Why Do Some Recordings Sound Great and Others Dead?


I listen to Radio Paradise MQA on my NODE 3, SMSL M400, B and O Beolab 8000’s and Hsu 15in sealed sub.  The acoustics in my room are poor.  I’ve noticed that some recordings sound very realistic. For instance the vocals on a Stabat Mater dolorosa hymn sounded great.  But a Nora Jones recording was terrible.  Her voice was lost in back of some murky instruments.  I’m familiar with this recording listening to it on my iPod, where her voice shines out and the music is good.  I’m wondering why the big differences?

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Not sure if RP is the a good reference or not as I don't use that service, but there are a couple things to consider. 

- If you don't know the CAT # of the specific album, well that is a major prob.  That is also a big downside to streaming - you have no idea (many times) of the provenance as well as they can remove/change said album version at any given point and you'll never know (generally speaking)

- The recording/mixing/mastering means everything (provenance) and if one doesn't know that then all bets are off

- Some recordings most def sound better than others (I would hope so)?  However, as has been pointed out, the room/acoustics are paramount to SQ along with proper setup.  Those two items are an absolute MUST before anything else. 

i also believe in "tone control courage" IOW using definitive electronic means to correct an incorrect frequency balance in a given recording. 

With my current setup I don’t have any tone controls.  The NODE has some when using the internal DAC.  I’m bypassing that into the SMSL DAC, which has no tone controls.  I don’t have a preamp, and my speakers are powered.  I’d have to put something into the system like a Lokius, minidsp or minidsp ddrc24.  There are some crossover frequency and q controls on my subs.

Some recordings sound great and others dead because of differences in recording, mixing and mastering.

I hear five different classes of sound quality in my collection of albums, even ranking each album D, C, B, A, A+ based on sound quality only.

This has nothing at all to do with the "music quality" of the material or the artists.

That's a great idea tom. I've got alot of used classical records from my father and an estate sale.  Ranking them sounds like a wise idea!

How do you rank them? Do you use post it notes or some other method?