Yes, Virginia, there are bad recordings

[fas42]

I might have to bite my tongue after saying there is no such as a bad recording, Tim will be pleased(!), I believe I had actually played this once before and couldn't believe what had been done in the mastering: this was a throw out from the local library and was picked up in a huge swag of mostly excellent stuff ...

Hollywood's Greatest Hits, Kunzel & CPO, Telarc: unbelievably tedious sound, obviously manufactured for people with columns of 15" woofer drivers spread across the room, and tweeters that would shred your ears at 20 paces; perhaps the typical audiophile setup in the late 80's, when this was produced. Zero dynamics, apart from the spectacular bits designed to show off your system's bass robustness, I ran this at maximum volume and still felt I was listening to a kitchen radio. Most of the time the orchestra was jammed into a box about 5 feet in dimensions, and the treble ... what treble? It had been completely castrated, cauterised, eliminated from the scene. At one point there's a drum kit and I was lucky to pick it as such!

And the piano!! The poor thing was struggling, submerged in about 5 layers of thick army blankets. It had the tone and depth of something you could pick up at Toys 'R Us for your 6 year old ...

So, yes, Tim and all others, I do now agree there are bad recordings ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Yes, Virginia, there are bad recordings
I might have to bite my tongue after saying there is no such as a bad recording, Tim will be pleased(!),

I am happy for you, Frank. Admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery.

Tim

 

[fas42]

It's probably an audiophile thing: I also have a Sheffield Lab's Bach recording with pretty miserable, anaemic string tone. These labels must be so terrified of scaring off buyers with anything approaching real intensity of treble tone, so they reduce the sound to something approaching cold dishwater ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

It's probably an audiophile thing: I also have a Sheffield Lab's Bach recording with pretty miserable, anaemic string tone. These labels must be so terrified of scaring off buyers with anything approaching real intensity of treble tone, so they reduce the sound to something approaching cold dishwater ...

Frank

This morning I was listening to a sort of country rock, alt. country, Americana playlist I've put together. Listening to Mr. Soul, from Buffalo Springfield circa 1967, it sounded good, and in that moment I probably could have imagined that I had my system well-sorted enough that there were no bad recordings, but then a couple of good modern digital recordings came along and spoiled the illusion. There is a difference. Denial doesn't delete it.

Tim

 

[Bruce B]

Hollywood's Greatest Hits, Kunzel & CPO, Telarc: unbelievably tedious sound, obviously manufactured for people with columns of 15" woofer drivers spread across the room, and tweeters that would shred your ears at 20 paces; perhaps the typical audiophile setup in the late 80's, when this was produced. Zero dynamics, apart from the spectacular bits designed to show off your system's bass robustness, I ran this at maximum volume and still felt I was listening to a kitchen radio. Most of the time the orchestra was jammed into a box about 5 feet in dimensions, and the treble ... what treble? It had been completely castrated, cauterised, eliminated from the scene. At one point there's a drum kit and I was lucky to pick it as such!

And the piano!! The poor thing was struggling, submerged in about 5 layers of thick army blankets. It had the tone and depth of something you could pick up at Toys 'R Us for your 6 year old ...Frank

Don't let Teresa G. see this!!

 

[fas42]

... , and in that moment I probably could have imagined that I had my system well-sorted enough that there were no bad recordings, but then a couple of good modern digital recordings came along and spoiled the illusion. There is a difference. Denial doesn't delete it.

Tim

Of course there is a difference in relative quality between recordings of different eras, recording technology and sound engineers' philosophies. I don't any trouble in acknowledging, and perceiving that there are variations in the "cleanness" of the recording, what I am concerned about is that enough of the essential musical content reaches the ear sufficiently undamaged for the mind to recreate a satisfying musical event. And that Kunzel recording fails to reach that level: it has been so doctored, adulterated and sanitised to suit certain styles of playback systems that insufficient musical flags remain to be able to conjure up the illusion of a decent musical event: it's a boring, banal recording. Though, an absolutely brilliantly engineered system that has been 100% optimised might pull it off, it is still possible that it could be rescued ...

An analogy to different recordings qualities is to pick up my previously mentioned real, live jazz trio, and drop them in various acoustic environments, some extremely sympathetic to such music making and others quite antagonistic to the instrument tones. If you were listening in person in these different environments you would most likely prefer some over others, but in all cases you would have no trouble discerning that these were living, breathing musicians, and if their skills were at a requisite level, you would be grooving to the music no matter what they "sounded like". In that sense the recording quality should never be "bad" enough to get in the way of enjoying the music.

Further, it has been mentioned many times that vinyl playback can be advanced more and more, and at each quality increment the listener is less aware of the physical process of playback, all the pops and crackles, vinyl hiss, and TT rumble seem to fade away into another acoustic space, and are less relevant or perceptible to the person tuning into the musical event. If you actually got a measuring device to monitor these signature sounds you would find that they hadn't really diminished in dB level; what has happened is that they have been isolated by the quality of playback rendering sufficient auditory clues so that the ear/brain can separate that "noise and distortion" from the musical message, the disturbing content has been made "invisible" to the listening brain -- something called psychoacoustics, and that's what you should be trying to do when "improving" your system ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

Also, Mark, in that other thread, perfectly highlighted the "correct" movement forward in refining a system:

The KBL is in a far different place than those that has come before it. Everything you play through this system just makes way more sense than it ever has. The suspension of disbelief that you are actually listening to live music has never been higher. Noise has never been lower by the way. This is one quiet preamp. Every record I played provided a new experience that took me far deeper into the music and away from mechanical/electrical artifacts that usually intrude in some way. To think that this preamp has already been thrown to the dustbin of high-end gear by the cognoscenti is sort of funny. Funny because the quality of this preamp has probably been exceeded (and that is sort of scary-I’m looking forward to the RMAF so I can hear the cost-no-object systems), but it’s hard to imagine how it can get much better.

Too many times people seem to make only sideways movements, these are the hallmarks of real progress. What goes along with that journey is that you can use that language, and make those statements about more and more "poor" recordings ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

Well, I feel really bad about this. It's going to be a bitter disappointment for Tim, but I might have to retract my statement about bad recordings existing: I mentioned in the previous post that the Kunzel might possibly be rescued in the right circumstances, and I seem to have found them. Obviously I had got to just the right degree of thrashing the DAC and speakers to extract just that little bit more juice out of them, but, yes, I was able to get to get the Telarc to be listenable to. Still zero treble, but I was able to pull a smidgeon more upper midrange out, so there was some life in the sound, although the piano was still pretty miserable, no bass or treble. The trick was to run it at maximum volume after a heavy thrashing from other recordings, and before the tweeter had a chance to go completely to sleep and cool down from being ignored. Even the silly Telarc "Let's show them how big our subwoofer is!" big bassdrum whacks sounded OK ...

So my journey continues, to find a really, really bad recording ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Well, I feel really bad about this. It's going to be a bitter disappointment for Tim, but I might have to retract my statement about bad recordings existing: I mentioned in the previous post that the Kunzel might possibly be rescued in the right circumstances, and I seem to have found them. Obviously I had got to just the right degree of thrashing the DAC and speakers to extract just that little bit more juice out of them, but, yes, I was able to get to get the Telarc to be listenable to. Still zero treble, but I was able to pull a smidgeon more upper midrange out, so there was some life in the sound, although the piano was still pretty miserable, no bass or treble. The trick was to run it at maximum volume after a heavy thrashing from other recordings, and before the tweeter had a chance to go completely to sleep and cool down from being ignored. Even the silly Telarc "Let's show them how big our subwoofer is!" big bassdrum whacks sounded OK ...

So my journey continues, to find a really, really bad recording ...

Frank

Frank, I'm not sure there's anything you could say that would really disappoint me. When, for a moment, I think you've grasped a bit of reality, I'm happy for your flashes of mental health. When you come back with a post like the one above, I'm happy for the entertainment. It's all good....

Tim

 

[fas42]

I am pleased, Tim, that I'm providing you with some perhaps sorely needed light relief in your life: however, I'm a little nonplussed at to what precisely so tickles your fancy. I think we've sorted out the maximum volume issue: an intelligent, not dumb attentuator, means the amp is not driven to clipping. The Telarc is recorded at a very low average level, a current pop recording would completely drown it out. The fact that the recording has no treble, perhaps? I've also stated many times that the drivers and electronics, being a bit cheap and nasty, need to be thoroughly exercised and kept running hard to give of their best. None of this is very extreme, I would have thought ...

Just curious,
Frank