The problem with the music


There are lots of people who frequent this site that have spent significant amounts of money to buy the gear that they use to reproduce their music. I would never suggest that you should not have done that, but I wonder if the music industry is not working against you, or at least, not with you.

For the most part studios are using expensive gear to record with, but is it really all that good? Do the people doing the recording have good systems that can reproduce soundstage, detail and all the other things that audiophiles desire, or do they even care about playback?

I know there are labels that are sympathetic to our obsessions, but does Sony/Columbia, Mercury, or RCA etc. give a rats #$%&@ about what we want?

Recordings (digital) have gotten a lot better since the garbage released in the mid 80's. Some of them are even listenable! BUT lots of people are spending lots of money to get great music when the studios don't seem that interested in doing good recordings. Mike Large, director of operations for Real Worl Studios said "The aim of the music is to connect with you on an emotional level; and I'd be prepared to bet that the system you have at home does that better than any of the systems we make records on."

Do recording engineers even care about relating the emotion of the music, or are they just concerned about the mechanics?

What do you think, and can/ should anything be done about it?
nrchy

Showing 2 responses by onhwy61

Ben Campbell's comments about the latest U2 release is an excellent example of what I meant when I said audiophile may not agree with the artistic choices made during the recording process. Believe it or not, it takes real skill to make that recording sound as loud and as big sounding as it is.
Just because you don't like Cinematic Systems style, don't make the mistake of dismissing his message. Based upon the astonishing number of posts where people are looking to warm up the sound of their systems with, take you pick - tubes, interconnects, power cords, cables, tweaks, etc., I'd say it is fairly common for audiophiles to assemble systems that make significant portions of their music collection sound bad.

I agree with Nrchy that the music industry isn't concerned with audiophile values, but I disagree that it's the fault of the recording engineers. As audiophiles we may not like some of the artistic decisions made in the recording process, but from a technical point of view most major label recordings are well made. As an analogy consider any of the latest big budget Hollywood movies. They may be piss poor films, but the production values (lighting, sound, costumes, sfx, cinematography, set design, etc.) are all first rate. Every recording engineer I've ever met strives for good sound quality. To achieve that within budget and time constraints while dealing with a group of insecure temperamental artists is not little feat.