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music that sounds good and music that sounds bad

Marc v E

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Due to my health conditions (infantile cerebral palsy) and living in a small village, I have not had the opportunity to listen to live music, except at town festivals, I have had the opportunity to compare various electronics with competent people who help me understand the differences. I like all the music a bit, especially pop, classical and jazz and a bit of electronics. with these headphones HD 600 and fidelio x2hr and akg 280 porabolic and with the V DAC II as a dac and a SABAJ A10h as an amplifier, how do I know if I listen in h-ifi, are there any methods of comparing what I have? thank you

help me understand with music videos
there is music that sounds good and music that sounds bad regardless of my electronics and so or not?
This list of songs helped me to understand what a good recording sounds like (and a bad one): https://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/stereo-recordings-air/

This site gives a good indication of the quality of a recording: https://dr.loudness-war.info/
Particularly useful if you know what artist you like and searching for the best album/recording. For example: https://dr.loudness-war.info/?artist=Sarah+Brightman&album=
Ime what a good recording does is that it doesn't feel tiring to listen to multiple times (because of good dynamic range) and clear sounding (low noise floor).

This was already mentioned in an earlier post: eq to get the optimal response from your headphone. This has the effect of placing the instruments in the right position ime.
 
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Rednaxela

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This list of songs helped me to understand what a good recording sounds like (and a bad one): https://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/stereo-recordings-air/
Very nice, thanks!

Bass
This is a collection of tracks that can be used to show off (and break…) your woofers and/or subwoofer(s). Beware: when I talk about “bass” I mean REAL bass. Not that silly pretend-bass 80 Hz oomph that you hear coming from a souped-up Honda with tinted windows as it drives down your street. I mean stuff an octave or two lower than that – it should make it feel like a giant is squeezing your listening room from the outside.
This bit made me chuckle. :)
 

Rednaxela

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Quite honestly, I couldn’t hear much of it in the Gaga track either. Checked it out through these, and expected to at least get an idea.
 

Hipper

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Hi and Welcome to ASR.

One thing that will make you derive the best out of yourheadphones is EQ, as in equalizing your headphones to be as xlose as possible to a scientifically derived "curve". If you source is a PC then you are in luck as there are software that would help you in EQualizing your headphones ot this curve...
These are:
EQ APO Download HERE.
And you use this software/App to control it. PEACE , Click HERE

List of Amir's Headphone PEQ filters for the headphones that were reiewed by ASR​

for the headphones that were reviewed by ASR.

A more extensive list is that one from

[PSA] - oratory1990's list of EQ Presets : r/headphones

Settings for your headphone are likely in it ...

The difference EQ bring to headphones, is to me, startling... I have come to believe, that except for a handful of headphones, EQ is mandatory. Regardless of price.

Enjoy the music

Peace.

I looked up Infantile Cerebral Palsy and it seems to be a disease that affects your limbs. Does it have any effect on hearing? In any case it may be worth checking your hearing. You could do this yourself with headphones and test tones. I'm 69 and age has affected my hearing, notably I can't hear above 10kHz and the 6-8kHz region is weaker. I also can't hear 7kHz in one ear for instance.

This may lead to problems with some music, mostly classical it seems to me. Pop music seems less of an issue. One example was the beautiful forty piece choir song by Thomas Tallis, Spem in Allum (I can't remember which version). Using a CD it was unpleasantly harsh on my speakers, and having copied it to a PC, headphones (Sennheiser HD800) so in the end I equalised the song using Nero Wave Editor, taming the problematic high frequencies. Was it the recording, my electronics, or my ears? I suspect my ears. It doesn't really matter because now I can listen to the music through both sets of electronics and enjoy it!

Therefore I suggest that if it is only one or two songs that are a problem, you could make them more pleasant for you to listen to either like I did, with some music editing software, or if it's a more common problem, perhaps caused by your hearing, you could use EQ, either as FranzM suggests, or just for particular songs or albums. Equalizers often have 'pre-sets' meaning you can have a number of different EQ arrangements stored.
 

Axo1989

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from 1.42 to 2.05 then from 3.50 to 450 for me it's just noise
I want to know if it feels so bad for you too?


The timings you indicate are where Brightman hits the high notes. I noticed some recording/processing artefacts on her vocal generally (nothing major, and common to many recordings) but no worsening of the higher/louder vocal sections to my ear.

Might be your system, see if you can swap in/out any components, check also gain isn't going wrong somewhere.

Might be your hearing: can you ask others to listen with you? Also more than a few people are just sensitive to treble and prefer more of a downward slope overall on the frequency response curve. Try that too.

Might be your source: others have noted YouTube quality is variable, so check it's set to HD and try other sources if you can.

Here's a recording to compare which sounds clean/clear to me (overall, a bit of hiss and hum on occasion) just playing from YouTube in HD. It's a recent NPR session with FKA twigs, but performed as an acoustic ensemble (her album material is usually features electronic instruments, there's some reverb on the voice here I think but may just be the space, and some echo effects on instruments later on, notably cello on the last song). She has a good vocal range and around 2:00-245 then around 3:50-4:30 she hits the high notes (if you like it enough to keep listening, there's more after that). Does it sound ok or does it do the same thing as the Brightman recording does for you?


Edit: checked your piece again, occurred to me it's the massed choir/orchestra crescendo sections so maybe not high vocals, can you clarify?

Some systems don't manage the busy sections so well, but apart from the Sennys I don't really know your gear.
 
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musica

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The timings you indicate are where Brightman hits the high notes. I noticed some recording/processing artefacts on her vocal generally (nothing major, and common to many recordings) but no worsening of the higher/louder vocal sections to my ear.

Might be your system, see if you can swap in/out any components, check also gain isn't going wrong somewhere.

Might be your hearing: can you ask others to listen with you? Also more than a few people are just sensitive to treble and prefer more of a downward slope overall on the frequency response curve. Try that too.

Might be your source: others have noted YouTube quality is variable, so check it's set to HD and try other sources if you can.

Here's a recording to compare which sounds clean/clear to me (overall, a bit of hiss and hum on occasion) just playing from YouTube in HD. It's a recent NPR session with FKA twigs, but performed as an acoustic ensemble (her album material is usually features electronic instruments, there's some reverb on the voice here I think but may just be the space, and some echo effects on instruments later on, notably cello on the last song). She has a good vocal range and around 2:00-245 then around 3:50-4:30 she hits the high notes (if you like it enough to keep listening, there's more after that). Does it sound ok or does it do the same thing as the Brightman recording does for you?


Edit: checked your piece again, occurred to me it's the massed choir/orchestra crescendo sections so maybe not high vocals, can you clarify?

Some systems don't manage the busy sections so well, but apart from the Sennys I don't really know your gear.
this sounds better to me
 

2020

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Everybody has been suggesting clean sounding songs, but that doesn't help what defines something "bad". You need variety if you want understand things in relation to each other.

I love this song, for all of its intentional low fidelity. You can easily hear how the bass line smashes into the limiter, the clipped drums, and distortion in general. Of course there are much more distorted things in the hyperpop scene now.

 
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Axo1989

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Everybody has been suggesting clean sounding songs, but that doesn't help what defines something "bad". You need variety if you want understand things in relation to each other.

I love this song, for all of its intentional low fidelity. You can easily hear how the bass line smashes into the limiter, the clipped drums, and distortion in general. Of course there are much more distorted things in the hyperpop scene now.


Good idea.

Btw I do enjoy hyperpop/glitchcore/digicore and lo-fi generally. Perhaps ironically, I reckon it also sounds good on Hi-Fi.
 
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musica

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the problem arises when many instruments play together, then it becomes a mess for me
 

RayDunzl

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I like music, where various surprise instruments come out and enter the song, this amuses me a lot, then it must be cheerful and enthralling music, that is, it must involve me, with deep and full-bodied bass, clear and present mids and high details you could show me some song?

 

Axo1989

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the problem arises when many instruments play together, then it becomes a mess for me

I was thinking that. Are you sure you like that style of music at all?

I'm not the best judge as I don't really like orchestral music generally. The comparison I suggested was a chamber piece (albeit modern) for reasons suggested upthread by others: easier to evaluate the sonics of voice and limited instruments wrt your hearing and gear.

The film soundtrack posted above sounds clear to me also ... but I can't listen for long: Dogme 95 was the best thing that happened to non-diegetic music on film :)
 

Axo1989

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I'm not really able to tell if this is a hardware problem or just your musical preference.

I’ve asked that question too.

That track isn’t to my taste, but beyond my musical preference it does have odd sonics. Like in lieu of euphonic guitar distortion they filled the mix with white noise.

The OP may just be responding to below-par production.
 
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