece of art. I would not want them all to sound the same, ie "the absolute sound". Not to say I might not have done them differently or tried to make them better if it were me. But I have no control over how recordings are made. I can only judge the results, not the details of the technology that went into making them behind the scenes. Nor do I care. If I do not like one recording, I can easily move on to the next.

When all is said and done when a studio/producer/engineer does adopt audiophile standards, I'm thinking Mapleshade, you do get better sounding recordings.

Thanks for the reply, and it does accurately depict what goes on in a studio. It's controlled chaos, and it's about getting a creative spark on tape FAST. There's no time to obsess over a signal chain. Take "Something in the Way" off of Nevermind, as a rock n roll example. Kurt starts strumming the song on the control room couch, and he's killing it. It sounds perfect. So Butch scrambles and throws a mic in front of him right where he's sitting, and they captured perfection. If he had stopped to employ some audiophile aesthetic, it would have been lost.

Of course studios and engineers who specialize in audiophile recording are going to produce clean sounding records. It would defy reason to say that they don't.

But it still doesn't explain how audiophile listeners only seem to find extreme positives when they listen to traditional studio recordings on expensive stereos. It's all about "big soundstages" and "less smear" and "livelier pace." It's never "revealed more noise" or "heard tuning problems" or "hum was more pronounced" or "soundstage stayed the same."

How are you getting good things that we don't hear, but aren't hearing the bad things that we DO hear?

A reason for the better sounding recordings of the 50's and 60's may be that there is a lot less of all the little "problems" you mention in rant.

That simply isn't something that's supported by fact.

Equipment in the '50s and '60s was marked by its high THD, noise, microphonics, and nascent electrical engineering. Signal chains, instead of having loads of DB25 interconnects, had multiple generation losses on tape decks with, by today's standards, abhorrent specs. Almost every piece of equipment in the chain was a tube device that added multiple odd and even-order harmonics (which is actually perceived as pleasing to the ear, although it is, by definition, distortion).

The entire philosophy of '80s recording and engineering was to clean up the signal path of the '50s-'70s, which was considered to be extremely low fidelity.

I can make an argument that 10 of your 15 "issues" were not present in those early recordings where simple recording techniques were used.

Excellent recordings are like a fine restaurant. You have to go out of your way to find one created by those who truly care enough about the final product to pay attention to every possible detail.