ASR burning the wrong witches?

[Gorgonzola]

Because many (most) recordings aren't terrible.

...nor is it necessary to spend thousands of pounds getting there. Thanks to good measurements and objective principles we can get there for much less.

The most recordings aren't "bad" but far too many are is mediocre. Fortunately there is a reasonable proportion of fine recordings and it is these that justify a top quality music system.

For those for whom SQ isn't a consideration, let them get "shelf" compacts; (some of these are pretty good).

 

[Sal1950]

There's many poorly recorded archival performances of classical works from long departed maestros where the quality doesn't matter one bit.

Well to an extent, yes.
But there's a level of quality below which I just cant' listen to, don't care how great the maestro.
Maybe once thru and then "the end".
In this world with untold numbers of recordings available, why suffer.
Find something well done and let it rock.

 

[Cote Dazur]

That‘s simply wrong. The number one determinant is the loudspeaker, closely followed by the room.

You have found loudspeakers that can make bad recordings sound good, very interesting, Please share with us what those would be.

 

[sarumbear]

For those for whom SQ isn't a consideration, let them get "shelf" compacts; (some of these are pretty good).

I'm struggling to understand your point.

 

[bluefuzz]

The recording microphones, acoustical conditions, and engineering decisions at the recording site introduce much greater sonic variability than any hardware component in a half decent playback system.

While the above is obviously true, I emphatically disagree with the conclusion:

Buy well-recorded CDs

Just buy and listen to the music you like! The recording is what it is - and is part and parcel of the artistic experience. The gear should simply reproduce as faithfully as possible what is on the recording.

To be honest, I don't think I have ever considered any recording 'bad' as such. The 'quality' of the recording is as much a part of what I enjoy about listening to many different genres of music from the last hundred years – of any and every technical recording 'quality'. The better my gear the better I appreciate the many-splendoured variability of the recording art.

 

[Waxx]

The thing is also with music, that most music is recorded with little to no budget. I listen a lot to music from 3th world countries (mainly African and Caribian) and those recordings, in the past and now are often done in ghetto area's with no budget at all. The sound may not be optimal, but the music is often of very high standards.

A perfect example is the works of Lee Perry during the 1970's. It's recorded in the very primitive "Black Ark Studio" in the Washington Gardens ghetto of Kingston Jamaica. The studio was actually a shack in the back of his yard, where he had an stolen prototype of a soundcraft I console, a Teac 3340 1/4 inch 4-track tapemachine, a Teac A6600 2 track 1/4" tape Recorder, a Grantham spring reverb a Roland Space Echo and a Mutron Biphase phaser. Mics were all dynamics from EV, Shure, AKG and Senheiser. His monitoring was a Marantz tube amp and Altec Lansing 612A speakers. That's all he had, no compressors, no outboard but those i mentioned and only 4 tracks on the tape machine. But that studio is crucial in the development of reggae and dub in the 1970's and hugely influencial on all modern music. It's where Bob Marley recorded everything between 1973 and 1977 (it was mixed in other studio's altough) and were the classic reggae albums of Max Romeo, The Congos, The Heptones and Junior Byles were recorded and mixed. It's also the place where he made all those crazy dub tunes between 1973 and 1979 (when the studio and his mind started to disorientate) that changed the way music is made a lot. The studio was set on fire by Lee Perry himself in 1980 because it was possessed by demons he said (Lee Perry was raised by a mother that was a voodoo priestess if you didn't know)

And like that there are many technical inferior studio's that made classic recordings. Their sound quality is not that good, but their musical quality is that high that it conquers the lack of good sound. It's that since not so long ago, it was only big budget mainstream artists that really could afford high quality recording studio's. The rest had to do it with way less.

 

[bluefuzz]

A perfect example is the works of Lee Perry during the 1970's.

Yes, exactly. It could be argued that for many genres of music technical quality is orthogonal to musical/artistic quality.

 

[BeerBear]

I can agree, at least somewhat, that musical quality can't be objectively measured...

But one thing that can be measured is pro audio gear. I think audiophiles would be shocked at how poorly some of it performs. Especially old analog effects, which are still quite common in studios.
And I don't think you can say that using noisy gear is all artistic choice. In the past it was caused by technical limitations (like the high noise floor of tape recorders), but nowadays a lot of it is out of ignorance. This is where ASR can play a part (as it already does to some extent with ADC measurements).

 

[bluefuzz]

And I don't think you can say that using noisy gear is all artistic choice.

Obviously not, for many (mostly economic) reasons. But, as exemplified in the Lee Perry example above, the creativity of getting the most out of the gear you have is far more important than any purely technical considerations for the artistic quality of the music.

And no, I'm not necessarily advocating 'primitive is better'. Give me a Boss Digital Delay over a Watkins Copycat any day ... ;-)

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

As far as I'm concerned, anything that happened in making the recording simply doesn't matter in relation to how I'm deciding what gear to buy to reproduce that recording. I don't care if the drummer only had access to an array of cardboard boxes and a trash can lid. If that's what he used to make the recording, all I want out of my system is an accurate reproduction of the recording they made. I can't know what their intentions were...or how they hoped the recording would turn out. All I have is the recording itself. If my system gets everything it can out of great recordings, it will also get everything it can out of poor recordings. They'll still sound poor, but that's as good as they're going to get.

 

[Gorgonzola]

For those for whom SQ isn't a consideration, let them get "shelf" compacts; (some of these are pretty good).

I'm struggling to understand your point.

Humm ... well I didn't think I was being particularly obscure.

For a start, what I'm NOT say is that there can't music that might be worth listening despite poor record quality.

But if, in general, you really don't much care whether your recordings sound good, then I submit you don't care about very much about SQ so why by spend many thousands on hi-fi equipment. I'm not dissing compact systems: on the contrary some are quite good.

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

Humm ... well I didn't think I was being particularly obscure.

For a start, what I'm NOT say is that there can't music that might be worth listening despite poor record quality.

But if, in general, you really don't much care whether your recordings sound good, then I submit you don't care about very much about SQ so why by spend many thousands on hi-fi equipment. I'm not dissing compact systems: on the contrary some are quite good.

I'm still not sure what you mean. Who are you referring to when you say "if you really don't much care whether your recordings sound good?"

 

[Katji]

But if, in general, you really don't much care whether your recordings sound good, then I submit you don't care about very much about SQ so why by spend many thousands on hi-fi equipment.

The purpose is high-fidelity reproduction. !

What comes before that, [long story short] is you take it or leave it.

 

[DanielT]

For a start, what I'm NOT say is that there can't music that might be worth listening despite poor record quality.

Good or bad recordings. Even though I swallow everything so obviously, it's most enjoyable with music that is good in itself AND is well recorded. Excuse me for expressing what I think is self-evident.

By the way, if you only listen to around 100 years old recordings, how much sensible, good modern HiFi equipment do you need? How much money did you need to spend on HiFi?

A wonder, just to spice it up in the thread. Take it to an extreme.
(the chance that those who only listen to such old recordings hang here is ... zero percent per se..and vice versa).

 

[Waxx]

I can agree, at least somewhat, that musical quality can't be objectively measured...

But one thing that can be measured is pro audio gear. I think audiophiles would be shocked at how poorly some of it performs. Especially old analog effects, which are still quite common in studios.
And I don't think you can say that using noisy gear is all artistic choice. In the past it was caused by technical limitations (like the high noise floor of tape recorders), but nowadays a lot of it is out of ignorance. This is where ASR can play a part (as it already does to some extent with ADC measurements).

It's often an artistic choice. These days, when digital recording is the standard in studio's, many have "tape emulators" that add the tape distortion to sound because that is what is wanted. In electronic music, bitcrushing drum tracks is often done as artistic choice. And colouring trough tubes, transformers, semiconductors (mostly FET's) and opamps are common in recording of pop and other modern music styles.

This is because a music production is mostly not recording what is played live, but a assembly of music, that is made to sound a certain way how the artist or the producer wants it. That has always been the case since multitracks were availeble. It's only for classic music, and some styles of jazz that they try to stay close to the original sound of the instruments in the room. The rest is heavy processed with eq, compression, reverb, delay ao tools to sound in a certain way. And mostly it's not recorded in one take, but in several takes and edited and mixed later.

Some tracks are even not fully recorded in the same studio. This song was largely recorded in the UK by Isobel Campbell (including some session musicians), while Mark Lanegan recorded his parts (mainly some of the guitars and his vocal parts) in the US. They only met physically after the album where it was on (Ballad of the Broken Seas) was done fully trough the internet connection they had...

 

[MattJ]

I have always looked at (listened to?) hi fi as a means to extract the most detail out of whatever kind of recordings are put into it. I listen to a lot of "classic" (ie, 1960s - 70's -ish) rock, most of which, despite stellar performances, was poorly recorded. I don't think any hi fi system can make recordings sound *better* than what they are, but they can help get the most out of them for people that enjoy them.

 

[i_build_stuff]

So.. it's absolutely true that all recordings are not created equal. You can definitely hear differences in quality between them.

However, it's also absolutely true that there are differences in how the same track plays, based on what you play it through..

 

[Gorgonzola]

The purpose is high-fidelity reproduction. !

What comes before that, [long story short] is you take it or leave it.

Whose arguing about that? Axzel merely said that the foremost contributor to good SQ was the recording: I agree.

 

[Gorgonzola]

Good or bad recordings. Even though I swallow everything so obviously, it's most enjoyable with music that is good in itself AND is well recorded. Excuse me for expressing what I think is self-evident.

By the way, if you only listen to around 100 years old recordings, how much sensible, good modern HiFi equipment do you need? How much money did you need to spend on HiFi?

A wonder, just to spice it up in the thread. Take it to an extreme.
(the chance that those who only listen to such old recordings hang here is ... zero percent per se..and vice versa).

Geez Aczel merely said the the foremost contribution to sound quality, (he wasn't talking about listening enjoyment), is the recording. I agree. After that came all the things he mentioned, most of which I also agree with.

 

[Gorgonzola]

I'm still not sure what you mean. Who are you referring to when you say "if you really don't much care whether your recordings sound good?"

Again, I draw a distinction between appreciating sound quality and enjoyment of music. Some people enjoy music very much with out being much concerned about sound quality -- is that hard to imagine? In fact I do know undoubted music lovers who are totally content with very modest compact systems.