What have you done to your system to make Bad Recordings sound more REAL?

[Luiz Felipe]

Personally I want to hear exactly what is on the file, I don't want my system to alter anything, a great recording will sound great ,a poor recording ,poor, that is the meaning of High Fidelity .
Keith.

+1

 

[caesar]

Personally I want to hear exactly what is on the file, I don't want my system to alter anything, a great recording will sound great ,a poor recording ,poor, that is the meaning of High Fidelity .
Keith.

Purite, you made that clear, but you are not addressing the topic, however. People claim bad recordings sound like sh!t! Yet not so on MBL 101. And per your Mola Mola thread, Philip posts:

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?16628-Mola-Mola-!&p=303228&viewfull=1#post303228

"John Atkinson commented, after listening to Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk "Normally, when you play heavily compressed pop music loud, it falls apart and becomes irritating, really quickly. But with your system it managed to all hang together & sound great." Don't you find that interesting?

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Personally I want to hear exactly what is on the file, I don't want my system to alter anything, a great recording will sound great ,a poor recording ,poor, that is the meaning of High Fidelity .
Keith.

I also want to hear exactly what's on the recording, but if it's a bad one I won't listen to it again after that first experience. If it's passable, then I have no qualms about incorporating a little EQ with my IA's tone controls. It's a shame I can't do that with Adele 19, Adele 21 and Amy Winehouse - Back to Black.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Mostly the freq response deviation of amps and pre amps cd players is not even worth mentioning , the deviations lay with speakers
Care to ellaborate on the dsp controlled Grimm response or the cessaro horn response which you also represent , lets say a 1/6 octave smoothed curve over a 200 hz- 20 khz band , the + - Db range ?
That the mola mola s are within +- 0,1 db or something( i didnt t check ) aint a new thing for amplifiers

 

[GaryProtein]

Mostly the freq response deviation of amps and pre amps cd players is not even worth mentioning , the deviations lay with speakers. . . .

That's definitely true.

Frequency response for sources, preamps and amps in quality modern equipment (that means the last 30 years) are ruler flat from 20-20kHz and almost flat from DC to Infinity. OK, I'm exaggerating there, but it is the speakers and room that make the most difference in the sound.


I'm more than a little curious why people aren't using some sort of equalizer/parametric tone control (and there are some excellent ones like the Avalon, Cello, Manley and Millennia) that could be easily taken in and out of the signal path to improve a bad recording of good music that you would like to hear. Or is the recording more important than the music?

 

[treitz3]

An EQ won't do anything to Adele's 21 (and other like recordings). Nothing anyone can do would make that recording sound listenable on a reference rig. You can't make chicken soup out of chicken ****.

Tom

 

[thedudeabides]

Tom,

Despite MBL's capabilities (given their design / radiation principles), the shortcomings in the Adele 21 CD are blatantly obvious.

Having said that, it's a great "car" CD or for background / non critical listening on the main rig.

 

[Orb]

I also want to hear exactly what's on the recording, but if it's a bad one I won't listen to it again after that first experience. If it's passable, then I have no qualms about incorporating a little EQ with my IA's tone controls. It's a shame I can't do that with Adele 19, Adele 21 and Amy Winehouse - Back to Black.

Yeah effing annoying such talented artists end up with albums that do not reflect their sound quality they deserve sigh, seems more of a trend with talented female artists than male ones as well IMO (appreciate the trend is universal just that it seems even more emphasised with talented female artists).

Cheers
Orb

 

[esldude]

Here is a screenshot of the 2nd track on Adele 21. Somebody should pay dearly for this. Not all the tracks are this bad, but all feature portions squashed, limited and what might as well be clipped content. And to think somebody somewhere wanted it this way, and somebody else got paid good money to ruin it this way. Hard to believe is it not? Lady with a nice voice. Just don't do anything and it would beat this.

 

[Orb]

I have followed Ian Shepherd for a long time and he provides excellent information.
The below youtube video he has done is great viewing and recommended for all (need to watch-listen to most of it though before drawing conclusions) as it covers some techniques used for mastering a song louder and the price you pay.

Here is a lot more videos he has done (also has own blog-business site as well if do a search): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMFrnWIF6N5YtOZzmCGP16A
Cheers
Orb

 

[dallasjustice]

IME, the things that make so called bad recordings sound better are the same things that make better recordings sound better. All of the things which make a "bad" or any recording sound better require changing the influence of the room/speakers into a more neutral response. All of the following help and are best used altogether:
1. Room treatments including a lot of bass traps in strategic locations based on dimensions. I don't like uncovered fiberglass. Also good diffusion behind listening position help to clear up rear wall reflections in midrange and HF. Don't forget about the ceiling.
2. Seating position. Use a mic to get the best bass and listen for best image. Usually there's some compromise between the two.
3. DSP should be used AFTER the first two are optimized. DSP isn't a fix-all but it's needed in all rooms to some extent. I use Audiolense XO or Acourate. Pick a target curve. It's usually going to be flat or slightly inverted from 20hz to 1khz and the gentle slope down 2db all the way to 20khz. There are good psycho-acoustic reasons why this sounds best but everyone has a preference so there's no right answer. Phase and group delay can be improved and this is very audible.
4. Use sub woofers! There are very few, if any, full range speakers which can handle the lowest bass and very high SPLs. There are some full range speakers which try to integrate separate woofers with passive components. I think that's going to miss the mark most of the time. Also, the woofers are often best placed up against a frontwall or backwall away from speakers to get smoother bass, especially when integrated with DSP.
5. Use a digital crossover to integrate the subs. This would include proper group delay so that the subs are time coherent with the R/L. I've used audiolense XO and acourate to do this. They both work well. But I think audiolense is a little easier and I like the crossover audiolense uses. It's proprietary and very good for integrating subs.
6. Don't be afraid to use some diffusion to take down HF decay times. Not all rt60 measurement are the same. You need to play with decay times and find what suits your music/room best. One person might like .3 while someone else might like .5 decay times at all frequencies. It won't be perfectly uniform in all rooms so it requires trial and error with room treatments. A good and inexpensive way to do this is use auralex t'fusors. I love them. I also affix them to the face of any fiberglass panel so as to preserve HF. Nobody likes that "dead" fiberglass sound.

I used to have a lot of "unlistenable" recordings. Now, my playlists is much expanded to a variety of genre and there are very few "bad" recordings. I think dynamically compressed/clipped music puts a heavy strain on most systems which causes folks to turn it off. But not all systems sound like that with those recordings. It is possible to enjoy those "bad" songs.