Perfect example of why we are losing fidelity.

jkn

It's been a trend for the last decade, I doubt this trend will end anytime soon - especially as music is migrating to mp3 more and more.

The power of the radio station makes a big difference - ironically, for a brief time here there was a station playing mp3's on a fairly weak tower. Sound quality was awful - however, the fact they'd play almost anything made it fun to listen to over the more powerful, but bland repetitive stations. Of course, this station got replaced - and it looks like it was really only a placeholder station anyway while they were rearranging the market.

I know I don't need to say it - but remember that people on this forum have a much higher interest in quality than most people.

I prefer the best sound I can get balanced with convenience and variety - if I really want to "hear" something - I turn on my Mackie's or my AKG phones - however, reality says I spend most of my day at work (listening to cd's on a boombox) and in the car... :-)

We're in the process of looking at speakers for our living room - I can't wait to have decent music out there again!

zombie boy 2000

I was listening to some old Johnny Cash recordings last night and I realized something.... wow, slam, and loudness may not be oozing from the speakers, but once your ears grow accustomed to the softer textures -- you begin to realize just how deeply layered the music is.
It doesn't necessarily grab your intention at first, but if you're willing to invest even the slightest amount of effort into really focusing on the music, it becomes a vivid, three-dimensional, organic experience.

It's there and all the more satisfying... you can save your infinite pings and tuneless bass for the Best Buy/Ipod crowd.

shack

zombie boy 2000 wrote:

I was listening to some old Johnny Cash recordings last night and I realized something.... wow, slam, and loudness may not be oozing from the speakers, but once your ears grow accustomed to the softer textures -- you begin to realize just how deeply layered the music is.
It doesn't necessarily grab your intention at first, but if you're willing to invest even the slightest amount of effort into really focusing on the music, it becomes a vivid, three-dimensional, organic experience.

Ironic as well, last night I was listening to Jimi Hendrix, "Band of Gypsys". On the first track "Who Knows", at one point you can hear Buddy Miles literally whispering while still hearing the faint bass of Billy Cox in the background. I know this was a live album but the dynamic range was fantastic and clear as a bell. I can't remember any rock albums of late that pull this off.

zombie boy 2000

That's what I'm talking about... it's not about superimposing "crystal-clear" instruments on top of each other to fabricate a performance. It's about the whole -- the subtle cues that may not impress the neighbors, but breathe life into a recording nonetheless.

bikezappa

Only amplitude and frequency make music.

Take away amplitude or make it all the same level and you have ****.

unc2701

I've got a Pixies vinyl pressing done off the original tapes and you can actually hear where the tape bled through adjacent sections on the reel... anything recorded these days and you wouldn't even notice.

zombie boy 2000

Which album?!?

This is so funny you mentioned it because I have a Pro-ject Debut III on order and I told my wife last night the first record I was going to buy would be Doolittle.

hearingimpared

zombie boy 2000 wrote:

I was listening to some old Johnny Cash recordings last night and I realized something.... wow, slam, and loudness may not be oozing from the speakers, but once your ears grow accustomed to the softer textures -- you begin to realize just how deeply layered the music is.
It doesn't necessarily grab your intention at first, but if you're willing to invest even the slightest amount of effort into really focusing on the music, it becomes a vivid, three-dimensional, organic experience.

It's there and all the more satisfying... you can save your infinite pings and tuneless bass for the Best Buy/Ipod crowd.

You hit the nail right on the head, especially with Johnny Cash. I have a few JC recordings and they are incredible, no compression there.

unc2701

zombie boy 2000 wrote:

Which album?!?

This is so funny you mentioned it because I have a Pro-ject Debut III on order and I told my wife last night the first record I was going to buy would be Doolittle.

Surfer Rosa, but I've got Doolittle, too.

zombie boy 2000

Both are stellar...
did you see the piece on the Pixies in the latest issue of Stereophile?

Gawd, I must be getting old:D

unc2701

huh, come to think of it, I haven't seen this month's stereophile. Wife must have hid it

MacLeod

That is very eye opening! I never thought of that.

However, the Rush example is dead on! Their late 80's CD's had exceptional SQ with Test for Echo being my favorite. Vapor Trails however wasnt even close to the older ones.

Lowell_M

Hmm.. This is the most educational post of the day. I knew that newer CD's weren't good recordings but wasnt' sure why. This is quite depressing.

On a positive note... I recently bought the HDCD remastered John Fogerty Centerfield CD. I was playing it at low volume levels (-45 ish) and was kind of dissappointed in the CD...THEN I turned it up to -20 and wow! the dynamics came alive. I then ripped the CD to the highest quality MP3 setting in Itunes and then plated the MP3 for comparison. What a mess. The dynamics are definately intact in this HDCD recording.

dragon1952

I'm sitting here listening to Tom Petty's Greatest Hits through headphones and thinking what an incredible freakin' recording this is. Too bad they're all not like this.

jkn

Ironically, I'm listening to a cd that my cousin sent to me - and I'm wondering if he converted it from mp3 to burn the disc... Definitely missing definition even on my Sony boombox. :-( The music is good at least.

Regarding Vapor Trails... there's a fairly famous article discussing the bad mastering. The prorec server where it's hosted seems to be down so I've linked to both the original page and google's cache (the original may just be down for me right now...) - the cache worked fine.


original: http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C

cache: http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:RbOJj6KLsO8J:www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C+rush+vapor+trails+compression+analysis&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

bikezappa

Dynamic range

I loved going to the BSO Thursday rehearsal concerts. These concerts we very cheap and no seats were assigned. Usually you got into the symphony hall and put your coat on good seats and left to go out for a quick bit to eat. Well this night they were playing a Mahler’s symphony. Mahler loved to use the dynamic range or loudness of the orchestra to set the mood. During one part of the monment Mahler spends about 10 minutes slowly reducing the volume by slowly peeling away waves of themes from the music. You definitely get lulled into the slowly reduced volume yet the melody is still there. During this part of the music I noticed this woman with two bags of groceries in her lap. She was definitely starting to surcome to the magic of the music and was nodding off. The end of Mahler’s slow quiet passage is the sudden impact of one of the loudest pieces of music ever. It’s like a burst out of a cannon for the orchestra from almost dead quiet. When this blast hits this women her grocery bags go into the air.

Dynamic range works in music.

Dynmaic range in very important to music.

Without dynmaic range there is no music.

zombie boy 2000

Incidently, the Stereophile article on The Pixies mentions the loud-soft-loud dynamic for which they are famous. And how many bands (both indie and underground) were directly influenced by their unique approach to rock.

btw Great post Bikezappa.

Mother Mooch

IS there a cure?

What about recording a CD to tape, then back to CD? Will the tape "warm it up" again? (yeah i know, but just a thought)

jkn

Mother Mooch wrote:

IS there a cure?

What about recording a CD to tape, then back to CD? Will the tape "warm it up" again? (yeah i know, but just a thought)

Not for the issue where the music has been pushed to the limit and all of the peaks have been clipped... there's nothing that can fix that short of going back to the original masters. (well - nothing that I'm aware of at least...)

Some of my friends record heavily on computer and will bounce the digital mix through a reel to reel 2 or 8 track tape recorder to get that more analog sound. It's a very nice technique that bridges both worlds somewhat. Some people run through tube amps to 'warm' things up. Although that's going off on a slightly different tangent from this thread.

bikezappa - I loved that Mahler story.

Mother Mooch

jkn wrote:

Not for the issue where the music has been pushed to the limit and all of the peaks have been clipped... there's nothing that can fix that short of going back to the original masters. (well - nothing that I'm aware of at least...)

Point taken! Now to get a hold of the masters... <Devious smile>

hearingimpared

a_mattison wrote:

Hmm.. This is the most educational post of the day. I knew that newer CD's weren't good recordings but wasnt' sure why. This is quite depressing.

On a positive note... I recently bought the HDCD remastered John Fogerty Centerfield CD. I was playing it at low volume levels (-45 ish) and was kind of dissappointed in the CD...THEN I turned it up to -20 and wow! the dynamics came alive. I then ripped the CD to the highest quality MP3 setting in Itunes and then plated the MP3 for comparison. What a mess. The dynamics are definately intact in this HDCD recording.

I have the original version of Centerfield from the 80s and it sounds incredible.

hearingimpared

bikezappa wrote:

Dynamic range

I loved going to the BSO Thursday rehearsal concerts. These concerts we very cheap and no seats were assigned. Usually you got into the symphony hall and put your coat on good seats and left to go out for a quick bit to eat. Well this night they were playing a Mahler’s symphony. Mahler loved to use the dynamic range or loudness of the orchestra to set the mood. During one part of the monment Mahler spends about 10 minutes slowly reducing the volume by slowly peeling away waves of themes from the music. You definitely get lulled into the slowly reduced volume yet the melody is still there. During this part of the music I noticed this woman with two bags of groceries in her lap. She was definitely starting to surcome to the magic of the music and was nodding off. The end of Mahler’s slow quiet passage is the sudden impact of one of the loudest pieces of music ever. It’s like a burst out of a cannon for the orchestra from almost dead quiet. When this blast hits this women her grocery bags go into the air.

Dynamic range works in music.

Dynmaic range in very important to music.

Without dynmaic range there is no music.

Sort of a reversed Ravel's Bolero?

joeparaski

Just thinkin'...but....isn't THIS where graphic equalizers and parametric equalizers will come in handy to bring back the "dynamics" of the music??

Joe

hearingimpared

joeparaski wrote:

Just thinkin'...but....isn't THIS where graphic equalizers and parametric equalizers will come in handy to bring back the "dynamics" of the music??

Joe

Good point Joe, I'm wondering now, if you had say, a 120 band eq, if that would enable you to restore some of the dynamics without it sounding bloated or breathy.

Lowell_M

joeparaski wrote:

Just thinkin'...but....isn't THIS where graphic equalizers and parametric equalizers will come in handy to bring back the "dynamics" of the music??

Joe

You must be one of those guys who really believes that the CSI Miami guys really can "enhance" the video so that they can read the emblem on the ladies shirt in the blackand white bank security video.

Something out of nothing, bro. The dynamics aren't going to be all in one frequency band.

joeparaski

I know there are a lot of purists on this forum that don't believe in tone controls. However, this phenomenon of crappy recordings could be the very reason why I play around with my eq's to change the sound to my liking. Without knowing the technical aspects of sound, am I not bringing back the sound to what my ears think it should sound like, while all along the purists are listening to the "wrong" sound because they have no tone controls.

So what is the reason some of you use no tone controls when the original music is wrong on the cd to begin with? According to the first post on this thread, the dynamics aren't there to begin with.

Joe

joeparaski

a_mattison wrote:

You must be one of those guys who really believes that the CSI Miami guys really can "enhance" the video so that they can read the emblem on the ladies shirt in the blackand white bank security video.

Something out of nothing, bro. The dynamics aren't going to be all in one frequency band.

Sorry Mattison, I watch very little t.v. and have never seen CSI, but I think I know what you're talking about.

I'm just curious about this issue that's all. After all, eq's were designed for a reason, and if my eq improves the sound I'm hearing, then that must be good thing.

Joe

Lowell_M

It is not that some particular frequency is cut down and needs to be louder, which is what an EQ would do, its that the loudest louds and and quietest quiets (in all frequencies) are both raised and lowered so that the music can easily be played "loud" on most systems and you don't "miss" any of the music. The dynamics are gone.

I'm thinking that and EQ would be used to correct a situation in a room where a particular frequency isn't recreated as it should be, so you turn that frequency up. The more expensive subs have built in software to manage this automatically. My H/K does a frequency sweep on all channels and adjusts accordingly automatically.

Lowell_M

joeparaski wrote:

Sorry Mattison, I watch very little t.v. and have never seen CSI, but I think I know what you're talking about.

I'm just curious about this issue that's all. After all, eq's were designed for a reason, and if my eq improves the sound I'm hearing, then that must be good thing.

Joe

Sorry for being a smart ****. That is one of my pet peaves in those CSI shows.....

hearingimpared

joeparaski wrote:

I know there are a lot of purists on this forum that don't believe in tone controls. However, this phenomenon of crappy recordings could be the very reason why I play around with my eq's to change the sound to my liking. Without knowing the technical aspects of sound, am I not bringing back the sound to what my ears think it should sound like, while all along the purists are listening to the "wrong" sound because they have no tone controls.

So what is the reason some of you use no tone controls when the original music is wrong on the cd to begin with? According to the first post on this thread, the dynamics aren't there to begin with.

Joe

This to me is another good point Joe. My preamp has no tone controls. . . I would never ever think of having tone controls, until recently. As you know I just got my rig up and running about 2 1/2 weeks now. The rig isn't tweaked out and the room is hot and needs to be treated so I'm not quite liking (sometimes) what I am hearing listening to certain material. The last day or two I have found myself wishing I had a bass tone control to just slightly boost the bass, not much, just a little. It's just a feeling that comes over me. I'm sure that once I get things the way they need to be especially with room treatments, that feeling will become less and less but your point is well taken.

EDIT: One of the reasons that I know it is the room is that when I move off the sweet spot, I hear deep tight bass and crisp clear trumpets and bones etc. but it would be nice that until I get the room treated I had a little leeway with tone control.