Playing Led Zeppelin on a pair of Infinity Kappa 8 speakers I had many years ago was great ( vinyl of course ). The speakers filled my room with the biggest soundstage I have ever had. On the opening bass line of dazed and confused ( Led Zeppelin 1 ), friends would come over to listen to music and I would play that song. They would say to me, "There's something wrong with your right speaker" . My response was, " No, that's John Paul Jones bass amp speaker rattling. It sounded as if the amp was in the room, right in front of me.. Those speakers were also great playing classical music, because they could reproduce the big scale of the orchestra. Eventually, I switched to monitor sized speakers with quicker bass and more transparency which sounded better on other types of music. Playing Zep And classical music was never the same. Now I'm back to tower speakers which is the middle ground between the two. Different systems do different things well. It's a tradeoff. None that I have heard does everything perfectly. Of course, I have not listened to everything out there, and a lot of the newer designs.
Bad recordings and high end audio
Hello. Have decided that the kids are out of the house and I can dedicate some space and money to my long ignored hobby. What is different now is there are so few audio stores. I firmly believe in listening to products so thus I start this great new chapter of my life. The first 2 stores I went to the people were very patient with me and I listened to a ton of combinations. They asked me did I want to hear anything else and I said yes, ummm,.. how about Led Zeppelin? I received the same response from both stores which was “all Led Zeppelin recordings are horrible” except for this one version of Led Zeppelin 2…blah blah. So I said what happens if I am at home and i have a desire to play Led Zeppelin or another perceived poor recording? They did not have an answer for me nor did they play Led Zeppelin lol . I ended up ordering a pair of Magnepan 3.7i’s from a different store. 13 weeks until I get them, ouch. I am going to guess that people do listen to poor recordings on great systems because you just want to hear a particular album, right? Or am I missing something? Just looking for a bit of insight. Yes, I know they want it to sound the best so I will buy it but is that the only motivation. Or maybe they hate Led Zeppelin, lol.
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alexberger- Hi @millercarbon ,Thanks. But I’m at 11k. Could you narrow it down a little? ;) blue-magoo- Led Zeppelin sounded best on my 8 track player in my car when I was 20. I recently bought a new vinyl version and it sounds terrible.8 track is the worst format ever. Even so, if you "recently bought a new vinyl version and it sounds terrible" don’t blame the recording. Don’t blame the vinyl. Blame the recent version pressing. Vinyl records are incredibly individual items. No two ever exactly the same. Even among the first original pressing run there are better and worse examples. There even is a whole business devoted to finding the very best sounding copies and selling them at seemingly insanely jacked up prices. They would never be able to do this if the records didn’t sound equally insanely good. So there is that much difference copy to copy. But you didn’t buy one of those original vintage pressings. You bought a "recent version". Nobody even knows what that means! It could be you got something remastered. More likely you got one of the crap junk pressings knocked off to fill the growing demand of newbies seeking vinyl. Being new they think they are all the same, because you know CD are all the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. So it is entirely possible you got something where they grabbed whatever generation worn out tape they could find cheap, knocked off a few plates and pressed some dreck. Don’t feel bad, I bought one like this myself one time years ago. Entirely possible what you got really does sound worse than 8 track. |
Update and Thank you everyone!!! |
I am a "music first" audiophile. The music comes before the gear. I listen to plenty of mediocre recordings, because the music is so good. But, lucky for me, a lot of my musical tastes seem to coincide with relatively good recordings. Also, jut because the music comes first for me, does not mean there are times every so often, that I can't enjoy just listening to a bunch of "audiophile approved" recordings, and just listen to the gear. The 2 modes of listening do not have to be mutually exclusive. |
I believe I’m becoming cured of my audiophile tendencies. Recently I’ve been enjoying a couple of very rough Elvis demos from the Vic Anesini remasters. It is a real shame he didn’t cut them for real, and a few years ago I would have dismissed them out of hand for the poor sonics. Not now.
https://youtu.be/w2qln6O0GKk
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