Songs with recording issues, what's your experience?

[Cippo95]

Hello everyone, just sharing some stuff and I would like to know your experiences!

In these days I'm reading and watching more and more stuff about "high fidelity audio", it's very interesting and I'm learning some stuff.

I was doing some equalization to my Sennheiser HD 599 SE (for me it really improves its sound).
During this, I was also testing from my browser Tidal vs Spotify (not premium) and YouTube, to understand the differences with FLAC (high setting, I can't use max) vs compressed audio.

Previously I also tried this test: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
There I got 4/6 FLAC but 'Speed of Sound" from Coldplay 2 tracks had strange glitches (for lack of a better term from me) and I preferred the 128kbps compressed audio because it didn't.
You can hear them around 1:45 on Tidal for example but not on Spotify or YouTube.

And that was a sign: I'm noticing more and more that "good enough compression" doesn't really bother me, but glitches surely do!

I think that my cheap devices have issues every time I hear these glitches... and I have to be sure that they are from the song itself! hahaha

I have also found a crackle in "What if" also from Coldplay at 1:08 (or 1:10 on Spotify), you can hear it in any format.

Completely changing genre listening to "The Trooper" from Iron Maiden from 2:37 there are many audio glitches, also in this case you can hear it in any format.
Thinking about it, they remember to me generic noise sounds that also my father's turntable did, but maybe it is a coincidence.

I strive to get good quality (as we all do I think) but then artists and audio engineers decide to ruin my day haha

What is your experience about this stuff? can you hear the issues I'm pointing out? It is not just me right?
There was already some discussion talking about this?

Thank you for reading!

 

[Greenman]

I’m not familiar with the specific glitches that you are referring to (I do know The trooper but nothing has particularly stood out to me on that track (without listening for it specifically)).

However there are a number of glitches both intentional and otherwise that do affect my enjoyment….
When I was primarily a turntable user (up until say 2000) I found the deliberate inclusion of pops/crackles etc to be very annoying as I had to convince myself they weren’t due to vinyl damage. These don’t bother me so much now as with streaming etc at least I can be certain they are a definite artistic choice.
The most egregious and unnecessary area is the volume wars brick wall mastering that destroys dynamics and introduces clear audible distortion in the worse cases (e.g Red hot chill Peppers - By the way, Californication). There are also various albums from the analogue days where the original masters deteriorated prior to digital transfer so that there are a number of distortion issues that can not now be resolved.
Analogue master tape noise never used to bother me in the vinyl days, but in the digital era if becomes more obvious and somehow seems more intrusive.

There are numerous recording with unintentional noises, be it cars passing the recording studio, someone making noise in the studio or similar, most of these are just ‘character’ to me

There are some historic recordings (think some 1950s and earlier) that I can’t really listen to on my main system due to the poor quality with noise and distortion. Fortunately this era of music doesn’t form much of my listening.

Of these issues it’s the brick wall mastering that annoys me most as it affects music I like to listen to, is completely avoidable and (in some cases) makes me not want to play certain albums.

 

[Berwhale]

Once you start paying attention to things, then you will notice more things. This is a true of audio as it is in many other areas of life. Many people who join ASR report no longer being able to listen to previously cherished songs or recordings because they have become 'unlistenable'. I have suffered from this myself, but the flip side is that it lead me to seek out better played/recorded/mixed/mastered* recordings across many different genres and greatly expanded my listening repertoire.

*delete or not as appropriate

 

[Mikig]

I don't remember the name, surely someone more informed or with a better memory can indicate the sites that contain the classification of the recordings of the various albums. There are excellent ones as well as poor ones. Regardless of how you listen to them you will have different results. Albums that have been recorded/mixed badly will always have a limited sound output.

 

[Multicore]

Pros and cons. If you spend your time using music recordings as test signals for determining the defects in production and reproduction then that's one hell you can live in. I live in the other hell, i.e. successfully ignoring technical aspects and instead noticing all the aesthetic defects in the music.

 

[DVDdoug]

Most modern recordings are technically "very good". When there is a defect you wonder how it got-through the layers of multiple takes, recording engineers, producers, mastering engineers, etc.

I'm not a fan of "loudness war" compression but that's an intentional artistic choice (or a "marketing choice").

In my car, I listen to MP3s with an antique iPod "docked" to the car stereo. Most of them were ripped from CDs and I used LAME 'V0' which is the "best" variable bitrate setting. Every time I thought I was hearing a compression artifact, it's turned-out that the CD had the same defect/sound. (None of these were super-annoying.)

There's one "defect" that I always thought was odd - There is a very obvious drum pedal squeak in a Led Zeppelin song (1970 analog recording). It's not especially annoying, just strange to hear in a professional recording.

...I grew-up with vinyl and the "snap", "crackle", and "pop" always annoyed me even though it didn't seem to bother most people. It was especially annoying when it was my record and I knew exactly when that nasty click was coming. I'd be waiting for the click instead of enjoying the music, "She loves you -click- yeah, yeah, -click- yeah."
Oh, that (made-up) Beatles reference reminded me... I read Geoff Emerick's book. He was the recording/mixing engineer on most of The Beatles songs. He mentions some "glitches" where they had to make a noticeable splice, or things like that and they were limited to what they could do in the analog days. I supposed they could have started-over with more takes but that wasn't his call.

"Speed of Sound" from Coldplay 2 tracks had strange glitches (for lack of a better term from me)

I didn't read the article. Do you know if they compressed it themselves? It's probably not the compression. Sometimes there are different mixes/masters, and especially with streaming you never know what recording they started with. It might not sound better (or worse) because of the format, it may simply be a different recording/production. And with YouTube it may have gone-through multiple generations of different lossy compression, etc.

and I preferred the 128kbps compressed audio because it didn't.

That makes sense! For the same reason, I'd take a "low quality" MP3 over vinyl (or digitized vinyl). The compression artifacts (if any are audible) are less annoying to me than vinyl noise.

But in general things get tricky when it comes to "preference" if you aren't clearly hearing a glitch. There are a few people who prefer the sound of low-bitrate MP3s!

Usually, the starting point is a blind ABX test? to determine if you can really reliably hear a difference. We very-often fool ourselves but then it turns out that we can't really hear a difference when we don't know which one we are listening to!

to understand the differences with FLAC (high setting, I can't use max) vs compressed audio.

FLAC is lossless, no matter the settings. The decompressed FLAC data is ALWAYS bit-identical to the uncompressed original. The "levels" determine "how hard it works" to get more compression (a lower bitrate and a smaller file). At higher levels compression takes more processing so it might take longer to compress. But usually it's fast enough and that's of no concern.

 

[Berwhale]

The most annoying sound to me any recording that I own is in Four Tet's live recording of 'Three Birdsong' from 'Live at Alexandra Palace'. Mr Hebden clearly has a dodgy peripheral plugged into his laptop as the Windows device connect/disconnect sound is audible 3 or 4 times within the track. If i'm listening to the track on my Android phone whilst mobile, it can lead to much discombobulation on my part.

 

[Greenman]

I'm not a fan of "loudness war" compression but that's an intentional artistic choice (or a "marketing choice").

Marketing maybe, artistic..no way. There’s no way 99% of the artists want their music to be distorted in this way. In almost all cases it’s not even the bands producers making these decisions. Now marketing maybe, in particular for radio play, and on the radio the distortion introduced is not quite so obvious due to typical lo-fi reproduction. However play these on a decent system and it’s a real turn off.

 

[Waxx]

I listen to a lot of so called lofi music, and when done right, it can still sound good in it's lofiness. But you need to avoid digital disortion, and to heavy analog distortion also, and the sound needs to be a bit balanced (not to bright, or big holes in the frequency spectrum). But i love a good lofi sound.

And when it's really bad, i use old coloured speakers (Goodman Mezzo SL) that sound good, those mask a lot of the things that annoy me with revealing systems and make the music listenable again.

EQ can also help sometimes, and i go that far that some tunes i have digital get remastered by myself (i'm an amateur on this) to fix problems (mostly with eq or soft limiting). Sometimes i'm surprised how easy an amateur mastering engineer like me can fix things and make music listenable again, in that sense that i wonder how ****** that mastering engineer that did the original master has been that day and how he got away with it...

 

[jp4573]

Going home - Theme from 'Local hero' from aLCHEMY<=>dIRE sTRAITS Live (pART tWO)
Very loud hum in part of the song.

 

[AnalogSteph]

Speaking of Dire Straits, my 1980s copy of Brothers in Arms came with a nice digital transfer glitch in the form of a very audible crack on one of the tracks (possibly Your Latest Trick). I later used CUETools to repair the rip based on another issue without this glitch. Transfers differing in a handful of samples don't seem to have been unusual at the time, as I noticed when ripping Scorpions' Love At First Sting and looking at AccurateRip info.

I have noticed recording issues here and there. The distortion on Emmy the Great's Creation is none too pretty, for example. An album that I always found unlistenable due to overcompression was Heathers' Kingdom. I could never get along with Maps' We Can Create either, really odd/grating sound. Ladytron albums from back in the day can be pretty hard to take, too.

 

[whereisbrian]

The main problem for me is the dynamic range (DR) on recordings.
For exemple The Cure last album in FLAC is awful to listen to (medium compression is 6).
If you wish a better quality, you have to buy the LP!