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

[goat76]

Looking out for the most perfect worst recording?

Birthday Party / She's Hit (any, it's programmatic)

There's not much wrong with the recording itself. You're probably just not a fan of the raw "live" style of the recording, and maybe you don't like the tune/sound esthetic of the band that goes in line with other bands of that era, songs like Gangs of Four- He'd Send in the Army (Yellow EP), Public Image Ltd - Albatross (Metal Box), and similar. Yes, those recordings did go for a typically raw and somewhat bright distant sound with much room, but there's not much wrong with the recordings.

Do you really find the Birthday Party song sounding worse in some way on your main HiFi system than on your portable Bluetooth speakers?

 

[goat76]

My take is more often it’s psychological. Take example of Anne Marie ‘then’ where there’s severe clipping and distortion in the track. When you listen on say, a phone speaker you kind of will think it’s a defect of the speaker, but once you go to a good speaker or earphones, your brain will go: nope, the recording itself does sucks

That is a good example of really bad music being severely destroyed further in the mastering process.

 

[Purité Audio]

Yes, and if I don't remember incorrectly, that was one of Peter Walker's deliberate aims.

Jim

You have probably already read this 1978 interview with Peter Walker,

The Quad ESL - Walker 1978

The definitive web reference to the original Quad ESL

www.quadesl.org

Keith

 

[JustCoolin‘]

A noisy, gritty 1970s rock recording is the best subjective test. If it can make sense of that then performance with showcase stuff can be taken as read,.

People say 'Come and have a listen to my system' and when you get there they want to play you Yello, or SRV or Patricia Barber. I always scan their shelves for something like Thin Lizzy 'Live & Dangerous' and ask them to put that on instead.

Some demonstrators at shows will refuse to play anything like that on the speakers they are selling. That's just as informative.

Yeah, I don't think I've noticed a bigger difference between my old floorstanders and the active monitors than on Neil Young & Crazy Horse albums. It was all a bit of a smear, and now I can hear exactly what everyone of the musicians does. I can imagine people actually preferring the smear.

 

[YSC]

That is a good example of really bad music being severely destroyed further in the mastering process.

I wouldn't call the music itself being really bad, it's the mixing and mastering problem.

 

[audiofooled]

To me it's that known good recordings are revealing flaws in loudspeakers, transparent systems are good at revealing flaws in recordings, and anything in between. But in the end, if it's the music that I really like, I don't mind the poor quality.

 

[goat76]

I wouldn't call the music itself being really bad, it's the mixing and mastering problem.

No, the part about the music being bad was just me trying to make a joke that we shouldn't mix up our own taste with the actual recording/mixing/mastering quality. The non-joke part was that it was a good example of music severely destroyed in the mastering process.

 

[YSC]

No, the part about the music being bad was just me trying to make a joke that we shouldn't mix up our own taste with the actual recording/mixing/mastering quality. The non-joke part was that it was a good example of music severely destroyed in the mastering process.

ok, then I completely agree with that, and that is only noticed or remembered by me coz it's a pop hit, there should be a lot more bad recordings out there in the wild ruining the music.

As a side note, it's an evidence that the mixing/mastering engineer not always know what they are doing or how it translates despite he/she might be a well respected pro.

 

[BeerBear]

This means they don’t emphasise any one frequency, giving you the most accurate impression of your mix so you can easily pick out imperfections.

That's true for hi-fi speakers too. If they don't have a flat frequency response, you're not hearing what was intended.

 

[goat76]

As a side note, it's an evidence that the mixing/mastering engineer not always know what they are doing or how it translates despite he/she might be a well respected pro.

No, they often know exactly what they do, it's just that the actual sound quality often takes the backseat to other aspects like maximizing the loudness and/or other trends in music production.

 

[YSC]

No, they often know exactly what they do, it's just that the actual sound quality often takes the backseat to other aspects like maximizing the loudness and/or other trends in music production.

well, it's basically impossible that pushing the track to clipping in raw signal is what needed to be put in there... and then there's an acoustic version of the same song they don't push it that far yet loudness is kept the same. it's pop and not like classical music having huge dynamic range between quiet and loud passages.

even the legends are human, and every single human makes mistakes and miss out the mistakes they made, the difference is only frequency. if anyone claim he always correct and knows every single work they've done, never making mistakes into final product, either he's God or he's a lier

 

[goat76]

well, it's basically impossible that pushing the track to clipping in raw signal is what needed to be put in there... and then there's an acoustic version of the same song they don't push it that far yet loudness is kept the same. it's pop and not like classical music having huge dynamic range between quiet and loud passages.

even the legends are human, and every single human makes mistakes and miss out the mistakes they made, the difference is only frequency. if anyone claim he always correct and knows every single work they've done, never making mistakes into final product, either he's God or he's a lier

Nah, controlling clipping and such is the easy part of music production, that’s what every level meter will reveal. They know exactly how much “over” they go when applying the limiter in the mastering stage. And no professional audio engineers are letting the signal pass the clipping level while tracking, they have large enough headroom to prevent that to happen.

 

[Mart68]

I was wondering how long it would take to get to 'Engineers don't know what they're doing.'

if they are some amateur in their bedroom maybe they don't but if they are being paid for making commercial recordings then yes they do. What you get is what the people paying for the recording wanted you to get. Not the engineer's fault if you don't like it.

 

[Sokel]

The worst produced album I ever heard is this:

Fun fact,CD costs 79$ euro in Amazon.
Try it,your speakers are not broken,don't worry.

 

[YSC]

Nah, controlling clipping and such is the easy part of music production, that’s what every level meter will reveal. They know exactly how much “over” they go when applying the limiter in the mastering stage. And no professional audio engineers are letting the signal pass the clipping level while tracking, they have large enough headroom to prevent that to happen.

Well ok, so they intentionally add those horrific clipping/noise inside the track after first chorus, I’ve nothing to add then, I know, that’s art

 

[goat76]

Well ok, so they intentionally add those horrific clipping/noise inside the track after first chorus, I’ve nothing to add then, I know, that’s art

No, those clippings are the artifacts that follow when they aggressively limit the music for the sake of getting it louder.

 

[Gorgonzola]

My philosophy: It is not the job of the speaker, nor any other component in the reproduction chain, to compensated for poor recordings. That is, with the exception of EQ that you can adjust depending on the individual recording.

Recordings can the deficient if different ways, however I've found over many years that the best recordings sound best played using the most accurate components. By "best" recordings I mean those that tend to sound best regardless of the components in the chain -- and yes, there are plenty of such recordings.

 

[Inner Space]

You have probably already read this 1978 interview with Peter Walker ...

No, I hadn't. I had heard excerpts, but your link is the first time I've read the entire interview. Quite interesting. Walker had a great deal of common sense.

Two things stood out for me (well, three, given the terrible transcription - some kind of early speech-to-text?) - first, when asked what area was most in need of work, Walker answered, "the loudspeaker in the room combination." True then, true now, true always.

And ... when asked if he was satisfied with the ESL57, he said, "Oh, no. No, we think our loudspeaker very poor, but we think the others are even poorer." That's the only honest and rational stance to have, whether a manufacturer talking about his flagship, or a consumer about his purchase, or a pro about his studio choice.

 

[YSC]

No, those clippings are the artifacts that follow when they aggressively limit the music for the sake of getting it louder.

Ah whatever, so nobody makes the mistake but it need that limitation and artefacts. And every single professional will occasionally mess up, the photographer do, medical doctor do, aircraft engineer and mechanics do, pilots do, even NASA and the military all so often got mistakes in their job and not done correctly, but mixing engineers never mess up and everything is intentional.

I will stop derail again but then, the topic is mostly urban myth to justify the worse hifi speakers by someone

 

[notsodeadlizard]

Your real suffering will begin when your audio system allows you to easily distinguish between bad mastered recordings and at least acceptable ones.
That's when the real suffering begins.