Well, as someone who actually owns all the Mastodon albums (except Remission which I have on Grooveshark), as well as James Blake's two albums and the XX's two albums - not to mention a lot of technical and progressive alt/metal (Meshuggah, Animals as Leaders, Slayer, Battles, et al), a lot of minimalist techno and avantgarde electronica (Monolake, Autechre, Pantha du Prince, Oval, etc), a lot of ambient and dark ambient (Thomas Koner, Lull, Tim Hecker) plus a lot of Beethoven, Coltrane, Jonny Cash, Diamanda Galas, Arvo Part, P.J. Harvey, Charles Lloyd, Bill Frisell, Chopin, and early Iron Maiden (the list goes on), I can say that personally, I believe it’s our brains that have the greatest influence over our enjoyment.
Unless I was the producer, mixer or mastering engineer then I have no part in how the sonics of an album are presented. The sonics of the above list of albums I own are… rather variable, to say the least. While I understand that many here may not listen to as broad a mix of musical genres as represented above, I’ve never ceased to be amazed at many who shun an album full of life-changing artistic intention and creative facility because the sonics fail to clear the high bar of audiophilia. Hence, I believe why shows and showrooms round the world are beset with Diana Krall albums and the latest and greatest re-re-remastered version of an album already owned on vinyl, then cassette, then digital compact cassette, then DAT, then CD, then the remastered CD, then the SACD, the DVD-A, then the high-rez download and finally back to the 180-gram half-speed mastered 45rpm vinyl.
I like stuff that’s not butchered by brick-wall limiting too. But I have no say on how much compression is added in tracking, mixing or mastering or a combination of all three. Even if the engineer had the skill and talent to ride the fader during tracking it’s still introducing artifacts between the artist and the listener.
So rather than build a system around a set of Platonic ideals that stifle my choice of music and format, I trained my brain to enjoy the greatest breadth and width of music irrespective of how it was engineered, mixed or mastered. It means I can enjoy the broadest collection of music available whether it be on vinyl, CD or streamed via Grooveshark. The system is secondary. Always.
