[stump4545]

when discovering a great sounding track that is recorded well and sounds great on my system, if it safe to say its a great recording and it will sound great on others hifi systems, or sometimes a track sounds awesome on my setup but only decent on a friends.  does this happen sometimes?

i found a jack johnson album that so far sounds the best on my setup, but other highly touted audiophile recordings that dont sound nearly as good.   is this only normal?

thanks

[jimdgoulding]

I bought a 200g Japanese pressing of Jack Johnson's Brushfire Fairytales a while back and what's good about it to me is the drum-in-a-room-sound.  Wide dynamics, the kit is unusally large, and there is air galore.  His voice, on the other hand, sounds heavily processed to me, too big and without the air of the drumkit but the size of the instruments and openess of it with the bass is very becoming.  Cheers

PS-  If you hang around here you'll get a lot of recs and opinions about audiophile qualified recordings.

[S Clark]

 
As far as what sounds good in a particular system, I've found that even mid fi systems are greatly aided by good material.  Back in the late 70's/early 80's I discovered DBX encoded Sheffield Labs vinyl, and my Sherwood 8900 receiver, BIC 980 turntable with Shure M91ed, and Design Acoustics D12 speakers revealed things I'd never known were possible with stereophonic sound.That was a true mid fi system (except for the speakers).  I tend to think that great recordings should be noticably better on anyones system, with more to be gained the better the playback gear.
Scott

[BPoletti]

Well-recorded music will usually sound good on most systems.  Some of the early Reader's Digest stereo boxes are very good examples of this. 

[Photon46]

I've slowly been increasing the quality of my audio system over the last forty years and as this process has gone on, I'm troubled less and less by the variations in recording quality. I remember an anecdote Mike Fremer related regarding an attendee to an audio show reacting to the $75k. price tag of the Caliburn turntable. To paraphrase, the conversation went something like. "Wow, that's really expensive for a turntable!!" To which the retort was, "yeah, but's it's really cheap for a time machine." I sure don't have anything near the level of the Caliburn, but things are still cooking well enough that I hear the recording process of every lp as a unique event to which venue, mics, engineers, cutting/mastering are all uniquely evident contributors to the musical experience. Things are what they are and I enjoy the experience for the music first and foremost and I'm happier when things are well recorded. I will say that, to my ears and pocketbook, a lot of highly vaulted "audiophile" reference level recordings aren't SO much better than merely "well" recorded classical recordings that I'm willing to pay a huge price premium. I've got hundreds of lps I paid $3-$4 bucks for that are almost, really close, to the recording quality of lps on the Absolute Sound's list of "records to die for" that sell for $35-$150.