Speakers that are unforgiving of poor-quality recordings - is that a thing?

[damage]

The whole 'exposing bad recordings' thing is what people who have bought bad speakers (usually expensive) kid themselves along with.

I disagree. The released versions U2's "Joshua Tree" and Oasis's "What's the Story Morning Glory" are perfect examples of albums that only get worse with better equipment.

 

[damage]

This of course can be my observation bias by limited sample size

More likely this. I know people that love collecting gear so much that they've opened businesses just to get the latest gear.

They enjoy their music just as much as I do.

 

[CDMC]

Or like Toole recommends, use neutral loudspeakers and EQ or the classic bass and treble controls to adjust for poor recordings accordingly.

This. My experience has been that more accurate speakers sound better on most recordings. I used Magnepans for decades (from SMGas up through 3.5s) and they did some things on some recordings beyond any speakers I have ever heard. The problem was that there were many recordings that were downright unlistenable on them. Having moved on to accurate speakers, the good recordings sound great, the bad recordings sound like bad recordings, but not as bad as on the Maggies. A compressed recording is always going to sound compressed. A bright recording can be easily tamed with a tone control, as can a bass heavy or light recording. What I don't find with my current setup is the highly variable listening experience where sometimes I am amazed, other times wondering if something is broken.

I think it is also important to be careful what we deem a poor recording. Yes, there are many poor recordings, but there are also recordings that may use heavy compression and distortion to get an effect. Nine Inch Nails does this. Meynard James Keenan of Tool/Perfect Circle/Pusifier fame is very careful in his mixing, and some stuff is extremely heavily compressed on purpose. Listen to these different tracks and you get an idea:

 

[YSC]

More likely this. I know people that love collecting gear so much that they've opened businesses just to get the latest gear.

They enjoy their music just as much as I do.

For those I would call them gear geeks but not audiophile

 

[Mart68]

I disagree. The released versions U2's "Joshua Tree" and Oasis's "What's the Story Morning Glory" are perfect examples of albums that only get worse with better equipment.

A good system will make sense of the Oasis recording but it's never going to make them sound like Dire Straits since they specifically wanted to avoid sounding like Dire Straits.

Actually their first two albums are a good example of this since they went to great lengths to get that sound but I've seen plenty of audiophiles complaining about the recording quality on them as though it was some sort of mistake or cock-up.

I don't know about the U2 record. A friend bought it back when it came out but none of us had a decent stereo back then and I was never keen on it anyway.

 

[Trdat]

Depending what type of sound you want to emulate, live performance, studio performance or multichannel you can choose the acoustics to match including the type of speakers such as the correct dispersion. When you get this right, the specific old recording can sound fantastic regardless of the quality but a recording of superb quality will sound even better.

I think the idea is that when comparing an average set up to a superb set up the bad sounds bad and the good sounds good so essentially this has nothing to do with the recording. Of course, its hard to back track to old recordings once you have a decent set of good recordings but for me the quality is usually based on the reverb added in or naturally in the recording and dynamics.

A bad studio recording or even an average one in a room with little to no reflections with high directivity speakers might not sound so good as it might lack the rooms natural reverb tail. While a good recording in the same room coud sound fantastic as the recording has that perfect amount of reverb in the recording.

The bottom line is some audiophile fool has taken some observation and turned it into a myth or some type of rule to sell spekaers when in essence there is some science or at least observation from true experts who have given us this type of information to work with and work towards our desire when building a sound system.

So to answer your question directly, at least from my experience a superb system and room will only make the bad recording sound better not worse.

 

[restorer-john]

Yes absolutely, with the Pioneer super cheap SP-BS22 everything sounds good, not so with better speakers.

That is not a good example to use...

 

[goat76]

No bass: the instrument is there, but not the tone, a guitar cutting through the mind like an iced scalpel and a psychopathically confident singer walking on pink clouds made of 'golden brown'--obviously.

Of course I get the artsy idea as a whole and times enjoy it. It has to be so, it's not a hifi-test-record for 'critical listening'. It's Birthday Party!

I did an analysis of this song and it confirms that this song has plenty of bass, even stereo bass. The bass guitar is a bit boomy and "roomy" as can be heard, but it is also likely close to the unprocessed sound of how that instrument sounded in the recorded space. Very raw.

The overall sound of the song is severely mid-scooped. That mid-scooped sound can have been exaggerated in the mixing process of the song but it can also be the settings of the amps and the sound the band was going for, as that tone/sound was "a thing" many other similar bands were going for at the time.

Just like the bass guitar, the guitars do also have a roomy and distant sound to them. I don't find the sound of the guitars to be "cutting through the mind like an iced scalpel" as you describe it, it can probably appear so thanks to that mid-scooped sound like all the other instruments in the mix have.

Again, that mid-scooped tone was most probably pretty representative of how the instrument's amplifiers were set up and sounded in the recording space. And again, the mid-scooped sound may have been a bit exaggerated in the mixing stage as that sound was trendy in that era of time among that genre of bands.

In the mastering analyzing program I used, it can be seen that very little processing has been done to the overall master, and no limiter has been applied to make the song less dynamic than the final mix. The song has plenty of headroom to digital zero/clipping point, and it also has a nice and healthy Crest factor. Minimal adjustments may have been done with EQ to the final master but not so much to make the overall mix mid-scooped.


But with all the above said, I can completely understand that the sound of this record may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think the sound of this record was all intentional to get the tone/sound they aimed for. But no, it's not a "HiFi test record".

 

[goat76]

But more often than not, those sticking to technical side will just keep a good system, properly treat the room if they can and enjoy it for decades before it finally breaks, while solely purchase by subjective review/ brand name / by ear in showroom will often try to acquire the next best thing or a second system for different type of music which the speaker set suits.

This of course can be my observation bias by limited sample size

I have noticed the opposite.

I see a lot of "traditional" non-technical audiophiles with audio equipment they had for about 20-30 years, and they still seem satisfied with their gear with no apparent longing for upgrades.

But on this very forum, I see a lot of people running amock for the next upgrade of their current gear, like small technical refinements of the very same speaker or amp they already have. Those small technical refinements have (most likely) very small audible benefits, but still, they can't wait to make the upgrade. KEF's lineup of Meta upgrades comes to mind, in a similar fashion as the car industry selling this year's version to the people who bought last year's version of the same car model.

 

[fineMen]

Not that I understood much of what you wrote, ... (E.g., normal non audiophiles would say to virtually anyone here "why the heck do you need to spend all this time, thinking, effort and money on a sound system? Why can't you just enjoy music on modest systems like normal people?")

The latter. It is so that the other "audiophool" I was referring to has the habit to happily and reluctantly ignore the recording process, the making of the recording. How much of, reiterated, *abstraction* is used when translating an often only virtual performance to a recording which shall be listened to *not* critical but with joy and enlightment.

Every single time in the past I mentioned necessary *abstractions* I was ignored, systematically. As if the concept of an abstraction was too abstract. Despite the given example of a pencil sketch on paper, abstraction as an artform, as THE essence of art. Dare to reiterate, the recording--the audio enthusist's "SIGNAL", is everything else than an electric copy of a real thing.

Given the very fact that a recording is an artifact of art, how could an audio enthusiast shell out the verdict "low-quality"?! Especially if he/she is ignorant of the very fact that it is an abstraction anyway?

 

[fpitas]

By now "poor recording" is basically just a dog whistle word for modern non-acoustic genres.

As far as I can tell, "unforgiving" means the transducer is a peaky mess which superficially seems to reveal more detail with sparse compositions but is unmasked by denser music which covers the entire frequency spectrum.

Even some "chick with a guitar" stuff can become problematic when the recording engineer uses one of the super-peaky mics which accentuate 4kHz.

 

[dedobot]

It's 100% subjective thing i.e. - magic.
If there's a "forgiving" speakers, why not bad/good recordings amps, signal sources, speaker cables, power cords ..OMG what a rabbit hole

 

[fpitas]

It's 100% subjective thing i.e. - magic.
If there's a "forgiving" speakers, why not bad/good recordings amps, signal sources, speaker cables, power cords ..OMG what a rabbit hole

It's a lot more likely the FR of a speaker is strange, and the directivity can also matter a lot. Generally if electronics isn't flat responding, it's broken.

 

[Sokel]

Given the very fact that a recording is an artifact of art, how could an audio enthusiast shell out the verdict "low-quality"?! Especially if he/she is ignorant of the very fact that it is an abstraction anyway?

Exactly:

 

[fpitas]

Low quality may not be the best descriptor. I have recordings that sound great almost no matter how I have the speakers EQd, and some that are very challenging, such that things have to be just right.

 

[sejarzo]

Given the very fact that a recording is an artifact of art, how could an audio enthusiast shell out the verdict "low-quality"?! Especially if he/she is ignorant of the very fact that it is an abstraction anyway?

I have a couple of live recordings that are clearly awful from artists that release well-done studio albums. Why they consented to release them is beyond me. Bass levels all over the place from obvious clipping to "where did the bass go?" and distorted vocals. Not art, just mistakes.

 

[fineMen]

Low quality may not be the best descriptor. I have recordings that sound great almost no matter how I have the speakers EQd, and some that are very challenging, such that things have to be just right.

With only a little bit of exaggeration which I'm pretty much aware of: every recording is like a Picasso, abstractions included ;-) An individual take on reality, but not identical to what it depicts. Not even resembling, as a thing, the real thing, but just a set of cues for the human mind's imagination.

Would anyone ask the question:

Sunglasses that are unforgiving of poor-quality Picassos - is that a thing?​

Ps for the real audiophiles: if your "system" doesn't bring you to acknowledge the abstract qualities of the (means: every) recording, you may long for an update (again ...)

 

[fpitas]

With only a little bit of exaggeration which I'm pretty much aware of: every recording is like a Picasso, abstractions included ;-) An individual take on reality, but not identical to what it depicts. Not even resembling, as a thing, the real thing, but just a set of cues for the human mind's imagination.

Would anyone ask the question:

Sunglasses that are unforgiving of poor-quality Picassos - is that a thing?​

Only if the future is so bright, you have to wear shades.

 

[YSC]

I have a couple of live recordings that are clearly awful from artists that release well-done studio albums. Why they consented to release them is beyond me. Bass levels all over the place from obvious clipping to "where did the bass go?" and distorted vocals. Not art, just mistakes.

well some will insist there's not mistake but the chosen artifacts to live with.. but somehow I found during random album screening through tidal, those weird mixes with clippings are more common than not even from known producers

 

[ErVikingo]

The one that always comes to my mind is 2112 specifically Passage to Bangkok. Geddy is very distant on the system, kind of distant on the iphone and headphones, compressed in the car system.