AudioCircle
Music and Media => The Music Circle => Topic started by: Lol999 on 21 Jan 2018, 08:25 pm
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As it says, who releases lousy cd's?
One of my biggest bug bears is Meatloaf, I've had a few Bat out of Hell cd's and they just sound muffled and compressed, whereas I remember the vinyl being quite the opposite years ago.
Genesis apparently don't do audiophiles any favours either reportedly being over processed and compressed soundstage.
Opposite end of the spectrum the amount of sibillance on George Michael's Ladies and Gentlemen album was almost unbearable.
I just think that if you are paying good money you should get the gear - end of!
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As it says, who releases lousy cd's?
One of my biggest bug bears is Meatloaf, I've had a few Bat out of Hell cd's and they just sound muffled and compressed, whereas I remember the vinyl being quite the opposite years ago.
Well this is a metal band, chances are his studio totally unknow what is audiophile.
Genesis apparently don't do audiophiles any favours either reportedly being over processed and compressed soundstage.
SMT the rock CDs now adays are mastered and compressed to car audio use not home audio, as they think car audio is his target audience.
The Genesis SACDs were mastered to an higher sound quality in mind:
http://www.sa-cd.net/search/genesis
Opposite end of the spectrum the amount of sibillance on George Michael's Ladies and Gentlemen album was almost unbearable.
SMT the pop music are mastered to MP3 to use in cell phones and ears buds, so in home audio the poor work is very audible.
Both artists, studios and executive producers are guilty from this poor sound quality.
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Shins. Great music, crappy sounding recordings. Aimee Mann's recent vinyl releases are pretty substandard too.
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Tame Impala. I bought a couple cds after a friend's recommendation. I might like the music if I ever get past the awful sound.
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Bob Mould - Two seconds of his discs and you are running to skip it . Gots to be the worst in the history of recordings.
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I have found that some really crappy recordings are out of phase. Some however are poorly mastered. There is an art to mastering a recording few have been able to produce.
On older albums/CDs there are multiple pressings/Burns and many sound very different but all of them will have the same upc code. How to identify the best recording is a crap shoot. Finding good recordings is extremely frustrating. I recommend that you Listen to different releases from around the world.
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An old analog prog rock bad sound CDs usually the producer dont do upsampling from the master tapes and a new mix to CD, they use the vinyl mix to press the CDs to less costs.
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Iggy and the Stooges, especially Raw Power. Though purposely mastered to sound "raw", still, it makes for physically painful listening. And as such, even though I really like the music I rarely listen to it because of the sound quality. A pity.
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Iggy and the Stooges, especially Raw Power. Though purposely mastered to sound "raw", still, it makes for physically painful listening. And as such, even though I really like the music I rarely listen to it because of the sound quality. A pity.
Yep, Iggy & the Stooges rank at the top of the charts for bad sound. Another release I wish had been recorded a bit cleaner was the Stones "Exile on Main Street." I have a hard time enjoying that one for the same reasons.
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I think that Adele's cd's are poorly recorded. Such a shame with that fabulous voice.
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Even her LPs are poorly recorded.
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I think that Adele's cd's are poorly recorded. Such a shame with that fabulous voice.
This is a top money singer its no lack of budget.
I was shocked in 2009 when I discover the German master of symphonic rock Klaus Schulze recorded in DAT tape Tascan DAT-30 and Sony DAT-2700A:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=174975)
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Most any pop recording, especially early CD releases where they just 'rolled tape' and cranked out an end product. Some analog CD remasters can sound pretty good.
I don't think it's an 'artist' thing per se; more a producer and/or label thing. Most pop in particular they care very little about SQ, because, let's face it, their audience cares very little about it. So even if the band does care about it, they probably couldn't fix it because time is money. As Frank Zappa said in his autobiography, "...If the master doesn't sound right, it goes out anyway- it's only 'product' to them." Chances are, the artists mentioned are just casualties of the 'volume wars' or some such producer decision.
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your'e probably right on the producer part but of course like most music consumers I know only the artist who lets me down and not the producer.
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I remember at one time the blame was put on mastering to sound good on car and home radios. Not for hifi.
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Worst grungy CD I own is Joe Satriani: Surfing With the Aliens.
The LP is just as bad!
The sound has a horrible digitalitis grunge all through.
Like it was recorded with a 12 bit master.
Definitely the worst sound quality of any album I have ever heard.
I would really love this music.. except for the bad sound.
His other albums are much better sound quality.
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Worst grungy CD I own is Joe Satriani: Surfing With the Aliens.
The LP is just as bad!
The sound has a horrible digitalitis grunge all through.
Like it was recorded with a 12 bit master.
Definitely the worst sound quality of any album I have ever heard.
I would really love this music.. except for the bad sound.
His other albums are much better sound quality.
That's interesting, I have Surfing With the Aliens on vinyl and my pressing is isn't terrible by any stretch of the imagination. Not great, but not bad either. On the other hand, his 1995 cd of "Joe Satriani" is horrible, sounds really low-res. I've got his "Engines of Creation" on SACD and that's one of the best rock recordings I've ever heard.
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I think that Adele's cd's are poorly recorded. Such a shame with that fabulous voice.
Wholeheartedly agree... inexcusable.
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I have an original pressing of BOH, bought when it first came out. It's not that good of a recording, and it is marred by the typical Jim Steinman problems - compressed, wall of sound, upper mid glare , rolled off bass...
Genesis albums are also ummm, off. Until Trick of the Tail (well, maybe Lamb), the albums were compressed with a less than linear mid EQ.
Given the flaws in the originals, I wouldn't expect much from the CD releases.
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ZZ Top Greatest Hits, great music really poor sound quality. Barry White's Greatest Hits sounds so bad it's unlistenable.
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I think that Adele's cd's are poorly recorded. Such a shame with that fabulous voice.
Absolutely unlistenable on a decent system. Ok on fm radio though.
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The worst I’ve ever heard and probably ever will are the Glenn Danzig era Misfits albums. He allegedly financed the whole thing himself before anyone really heard of him, so I guess it goes without saying he didn’t have the money to make them sound anything near good. It genuinely sounds like they put a tape in a ghetto blaster boom box, hit record, and started playing. Truly iconic punk music though.
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Jimmy Buffett .......... all really poorly recorded. A shame since I grew up liking his music. Sound ok in a car but not much else
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Jimmy Buffett .......... all really poorly recorded. A shame since I grew up liking his music. Sound ok in a car but not much else
For security reasons listening to radio or music in cars should be prohibited.
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For security reasons listening to radio or music in cars should be prohibited.
For security reasons? :scratch:
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For security reasons? :scratch:
I should have said for safety reasons :green:
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I should have said for safety reasons :green:
Your idea of safety is one of the most dangerous things I've ever read.
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I think that Adele's cd's are poorly recorded. Such a shame with that fabulous voice.
I agree as well and it is very sad. Adele "Live at Alpert Hall" CD/DVD set is a good sounding exception
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I have to nominate Ted Nugent. He was my kinda hard rock guitarist. But the high treble set for his guitar drowns out the bass in the recordings. Live in Sweden was much better but suffers from compression.
I do however have a good recording of Stranglehold. Love the Ted Nugent show at Rockpalace '76 in Germany on Youtube. IMO his best performance.
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I was shocked in 2009 when I discover the German master of symphonic rock Klaus Schulze recorded in DAT tape Tascan DAT-30 and Sony DAT-2700A:
Why were you shocked?
I see he was also using KS Digital speakers in a 5.1 surround set up in 2003. Have you even heard of KS Digital speakers even now, 15 years later?
Too many armchair experts.
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Why were you shocked?
I see he was also using KS Digital speakers in a 5.1 surround set up in 2003. Have you even heard of KS Digital speakers even now, 15 years later?
Too many armchair experts.
These reconding machines were very inexpensive at the time and poor 16/48 sound, a great sympnonic rock master as Klaus deserve something much better, I feel for Klaus fans who like his music which I include me, DAT is a awful media to store anything, until 1998 I used DAT tapes to made backups in a Compaq Server that came w/a DAT driver, the tapes (Scotch and TDK) lasted only 4 weeks until starting present datachecks during recording or even reject at the tape insertion on driver.
One time I let a new DAT tape fall on the floor, just because this it was not recognized by the backup program I had to use another tape, so when I see the worldwide famous KS using DAT tape as main master source I could not believe.
I like Stereo tube amps not 5.1 Receiver designed for movies,
you talk as if Multi Channel sound was something decent or purist.
I dont like listen speaker w/xovers, even dint got impressed anymore w/it hi spl capabilities or its harmonic content(none) but if you have German Alnico vintage FR drivers invite me to an audition.
(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/SIQAAOSwT6pVhwER/s-l300.jpg)
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Listening to an audiophile 'guilty pleasure' now. Sorry but I like the music.
Artists are connected to their agents/labels and thus 'trapped' into using given recording/mixing studios, producers, and mastering studios. Very few have the clout to have a say. And as most things in this life, the adage "follow the money" comes to mind. Those few artists who can dictate their producers (who pick the studios and has final say in the sound) probably owe friendships and favors to who got them to that position. That's the real world.
Quality of recordings largely reflect the bulk of the intended audience. For pop, think portable players using ear buds by non-discerning pre-teens. For rock, think very high spls listened to by anti-conformists (young adults and ruffians who probably prefer distortion). Many rock performers actually purposefully generate distortion as part of their music. Regardless most pop/rock instruments are artificial (electronic) anyway, so there is no real standard to measure their sound against. Modern pop performers are largely picked based on persona, not their voices. So these genres really don't relate well to high fidelity reproduction.
Any complaints about mainstream studio (not those produced by raw amateurs) jazz or classical recordings? Those recordings reflect the use of "real" instruments and mature audiences (the fodder of serious audiophiles).
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These reconding machines were very inexpensive at the time and poor 16/48 sound, a great sympnonic rock master as Klaus deserve something much better, I feel for Klaus fans who like his music which I include me, DAT is a awful media to store anything, until 1998 I used DAT tapes to made backups in a Compaq Server that came w/a DAT driver, the tapes (Scotch and TDK) lasted only 4 weeks until starting present datachecks during recording or even reject at the tape insertion on driver.
One time I let a new DAT tape fall on the floor, just because this it was not recognized by the backup program I had to use another tape, so when I see the worldwide famous KS using DAT tape as main master source I could not believe.
I like Stereo tube amps not 5.1 Receiver designed for movies,
you talk as if Multi Channel sound was something decent or purist.
I dont like listen speaker w/xovers, even dint got impressed anymore w/it hi spl capabilities or its harmonic content(none) but if you have German Alnico vintage FR drivers invite me to an audition.
(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/SIQAAOSwT6pVhwER/s-l300.jpg)
I am beginning to understand why you and maty are capable of having a dialogue.
What you have typed here is, apparently, a deeply confused picture of reality.
In the first place, you appear to be confusing DAT tape with the short-lived cassette data storage era. The tape in your image is a cassette tape, not a DAT tape.
Secondly, the Tascam DA-30 was a fully professional and very good sounding unit, widely used—and 16/44, done right, is excellent. 16/48 was established as a consumer format to create incompatibility and keep the consumer away from pro grade stuff. It failed to do so, but became the de-facto video standard, strangely.
Thirdly, DAT tapes are a very robust archival medium; I guess you are talking about the short-lived cassette data storage format.
Finally, possessing a 5.1 system comprised of KS Digital speakers is an indicator of seriousness on the part of Klaus. KS Digital speakers are both exceptionally good and exceptionally expensive—vastly better, it could be argued, than any wideband speaker—whether the tweeter is shot out or not.
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I am beginning to understand why you and maty are capable of having a dialogue.
What you have typed here is, apparently, a deeply confused picture of reality.
In the first place, you appear to be confusing DAT tape with the short-lived cassette data storage era. The tape in your image is a cassette tape, not a DAT tape.
Secondly, the Tascam DA-30 was a fully professional and very good sounding unit, widely used—and 16/44, done right, is excellent. 16/48 was established as a consumer format to create incompatibility and keep the consumer away from pro grade stuff. It failed to do so, but became the de-facto video standard, strangely.
Thirdly, DAT tapes are a very robust archival medium; I guess you are talking about the short-lived cassette data storage format.
Finally, possessing a 5.1 system comprised of KS Digital speakers is an indicator of seriousness on the part of Klaus. KS Digital speakers are both exceptionally good and exceptionally better, it could be argued, than any wideband speaker—whether the tweeter is shot out or not.
I wrong posted this mini cassete image as DAT, I mean say DAT tapes indeed,
analog cassete dont work as digital data backup. The referred DAT tapes were from good brands about $20usd and lasted very one month being used just once or twince a week(Sunday) for backup files in a Server, its not great reliability.
I have found various pro audio guys saying 16/44 is good, even being the lowest quality in digital recording. The prob here is I dont want spend my money on hardware and very low expectations.
Personal attacks have become frequent on this forum lately.
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I wrong posted this mini cassete image as DAT, I mean say DAT tapes indeed,
analog cassete dont work as digital data backup. The referred DAT tapes were from good brands about $20usd and lasted very one month being used just once or twince a week(Sunday) for backup files in a Server, its not great reliability.
I have found various pro audio guys saying 16/44 is good, even being the lowest quality in digital recording. The prob here is I dont want spend my money on hardware and very low expectations.
Personal attacks have become frequent on this forum lately.
Well, I have had 5 DAT machines over the years—an Aiwa HD-S1 in 1991, two Teac DAP-20s until 2002, a Tascam DA-30 from 1995 to present and a Panasonic SV-3700 and have never had a single DAT failure, ever, over all those years. So much for not great reliability.
I do have a large number of Princo CDRs—many of them masters of my recordings from 2000 to 2011—that will not play at all, on any one of my 5 CD players and are a complete write-off. Since 2004 I have stored my masters on my hard drive, with two back ups.
My point is that you are wrong in saying that DATs are unreliable and you are spreading false information. You are also very wrong in criticising Klaus Schulze studio set up based on his equipment list of 2003 and presuming he is thus unable to produce good quality recordings. You are not qualified to pass judgement based on his equipment list, nor should you, with your apparent lack of experience.
And, finally, analog cassettes were used as digital data backup, albeit briefly, thankfully:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/history-removable-computer-storage/
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Well, I have had 5 DAT machines over the years—an Aiwa HD-S1 in 1991, two Teac DAP-20s until 2002, a Tascam DA-30 from 1995 to present and a Panasonic SV-3700 and have never had a single DAT failure, ever, over all those years. So much for not great reliability.
I do have a large number of Princo CDRs—many of them masters of my recordings from 2000 to 2011—that will not play at all, on any one of my 5 CD players and are a complete write-off. Since 2004 I have stored my masters on my hard drive, with two back ups.
My point is that you are wrong in saying that DATs are unreliable and you are spreading false information. You are also very wrong in criticising Klaus Schulze studio set up based on his equipment list of 2003 and presuming he is thus unable to produce good quality recordings. You are not qualified to pass judgement based on his equipment list, nor should you, with your apparent lack of experience.
Not sure what you mean say by failure as seems you recording just once in a tape and store it in a vault. Again personal attack to disqualify me buddy!
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Not sure what you mean say by failure as seems you recording just once in a tape and store it in a vault. Again personal attack to disqualify me buddy!
Not so much personal attack as targetted pointing out of irrational, pointless and insulting comments.
How would you feel if you were Klaus Schulze and someone with so little experience as not to know what a DAT tape even looked like criticized the quality of his work by pointing out that in 2003 his equipment line up included DAT machines, yet at the same time not knowing that the speakers in his list (KS Digital) indicated someone who was very much indeed concerned with quality.
There is a reason "audiophile" is used as a pejorative term in the recording industry.
KS Digital are very expensive as well as very good, by the way, although they do have tweeters, so I guess that disqualifies them in your books.
And don't get me started...
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There is a reason "audiophile" is used as a perjorative term in the recording industry.
This is very interesting to me Russell. I always enjoy your posts as a window into the professional world. So recording engineers despise audiophiles? And audiophiles despise engineers that compress dynamics and destroy sound staging? Seems like a system designed for failure. Yet I have a library full of wonderful recordings. Somebody didn't get the memo? Thanks again for your insights.
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This is very interesting to me Russell. I always enjoy your posts as a window into the professional world. So recording engineers despise audiophiles? And audiophiles despise engineers that compress dynamics and destroy sound staging? Seems like a system designed for failure. Yet I have a library full of wonderful recordings. Somebody didn't get the memo? Thanks again for your insights.
It's almost always the producer who wants dynamics squeezed to fit better into the pop world of FM, car radio, and personal sound gear used by non-discriminating young listeners who make up most of the music buying market. Again, 'serious' music such as classical or jazz has fewer truly poor recordings.
Yes professionals have little patience for the bulk of audiophiles, who fixate on witch hunts regarding stuff that has little influence on the nature of the music, prefer various colorations over accurate sound reproduction, and have little idea of what most instruments really sound like or how music is really produced. That's why they focus on active speakers and avoid stuff like boutique cables or tubes.
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Yes professionals have little patience for the bulk of audiophiles, who fixate on witch hunts regarding stuff that has little influence on the nature of the music, prefer various colorations over accurate sound reproduction, and have little idea of what most instruments really sound like or how music is really produced. That's why they focus on active speakers and avoid stuff like boutique cables or tubes.
Your characterization of professional disdain for cables, tubes, and "audiophile" concerns paints a picture with a brush too broad. There are plenty of examples of recording professionals that do care about cables, power conditioning, tubes, etc. Doug Sax was well regarded as one of the greatest mastering engineers of all times and he was obsessed with every detail of the recording technology chain. He even obsessed about connectors degrading influence on cable performance and hardwired as much as he could, insisting on silver solder. Plenty of vacuum tubes were found in his Sheffield Lab studios. Until 2003 engineer Kavi Alexander at Water Lily Acoustics recordings used EAR/Tim Paravacini tubed equipment. He switched his recording studio over to solid state digital after that date as he felt the world was moving on and digital technology had advanced far enough to merit the changeover. These two examples are admittedly in an earlier era.
In more recent times producer Rick Ruben, Skywalker Sound studios, Astoria Studios UK, Phillip Crest National Studio, Mobile Fidelity, Sony Studios Japan, and others endorse and use Shunyata Audio cables and power conditioning.
Abbey Road studios in London uses Classe amplification and B&W 800D speakers, not your typical monitoring room equipment.
I think it's true that recording professionals aren't going to waste time and money on things they deem irrelevant to outcomes. However, just as we have different ideas about what matters in our home systems, there are differences in tastes, choices, and opinions in recording studios.
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I always thought Adele was bad too, but sounds pretty good with my latest set-up. Best of Abba was much worse, but finally now tolerable.
Most(all) metal bands are still bad.
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This is very interesting to me Russell. I always enjoy your posts as a window into the professional world. So recording engineers despise audiophiles? And audiophiles despise engineers that compress dynamics and destroy sound staging? Seems like a system designed for failure. Yet I have a library full of wonderful recordings. Somebody didn't get the memo? Thanks again for your insights.
No, I'm not saying audiophiles are despised in the engineering fraternity at all. Tolerated with bemusement, maybe—especially if you have had any personal experience with the immense power of expectation bias in subtle comparisons between different sounds.
An extreme example of audiophilia gone awry would be the system employing every tweak know to man—highest res source, cryo'd 99.9999% silver interconnects with silk dielectric, oriented in the 'correct' direction and of the 'correct' length (yes, there has been debate about that) feeding a preamp and power amp of pedigree with machine-turned 1/2" thick faceplates, feeding speakers with very wrong tonality, inadequate dynamic capability and wrongly positioned in a bad sounding room through very expensive and thick speaker wires carefully elevated off the floor.
That, or variations on that scenario.
In other words, the view is that 'audiophiles' are concentrating on the trees and missing the forest—obsessing about minutae and not addressing the big flaw. The speakers and the room.
The desire of most recording, mixing or mastering engineers, I think it's fair to say, is to provide the client and the listening public with a sonic experience that will thrill, delight or impress them, depending on the intended audience. That can only be accomplished by the artful manipulation of just a few variables, the most important (apart from the music and the performance) being the mix itself. How much of what do you put where in the panorama, and how do you adjust the tonality and dynamics of each element? Like stage makeup—if done well, the process is invisible.
To make all these decisions accurately (so that the resulting sound works on the greatest number of playback systems) what is needed at the mixing stage is accurate monitoring—particularly as pertains to the speakers and the room.
To satisfy the speaker needs the powered speaker has proven to be more effective than the passive speaker and, more recently, the type of powered speaker where the signal either enters in the digital domain or is converted internally to digital so that elaborate digital sound processing (DSP) can be employed. This eliminates many of the pitfalls of the analog crossover in passive speakers. Steep crossover slopes are easy, without the nasty phase rotations intrinsic to analog crossovers, enabling sonic accuracy over a wider listening window, and accurate adjustments to the linearity of frequency response are also easy—and travel through capacitors is unecessary.
As to the room, professional acousticians are employed in the big budget rooms and room correction EQ has become more common. Many use the Trinnov system for this.
Anyway, the bottom line to this diatribe is that sound engineers do care very much about good sound, are not deaf for the most part and want to produce a result which brings pleasure to the greatest number of people listening on all manner of gear, from earbuds to monster systems, and to do this they concentrate on their monitor systems; both speakers and rooms.
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This thread is all over the place.
As I understand it, the original question was what artists put out bad sounding music.
From there we somehow made it to arguing about obsolete recording and archiving formats.
My answer to the original question is, virtually all of them. However, it's not primarily the artist's fault. It's the producers, the record companies, and, in the end, the listeners. All of these have determined that 'Loud sells'. So 'Loud' is what they put out. A typical pop recording has maybe 5dB of dynamic range. That (aside from the fact that virtually all new pop sucks) is why I listen almost exclusively to Jazz and Classical. These have usually been deemed unworthy of The Big Push by the labels, so they tend to be abused less on their way through the production pipeline. If you've ever heard recordings done with minimal or no compression, it's a vastly different experience. An entire aspect of the language of music- dynamic contrasts- has been eliminated for commercial reasons. Pretty sad, really. But not really attributable to individual artists for the most part, IMHO.
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This thread is all over the place.
As I understand it, the original question was what artists put out bad sounding music.
From there we somehow made it to arguing about obsolete recording and archiving formats.
My answer to the original question is, virtually all of them. However, it's not primarily the artist's fault. It's the producers, the record companies, and, in the end, the listeners. All of these have determined that 'Loud sells'. So 'Loud' is what they put out. A typical pop recording has maybe 5dB of dynamic range. That (aside from the fact that virtually all new pop sucks) is why I listen almost exclusively to Jazz and Classical. These have usually been deemed unworthy of The Big Push by the labels, so they tend to be abused less on their way through the production pipeline. If you've ever heard recordings done with minimal or no compression, it's a vastly different experience. An entire aspect of the language of music- dynamic contrasts- has been eliminated for commercial reasons. Pretty sad, really. But not really attributable to individual artists for the most part, IMHO.
Agreed.
If we all had the original master tape with a master tape machine, their would be no complaints on any artist. But that is impossible.
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Agreed.
If we all had the original master tape with a master tape machine, their would be no complaints on any artist. But that is impossible.
Don't forget the master 'tape' is no longer a tape, but more likely to be multiple files in a folder, and that what you are hearing at home is more or less what the mixing engineer produced by mixing the many tracks from these tracks down to the 2 or so tracks you hear. The mastering engineer works from the stereo (or 5.1, or whatever) master the mixing engineer creates. Most of the damage, if damage is done, is done at the mixing stage, so what you are suggesting does not make sense, actually.
Do you follow me?
In other words, the 'master', if made in the last 50 years, is almost never a stereo pair but a multitrack tape or file. Typically, the mastering engineer does not change the sound hugely—what you hear as consumers is close to what the mixing engineer produced, mostly as a stereo file.
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An extreme example of audiophilia gone awry would be the system employing every tweak know to man—highest res source, cryo'd 99.9999% silver interconnects with silk dielectric, oriented in the 'correct' direction and of the 'correct' length (yes, there has been debate about that) feeding a preamp and power amp of pedigree with machine-turned 1/2" thick faceplates, feeding speakers with very wrong tonality, inadequate dynamic capability and wrongly positioned in a bad sounding room through very expensive and thick speaker wires carefully elevated off the floor.
That, or variations on that scenario.
A little tour through the 'Systems' sections, I'm sorry to say, reveals the above approach to be not only common but perhaps even prevalent. But let's be real, it's often more about conspicuous consumption and status for many than it is about sound.
But the recordings we started out discussing are expected to be played on cheap earbuds or 'smart speakers', so maybe we're all tilting at windmills here...
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..... The mastering engineer works from the stereo (or 5.1, or whatever) master the mixing engineer creates. Most of the damage, if damage is done, is done at the mixing stage, so what you are suggesting does not make sense, actually.
Great point....
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Stills, Collins cd some good music and vocals but distorted as heck on my system. Anyone else give it a listen?
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I've got it. Sounds good to me. Handle with care for off to a hell of a start it sounded strange. Got better after a few listens. But more then happy. Been a Stills fan for 45 yrs.
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I'm not an insider but....
I kind of think that an artist would have some say in the quality of recording - especially the more famous ones. Paul Simon (as well as a few other artists) recordings usually seem to be a cut above. I think that artists simply don't care enough to even speak about it.
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I'm not an insider but....
I kind of think that an artist would have some say in the quality of recording - especially the more famous ones. Paul Simon (as well as a few other artists) recordings usually seem to be a cut above. I think that artists simply don't care enough to even speak about it.
In the 70s I worked for 2 years as stage roadie, and the things that the artists did and said were hair-raising, everything about the small and big stars including internationals one was known.
Many famous artists do not like the fans, much less talk and give autographs, in the time when there was only vinyl, studio engineers openly said that the sound quality of the Master Tape was not important for LP pressing.
I got tired to see the tape deck recorder spinning at minimum speed (1.5'' per second) to record important rock and jazz artists, not to mention using tape reel already used or even older tapes recovered from discarded masters from the vaults, they want to spend as little as possible and dont give a damn the sound quality the fan is going to have.
Before the Beatles the situation was not like this.
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In the 70s I worked for 2 years as stage roadie, and the things that the artists did and said were hair-raising, everything about the small and big stars including internationals one was known.
Many famous artists do not like the fans, much less talk and give autographs, in the time when there was only vinyl, studio engineers openly said that the sound quality of the Master Tape was not important for LP pressing.
I got tired to see the tape deck recorder spinning at minimum speed (1.5'' per second) to record important rock and jazz artists, not to mention using tape reel already used or even older tapes recovered from discarded masters from the vaults, they want to spend as little as possible and dont give a damn the sound quality the fan is going to have.
Before the Beatles the situation was not like this.
I think things must have been different in Brazil. I've never seen anything important recorded at 1 7/8 ips; The least I've seen is 7 1/2 ips, with 15 or 30 ips most common for important recordings.
I know the vested business interests in Brazil delayed the entry of the CD format in that country by 1-2 years while the last few dollars were squeezed out of vinyl, and they had time to build CD manufacturing plants. Brazil was the last major country in the world to get CDs. Maybe the same hard-nosed attitude applied to saving money by recording at tape-saving speeds.
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I'm not an insider but....
I kind of think that an artist would have some say in the quality of recording - especially the more famous ones. Paul Simon (as well as a few other artists) recordings usually seem to be a cut above. I think that artists simply don't care enough to even speak about it.
You have to realize that the Artist isn't paying (directly) for the recording, mastering, pressing, promotion, the label is. Now, you can argue that the Artist does pay for this stuff, and it's true, because the label will send them a bill for it all, but still, it's like Daddy is buying you a car, which car do you think you get; the one Daddy wants you to have or the one you want to have? If the deal is he lends you the money, what if you don't like the car he is going to buy you? Walk and (literally) keep walking, or drive the thing and deal with it later once you've paid him off?
Plus the Artist has no rights to his own music, you sign over the copyrights when you sign with a label. So it's not like you are in a strong position to be telling people what to do and how to do it.
In most cases it's about the projected audience. Mass market pop? Sonics get a back seat to things that will benefit marketing (like how loud the thing sounds on the radio). Jazz? Oh, FM late night and people who still buy software. A little more care is taken. And so on. Classic Rock with Collector value? We can resell this catalog twenty more times, let's not release the 192/24 until the 96/24 demand falls off first.
I don't think (true) audiophiles are held in such poor regard as some have suggested. The old rule of thumb was 5% of your sales, with 95% going to people who won't or can't tell the difference. But they are an influential 5%, and are responsible for the popularizing of most music that doesn't fit a Top40 playlist to that part of the other 95% that isn't focused on singles and banal pop beats and fads. Which is, give them credit, a lot of people.
As in almost everything else the Interwebs touch, the idea of the audiophile as "audiophool" is more myth than reality, it's a meme, not an indication of how most actually approach the subject of reproduction in the home. After all, if even 1% of the record buying public bought all the "snake oil" they are accused of buying, it would be a multi-billion dollar business, outselling actual audio gear and all software (hard copy or digital) by quite a margin.