Good recordings vs Bad recordings

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Huck

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Re: Good recordings vs Bad recordings
« Reply #20 on: 17 Sep 2022, 02:15 pm »
Yeah,I have been doing mainly streaming from Amazon Music Unlimited  via Bluesound NODE lately and found that most(not all) music is lifeless,with zero stereo separation,but 'some' sound good,like Def Leppard "Hysteria" title,which I give about a 8/10 and probably 20% of the music I listen to,while streaming,is few and far between,as far as 'good' sound quality goes,but for me,still beats listening to CD's,only for the 'convenience' part. Huck

DannyBadorine

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Re: Good recordings vs Bad recordings
« Reply #21 on: 17 Sep 2022, 06:00 pm »
Interesting discussion here.  Are we confusing the term "distortion" with "compression"?  Modern recordings are generally mixed and mastered with a lot of compression, which is a form of distortion and causes some distortion artifacts.  Many of these modern recordings are mixed and mastered to have a final product that is loud, but most of the time this doesn't sound distorted as much as it lacks dynamic range.  This can be heard on nice speakers, but most people don't listen on nice speakers.  Old recordings were done to tape, which causes a lot of distortion, but they have a lot less compression so they don't present as being "distorted".  Tube and ribbon microphones were also used on these recordings and those cause distortion also.  So I wouldn't say that distortion is the problem here as much as audio compression.  Additionally, audio compression is different than the "compression" that is used to change digital forms of music from (for example) a wave file into an MP3 file.  This is a completely different compression in which the file loses a ton of information in order to make it smaller.  This kind of compression is awful and really destroys good recordings.
 I also agree about Radiohead being some of the best sounding albums out there.  But there are many bands making good sounding music.  There are also some highly compressed albums that still sound good as the Mastering Engineers have gotten so good at it, they can trick you into hearing dynamics when there aren't any.

DannyBadorine

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Re: Good recordings vs Bad recordings
« Reply #22 on: 17 Sep 2022, 06:21 pm »
The system has to do with distortion, not the tracks.  It may seem like highly-compressed tracks have more distortion when loud, but the distortion is the same.  What happens in most systems is that the dynamic capability improves at higher levels, making a poor track sound worse.

Good examples of uncompressed tracks can be found at bluecoastrecords.com  I use many of these for reference and at shows.

Examples of highly compressed tracks include Santana Supernatural and most recordings of Bruno Mars.  It's a shame because I like Mars....

Steve N.

This is dead on.