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Surprised by quality?

I've been listening to my music on crappy speakers for years now. Finally, I bought a decent pair of speakers, and have been listening to all of my music over again, searching for the quality of reproduction and tone, and all that good stuff. There have been a few recordings, though, that have surprised me with their quality. One of these is Seven Mary Three-- American Standard. The cymbals sound like cymbals, the drums sound like drums, and the guitar has exactly that crunch which I liked to pretend it did with my old system. Also, there are the Glenn Miller recordings from the 30's and 40's. I expected digitally remastered music from that long ago to lack something. I've discovered that they do not in any way. What recordings have you listened to that surprised you with their high(or low) quality?
midficollege

Showing 2 responses by bombaywalla

bombaywalla's avatar
bombaywalla
1,958 posts
 
Rich,

Thanks for the clarification.

I indeed have one of the recordings you cited - "Satchmo Plays Fats" on Columbia 6-eyes vinyl. It's a mono recording. I might have another from your list "Ella & Louis" (& not "Ella & Louis Again").

I've listened to "Satchmo PLays Fats" many times & nothing really jumped out at me. I have to admit that I was not looking for anything in particular & ended up simply enjoying the music. However, I'll listen to it again with more concentration this time & let you know. It's very likely that the vinyl is much diff. from the redbook CDs so my impressions could be very diff. All-the-same, I'll listen again.
bombaywalla's avatar
bombaywalla
1,958 posts
 
Re. quality of recorded music on CD or vinyl: I went to the Underground Atlanta, which is 3-level shopping plaza right in the middle of Atlanta. Was walking around & came upon a 2-man band playing some old Jazz numbers. One fellow was playing the saxophone (sounded like tenor) & his buddy the drums. I was standing atleast 20 feet away & that saxophone had some bite (& then some)! There was a clear harshness to its sound & the 2 were playing completely unmicrophoned. The music was excellent to listen to so I stood there a long time.

This made me realise that a real, live saxophone has bite. Any recording (or SACD treatment) that removes this bite is creating distortion! If the music is correctly recorded then any music system softening this saxophone bite is, again, creating distortion! If you don't like the harshness of brass instruments, don't listen to brass instruments (better than murdering the recording to remove the harshness!).

What is the point of getting an accurate recording when you are going to play it on an inaccurate (or distortion producing) system???? Money totally wasted, I say!! IMHO.
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