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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 3 responses by pabelson

pabelson
344 posts
 
You might also consider the remote possibility that they, as professionals, actually know more about this than you do.
pabelson
344 posts
 
Nrchy: Please forgive the tone of my last post, and then let me explain its point. You seem to attribute the poor quality you find in many recordings to the quality of the equipment used in recording studios. I think you're wrong about that. People I've talked to who do recordings generally choose their equipment carefully. They have to think about more than just sound quality, but they will not tolerate anything less than great sound quality. And they know it when they hear it, which is their business. It's only our hooby.

The variability in quality comes not so much from the equipment as from the decisions they make about everything from mike placement to EQ. Getting a good sound is no easy task, as anyone who's tried it will tell you. Plus, they have to make a recording to sound good in a wide variety of environments and systems.

Now, it's often suggested that the majors engineer recordings to sound good on earbuds and boomboxes. There may be some truth to that, especially for pop releases, many of which seem to have little in the way of dynamic range, for example. I haven't heard a really bad jazz recording in a while, though I have heard some with very different recording styles. Depending on your tastes, you might like some styles more than others.
pabelson
344 posts
 
Nrchy: It seems to me you've just stated the obvious. So what's your point? Audiophiles cannot "hold the manufacturers and engineers responsible" because they're too small in number to matter in the marketplace.

On the other hand, as you note, there are a number of small companies willing to cater to audiophiles by taking better care in recording and production. If you value that enough to pay the price premium, then what's the problem?
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