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Can someone check my hearing,or maybe it's my 'music sense',or whatever.I listened(streamed) to Ozzy's new title "Patient #9" in Ultra HD (Amazon Unlimited) just now and I am a little disappointed in the sound quality,so I thought someone here would be kind enough and give me a "Sound Quality" score from 1-10.I need to find out if it's me,my stereo or something else?!I give it a sound quality score of 4.5/10. Thanks,Huck
I'm really not into metal. What I would call heavy rock is a better description of what I can listen to.Bands like Anthrax, Slayer, Death Angel don't work for me.I can listen to Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Judus Priest, but slower music Def Leppard, Tom Petty just seems to have a more pleasent presentation of music that can be listend to for hours without ear fatuige.I'm wondering if my system has anything to do with which musical genders are presented without distortion.I use a tube preamp along with a tube amp (EL34) or (300B).HUCK, What does your system consist of.??
I will listen to Sorceress tonight.Which other titles would you consider to best their best sounding?. I will be streaming AMZ.Thanks,Huck
unfortunately, metal and excellent sound quality are never used in the same sentence. Even "metal" has some room for interpretation.
Opeth's "Watershed" (2008). A real nice balance of harsh and clean vocals. Prime example of how these two styles generate a wonderful sense of depth and texture. Watershed is so well produced and executed. Audio top notch as well. No other band out there like Opeth. I find them to quite unique and masterful.
Yeah, even the best recorded metal recordings, are not that great.I listen to quit a bit or progressive metal and technical metal, and overall, I would guess that they are recorded a bit better than most other types of metal. Although, since I don't listen to other types of metal, this is only conjecture on my part.The reason why I would make this assumption is, that since these types of bands take a lot of musical cues from 70's progressive music, much of that 70's influence still hangs around in prog-metal and technical-metal. Like: musical intricacy/complexity, use of broad dynamic range, extremely high levels of musicianship, and long form pieces with changes in mood, intensity, emotional content. All of which tend to to have more impact with better recordings.All that being said, dynamic range is still where prog and technical metal fall apart. Most still lack dynamic range, but most do have good detail and frequency response. The Swedish prog-metal band, Pain of Salvation, tend of have quite detailed recordings. Unless you get the vinyl versions, then the dynamic range is quite good. Their best recordings (musically speaking) are: One Hour by the Concrete Lake, Perfect Element, Remedy Lane, In the Passing Light of DayThe US band, The Contortionist, also have decent sounding recordings, except with regards to dynamic range. Their 2014 release, Language, is pretty detailed. And considering the level of complexity in their music, it takes a decent recording to hear all the intricacies of what they are doing. The British band, Tesseract, is similar to the above. Their album, Altered State is reasonably well recorded. The aforementioned Opeth, have pretty good recordings. Their latest recordings are the best overall, and even have a good level of dynamic range. But then, their latest recordings (Heritage, Pale Communion, Sorceress, In Cauda Venenum) are really not metal albums. They are firmly in the prog-rock genre.There are so many really amazing prog-metal, technical-metal, experimental-metal albums that would have been so much better served by more dynamic range, and overall better recording quality. Diablo Swing Orchestra, uneXpect, Spastic Ink, Cynic, Thank You Scientist, Wolverine, Sun Caged just to name a few others. Interesting thing is, if you go to the Loudness War dynamic range data base site, many of these bands reissued their recordings on vinyl, and they invariably have better dynamic range. https://dr.loudness-war.info/
Nice list you have there and I will check them out,although I have heard already most of your list.I am an old dog,so for me there are basically five genres...Rock(metal is in there),Country,Jazz,Classical and Rap.Although a title may have good Dynamic Range numbers,that unfortunately does not equate to good sounding,IMHO.Ever listen to "Avalon" by Roxy Music,now I call that 'Rock' and also a good recording,which is what I am talking about regarding good sounding music.Thanks,Huck
I get what you are saying about the five genres, but it seems to miss a lot of music. Like, which of your 5 genres would: Celtic folk from France fit? Does R&B fit in your rock genre, or should you add another genre? Which genre does ambient music fit? How about Musique Concrete? What about Delta blues (one person singing and playing a guitar)?And yes, I agree, metal is a subgenre of rock. But that does not also exclude metal of having subgenres of its own.For me, I care more about the structure of the music, and less about the genre it falls into. The things I enjoy in music, are most or all of the following attributes (no particular order): very high levels of musicianship, deep and broad emotional and/or intellectual content, complexity, (usually) long format multipart pieces, avoidance of verse>chorus>bridge>repeat structure, hooks or catchy melodies are unimportant to me. And let me be clear, I did make a conscious decision to only like music that has these attributes, it is just how my tastes evolved over time.Once those attributes above are met, I am almost 'genre agnostic'. In other words, the subgenres of metal that I like, I like them because they have most or all of those attributes above. The fact that they are a subgenre of metal is unimportant to me. The genres and subgenres that fit those attributes:Prog - classic prog, Canterbury, avant-prog, Zeuhl, prog-metalJazz - fusion, post-bop, chamber-jazz, M-Base, avant-garde, free jazzClassical - serialism, atonal, avant-garde, spectralism, contemporary
I tried to get into Patient #9 for the fourth time last night and have taken it off of my routine listening rotation,sounds too muck like A.M. radio.Huck
Huck, please let us know if you come across some real good sounding metal albums. My favorite band in high school was Deep Purple, and I was lucky enough to see them at Olympia in Detroit. (Yes, I recognize where the "Everything Louder Than Everything Else" thread title comes from. LOL) But man, I've had a hard time finding any CD's or streams of them that sound great. I gave all of my albums and my turntable to my DJ brother many years ago, and although I have no doubt that analog may well sound better than streaming, I can't start over down that rabbit hole.
Huck, I agree with you on both Deep Purple's amazing musicianship and the SQ of Youthanasia - a very good sounding release. I don't listen to much metal any more, and I just tried putting Godsmack's self-titled album on and it wasn't my cup of tea. (The fact that I had Bill Evans "You Must Believe In Spring" playing right before it had my mind in a different place, I guess.) I didn't have it on long enough or loud enough to comment on the SQ.Out of curiosity, what do you think of the sound of Metallica's "Master of Puppets" and "And Justice For All"? I kind of like them. Cool thread. Looking for more recs!
A lot of the hair bands had ok sounding stuff. RATT, Scorpions, Dokken but a lot of that music was terrible IMHO (I liked those bands) Danzig, his stuff is really clean sounding and very heavy. Type O Negative. Sorry I'll stop.
