The Quality of recordings these days

Im getting so tired of poorly recorded albums and thought it best rather than ranting on to my dear long suffering wife... that I ought to share my cd buying experience (nightmare) this last couple of months.

I find that by far the best recorded cd's tend to be classical, Jazz and certain dance / trance discs, whereas rock and pop cd's have been leaving me cold and headachy.... they all seem to be recorded with no headroom i.e all settings on max

This is even more apparent after upgrading to a high quality dac recently. Good recordings sound excellent...poor recordings are plain awful, there seems to be no compromise, this has made me consider buying some kind of EQ to ease the listening of certain discs.

heres a list of recently bought cd's and a recording quality score (*****)

Kasabian.... (*) I quite liked this band until the quality of the cd put me off.
Guillemots, through the windowpane... (**) so much production, so little music.
Pat metheny quartet... (****) easy to knock but beautifully recorded like most recent PM albums.
Pearl Jam... (**) recorded in a tin can under a large blanket (damned shame).
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, show your bones... (***) good album fairly well recorded
Kate Bush, Sensual world (**) sounds passable in the car... just, (Blasphemy?)
Massive attack, Collected (***)
Porcupine Tree, Signify... (***) not bad for a 10 year old album
Shpongle, Remixed... (*****) Excellent recording
Love, Forever changes remastered... (***) its 40 years old but still sounds fresh.
Delibes Lakme, Joan sutherland...(****) another recording from the 60's that could teach todays sound engineers a thing or two
Keith Jarrett, The melody at night with you... (****) beautifully intimate cd.
Younger Brother, A flock of Bleeps... (*****) like all Simon Posfords work this deserves six stars... why doesnt he advise others on what there doing wrong at the mixing desk?... like some sort of sound engineer Tzar
Sufjan Stevens, Avalanche (*****) ah sufjan!

looking at the list obviously all is not lost.. but is it unreasonable to want ALL my discs to sound good?

Interestingly a lot of poor sounding cd's that I buy these days tend to sound better on my car stereo as if they have been mixed for this purpose alone.

Its a travesty I tell you, A TRAVESTY rant rant.


Jack.

[KennyK]

the short answer is that many albums are very heavily compressed at the mastering stage. compression removes any dynamic range - i.e. no headroom.

if you 'rip' tracks from a CD and look at the waveform you will see the problem. the upshot is that as you point out, it sounds better in the car. most FM radio is compressed as well. someone somewhere got the idea that louder=better. Adverts on TV often do this so they seem louder as well - it's to grab your attention...

the problem is that it sounds bloody awful.

as an example, Coldplay's X&Y is one of the most heavily compressed albums around. the fact that the music is as devoid of merit as the mastering engineer is of achieving anything remotely like acceptable sonic quality means that fortunately I am unaffected by this particular audio nightmare and nor am I likely to be.

It means that slowly, I am changing my musical tastes as the maxed out high RMS mastered albums leave me cold as well.

Good to see Shpongle geting a name check. "Are You Shpongled?" is a recent discovery and is now in my most played pile

the irony is that CD has a far better theoretical dynamic range than vinyl...

[Dave_The_Vinyl_Junkie]

The two recordings that I demonstrated my 401 / OTL's with at Eggfest 2 a year ago were made in 1961 (I think) and 1958 respectively. We'd had Norah Jones all day and I decided it was time to frighten the horses.

The '61 was a reissue of a Mercury Living Presence reccording of Stravinsky's Firebird (that was dynamic enough to almost destroy Neal's speakers). The '58 was the opening of Das Rheingold (Wagner) which was a Decca job - this was played on Paul's 212 with James' Quasars.

Someone has lent me (admittedly on CD) the recent Testament issue of Decca's live stereo recording of Siegfried at the 1955 Bayreuth festival. This was before even the first stereo LP's came along. The sound is rich, warm and detailed, despite the live setting and the inevitable compromises that could have resulted.

That is a 50 year-old recording - issued for the first time because it's now out of copyright (Culshaw vetoed its release because of his plans for a studio Ring cycle - mentioned above). If Decca were doing this in 1955 then what on earth were Deutsche Grammophon playing at 20 years later?!!

[John T]

Gosh! What a coincidence Dave. One of my “best” recordings is also Firebird (coupled with Le Coq d’Or) recorded on RCA Victor in 1965. According to the sleeve, it’s recorded in “RCA’s newly developed Dynagroove system which provides a spectacular improvement to sound quality……….”

This disc gives the impression of being 1/8in thick(!!) and in spite of being played eons of times on all kinds and quality of equipment still reproduces superbly and exhibits virtually no surface noise, ticks or clicks – and to cap it all, it’s never been cleaned.

Personally, I’m sure the reason for this quality of reproduction is simply that in those days they used virgin vinyl in the manufacturing process and not recycled rubbish.

John.

Originally Posted by Dave_The_Vinyl_Junkie

We'd had Norah Jones all day and I decided it was time to frighten the horses.

Isn't Norah Jones (and Eva Cassidy, etc) that kind of anaemic lite-jazz that makes any hi-fi sound "nice"?

Congratulations to you for putting on something that will not only make a bad hi-fi struggle, but for choosing music that has life too!

[steve s]

Originally Posted by Lord.

Isn't Norah Jones (and Eva Cassidy, etc) that kind of anaemic lite-jazz that makes any hi-fi sound "nice"?

Congratulations to you for putting on something that will not only make a bad hi-fi struggle, but for choosing music that has life too!

I would disagree quite strongly there.. at the last eggfest Eva showed up weakness in a couple of 'good' systems .... especially good at showing up distortion in a system..
I'm not saying the music is to everyone's taste... but as a tool, its good...
....and i'm also sure there are much better 'musical tool's' out there as well...

[david]

I agree with Steve. Firastly, I'm not sure how anyone can seriously lable Eva Cassidy 'anaemic lite-jazz'. Have you ever listened to her belting out some of the material on Live at Blues Alley?

But the whole point is this is music simply (and well) recorded using a couple of mikes and limited production.
David

Originally Posted by steve s

but as a tool, its good

Yes I find it excellent for keeping those unsightly coffee rings off my table.

Isn't anyone tired of these threads by now? We all know that a lot of modern stuff is over compressed because loud initially sounds better but complaining on hifi forums doesn't change anything. Why not try to email some of the artists asking them why their recordings are rubbish? Tbh I've never found it bothers me that much, it would be nice if everything was recorded well but it isn't. The music is still on the disc, listen to that instead. IMO if you find you can't listen to things simply because of the recording then there is something wrong with the system.

[Dave_The_Vinyl_Junkie]

Originally Posted by Lord.

Isn't Norah Jones (and Eva Cassidy, etc) that kind of anaemic lite-jazz that makes any hi-fi sound "nice"?

Congratulations to you for putting on something that will not only make a bad hi-fi struggle, but for choosing music that has life too!

Thanks. I suppose my reason for choosing those two recordings was to demonstrate the joint strengths of the 401 and OTL amplification, namely speed, attack, dramatic tension and involvement. If you're getting Wagner to sound exciting, then you're onto a winner.

Whilst I would hesitate to describe Eva Cassidy as anaemic lite jazz (the Songbird LP is actually quite eclectic), it raises an interesting point.

A few months ago I was over at a friend's house where they were trying isolation products on his Hyperspace (I think they were Stillpoints). When I walked in, they were playing a solo piano LP, which was a non-Tulip DG pressing, with the inevitable results.

My first reaction was, why are we using that yellow peril? How on earth are you going to hear system improvements if the source material is less than first-rate?

However, as we progressed through the session, despite the source LP's shortcomings it was still possible to hear the benefits of the Stillpoints, as the record went from rough-as-a-badger's-**** to actually sounding something like a piano.

One would think that better quality, better sounding recordings would more readily show up the differences that interconnects or isolation makes, and historically I would always use those when auditioning components or making system changes, but I'm now finding that a lot of the time it's the non-audiophile stuff that shows the biggest changes.

One of my LP's is a case in point - it's an HMV Greensleeve issue of Elgar's 'In the South' recorded by the Bournemouth Symphony in the Winter Gardens. It's one of those recordings that sounds really congested and harsh if anything on the deck is not properly set up - however, once the deck is optimised, the record sounds amazing. Conversely, Richard Thompson's 'Old Kit Bag' sounds identical whatever it's played on.

[lt_texan]

Originally Posted by Dave_The_Vinyl_Junkie

...We'd had Norah Jones all day and I decided it was time to frighten the horses....

as if that wasn't frightening enough!

I'm getting good quality pressings on buying on line from HMV at about £10 (vs £9 cd) on new/newish releases. I just got the Zutons last album and the pressing is nice and quiet. The recording sounds pretty good to me too.

Dan