The latest crop of redbook recording quality

polkatese

...is getting better and better. I don't know whether this is because of the trend (influenced by the hi-rez battle, or mastering technology that gets better in the past couple years)

Cases in point:

Don Grusin "The Hang"
Bob Baldwin "Brazil Chill"

I picked up these two within a couple of weeks. Fyi, both are jazz/smooth jazz artists.

The quality of these two recordings are definitely comparable to HDCD (if not better). Low freq are tight and clean, high freq are smooth without and pleasant. Mids are detailed. Also, recording level is at least +1dB hotter on the scale, compared to the recordings from two years ago or so.

Anyone else noticing these (very nice) trends? I figure, at this rate, higher resolutions system will become easier to achieve, without spending a fortune. I am interested to hear others with different genre impressions (in terms of the recording quality of the redbooks).

organ

Yup, noticed it too and I'm loving it. I'm hearing much better sound quality even from black metal bands, especially the ones that moved over to bigger record labels. I'm hearing less compression, better soundstaging, etc.

Maurice

polkatese

Thanks, Maurice...so I wasn't imagining things.

Also, I was rationalizing that they made the recording hotter to make it sound louder and better, but I failed to find any flaws on the process. Usually when they pushed the envelope, the sound becomes harsher and distort slightly on the top end. But that is not the case on these latest crop.

Just like the tag line of LG Electronics - Life's Good!