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

[YSC]

Gotta think the studio just didn't care if they released something that grainy sounding.

Maybe it's the era's tech constrain, and when most playback device are radio quality I bet it likely doesn't matter back then.

For my first listen, if without better quality recordings spoiling me prior, I can actually enjoy the music itself, even from the "bright genelec", it's only when you are comparing to more dynamic and not over compressed recordings you instantly feels it's bad.

Somehow like back in the days when the best thing you can enjoy everywhere is MP3 and ipod most ppl don't feel it's bad, only when bettere things arrives

 

[fpitas]

Maybe it's the era's tech constrain, and when most playback device are radio quality I bet it likely doesn't matter back then.

For my first listen, if without better quality recordings spoiling me prior, I can actually enjoy the music itself, even from the "bright genelec", it's only when you are comparing to more dynamic and not over compressed recordings you instantly feels it's bad.

Somehow like back in the days when the best thing you can enjoy everywhere is MP3 and ipod most ppl don't feel it's bad, only when bettere things arrives

I suppose that coming from a car radio, or a five-tube radio of the time, the graininess would simply add to the rest of the sonic disaster.

/No nostalgia

 

[YSC]

I suppose that coming from a car radio, or a five-tube radio of the time, the graininess would simply add to the rest of the sonic disaster.

/No nostalgia

it could be, but on the other hand, everything will sound very compressed, so maybe music production will goes to the basics, rythm, beats, lyrics and emotions etc. but will be more difficult for later generations to appreciate

 

[fpitas]

it could be, but on the other hand, everything will sound very compressed, so maybe music production will goes to the basics, rythm, beats, lyrics and emotions etc. but will be more difficult for later generations to appreciate

I doubt they were thinking about future generations. Back then, rock and roll was considered to be completely disposable.

 

[YSC]

I doubt they were thinking about future generations. Back then, rock and roll was considered to be completely disposable.

if it was me I won't also, as long as it make me (big) money, who cares when I retired!

 

[Mart68]

I doubt they were thinking about future generations. Back then, rock and roll was considered to be completely disposable.

yes it was thought of as just another fad by the labels hence that bloke not signing the Beatles because 'Guitar bands are over.'

 

[MaxwellsEq]

If y'all need a test track, might I (with characteristic humility) suggest the Moody Blues' early hit, Go Now?

low-res example:

I don't think any loudspeaker will make it sound good.

Oh, and I'd also like to mention my bias against most much early to mid 1980s pop music (at least as originally released on LP): The 'big hits' of the era were often (IMO/IME) distressingly (over) compressed, thin, and steely sounding. I don't think much will help 'em.

I agree - I'm not sure any domestic audio system can make that sound good. It sounds like it was recorded way too hot.

 

[damage]

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.

There is basically two camps on this.

Yours... and mine.

My opinion is it's rubbish. A good system only makes it more rubbish. Sounds fine in my stock 1992 Eclipse. Sounds like trash on my home stereos.

 

[DualTriode]

Hi

is that a thing?​

Sure it is a thing that some people say.

It is kind of like:
Are you bragging or complaining?

 

[Mart68]

There is basically two camps on this.

Yours... and mine.

My opinion is it's rubbish. A good system only makes it more rubbish. Sounds fine in my stock 1992 Eclipse. Sounds like trash on my home stereos.

maybe...on mine it sounds how it was intended to sound. Which is job done as far as I'm concerned.

Would I buy a remix and remaster of it where it was all polished up and sounding impeccable, like 'Brothers In Arms' ? No. Would I want a remix of 'Brothers In Arms' which was all roughed up to sound like Oasis? No. Same reason I never play my Rolling Stone's remixed SACDs and listen to the much rougher sounding original CD releases instead.

This is a question of philosophy not recording quality and we all have our own.

 

[goat76]

There is basically two camps on this.

Yours... and mine.

My opinion is it's rubbish. A good system only makes it more rubbish. Sounds fine in my stock 1992 Eclipse. Sounds like trash on my home stereos.

It's possible that your better sound system (or setup) is not better in all aspects than your stock car stereo, but it is hard to know if you don't explain in more detail what sound aspects you don't like with the Oasis record.

I can certainly hear that all the sound objects on the record are somewhat hard and edgy sounding as if they all are way too much controlled by compression, it sounds pretty flat without much depth to the mix. The mix is very "static" sounding with not much "musical movement" going on, things that more depth and separation to the sound objects could have provided.

 

[fineMen]

A good system will make sense of the Oasis recording ... the U2 record.

Sorry for cutting down your comment so much. But my question is quite simple. Do you like Oasis or U2? What I'm after is whether or not the "sound quality" can be seen as an individual aspect of the overall experience.

The mix and the mastering may follow a contemporary fashion. The so called phillysound was famous, wiki says it was a stereotype (haha, stereo!). I argue that less extreme stereotypes are still in effect, the archetypical HiFiSound if you will. So and so much bass, so and so much treble, so and so much reverberation, singer in front by so much and so forth.

I wonder why I, wandering off the mainstream mostly, have a different take on "bad recordings". I accept the style that it was given by the recording engineers. More often than never accompanied by the musicians, composers with strong opinions. The latter make it sound quite different but anyway 'good' as soon as one understands the objectives. For the understanding of a deviating style some 'unforgiving speakers' support my appreciation of an 'other-quality' recording.

 

[TheZebraKilledDarwin]

It's like asking a mechanic: What is the better tool: the screwdriver or the hammer?

I do not agree with the assumption, that good mixes sound better on "good speakers" and bad mixes sound worse. To understand why that is not the case, one has to put himself in the shoes of the mixing engineer in his specific room. The task is not to make a mix sound good. The task is to make a mix, that translates well and make it sound comparatively good on all kind of systems.

With that in mind, it becomes understandable, that not one pair of the best speakers int he world is enough, to judge the mix.
Different speakers are necessary for very specific tasks.
Being able to work at low levels is very important to protect the ears. That means very specific speaker attributes are needed.
The sound is in the mids. That means that the speaker characteristics should help to judge the midrange at low levels.
Why have NS-10 become that helpful although they don't have a good bass response?
Because they have a loud mud range ~300 and a loud upper midrange (louder 1.5k than 0.5).
That naturally emphasizes mud or annoying mids in a mix and helps to make the 500 Hz range loud and sound good (monitors emphasizing nasty, unpleasant frequencies, i.e. mud, lead to a mix that is inverse sounding.

But do we as consumers want to hear every muddyness in a mix?
Hey, Elton Johns left hand on that piano track is way too loud!
Or who wants to have dialogue intelligibility problems, because of a careless postproduction?
Additonally they have very good impulse response, which is necessary to hear annoying ear piercing transients.

Now are NS-10 good or bad speakers? They are among the best - to achieve a good sounding, well balanced mix. Therefore they work as tool and therefore they are very good speakers.
Are NS-10 suited to judge louder levels? Yes. If the mix sounds pleasing on them (the sound is in the mids anyway), then the chances are very good, that the mids are sounding good.
Are they suited to judge the bass region? To the most part, yes.
Are they suited to judge bass energy? No, then other tools (speakers, headphones) come into play.
Now who can say, what is the better tool? It's not possible. What works (= gets the job of a good sounding, well translating mix done quickly) is good.


As consumers we have very different wishes.
When I was young I only wanted to have "bass" and treble. I did not listen and did not hear much. Today? I want to hear all instruments and I don't want a loud bass masking the mids, details, nuances, emotion.
When I was young I confused "good bass" with mixes that kept the 100-150 Hz modes in check for smaller rooms, while I was turning up "the bass" knob. Today I would not even take my beloved sound setups from back then as gift.
Personal tastes vary a lot. And they can change dramatically with the way we are listening.

As an extreme example: some of you surely remember, when the two, three loudest room modes were EQed away and how you perceived how the "bass vanished"? And that it took a few hours for the brain to adjust? But after some time you started to hear much more details? And going back to the resonating room modes made you suddenly hear, how the resonances mask everything and that it was not at all a "powerful bass"?

Therefore I think it's not good, to make generalizations about "best" speakers or "best" setups. The first question must always be: What do you listen for and what do you want to hear? This very subjective point of view determines how a setup should sound and what may be needed.

 

[ldarieut]

Distortion will be audible on crappy recordings, like some jazz DOL reissues of classics versus the blue note ones.

 

[Mart68]

Sorry for cutting down your comment so much. But my question is quite simple. Do you like Oasis or U2? What I'm after is whether or not the "sound quality" can be seen as an individual aspect of the overall experience.

The mix and the mastering may follow a contemporary fashion. The so called phillysound was famous, wiki says it was a stereotype (haha, stereo!). I argue that less extreme stereotypes are still in effect, the archetypical HiFiSound if you will. So and so much bass, so and so much treble, so and so much reverberation, singer in front by so much and so forth.

I wonder why I, wandering off the mainstream mostly, have a different take on "bad recordings". I accept the style that it was given by the recording engineers. More often than never accompanied by the musicians, composers with strong opinions. The latter make it sound quite different but anyway 'good' as soon as one understands the objectives. For the understanding of a deviating style some 'unforgiving speakers' support my appreciation of an 'other-quality' recording.

I like the first two Oasis albums and the first two U2 albums but not sure why that is relevant?

The talk of bad recordings confuses me. We get what we are given and for replay purposes that is the starting point. I get the impression that some would like all recordings to have a prodiction like Patricia Barber albums. Or Yello. Or any showcase production. Is that really the world we want? I think the living would envy the dead.

I take the view that the production is intrinsic to the art. I wouldn't buy a Picasso and then touch it up so it looks better. Or go on an art forum and say 'That Picasso really screwed up with that sketch, looks nothing like a real person'.

Take a concrete example - Boston 'Third Stage''. You can hear tape hiss and tape wow in some places. Is it a 'bad recording'. Or is that intrinsic to the art (even though it was unintentional or maybe avoidable). I take the view that it is intrinsic. If there were a new version with no hiss or wow would I replace the original with it? No.

But this, as I said, is a question of philosophy, not recording quality.

 

[spacevector]

The headline is a direct quote from this review:

It is a perfect way to sell stuff. Who amongst us doesn't have some music close to our hearts that is poorly recorded? I remember reading amplifier reviews mentioning "this gear can make bad recordings sound good". Almost spent ~$1000 - so glad I slept on it.

 

[fineMen]

I like the first two Oasis albums and the first two U2 albums but not sure why that is relevant?

The talk of bad recordings confuses me. ... Or is that intrinsic to the art (even though it was unintentional or maybe avoidable). I take the view that it is intrinsic. If there were a new version with no hiss or wow would I replace the original with it?

Relevant insofar that I assume the Oasis and U2 albums are being manufactured to the highest available standards, taking the then current fashion into account for good measure.

I easily accept technical flaws as I grew up with vinyl recordings and the Beatle's studio, later ABBA and then Zappa ;-)

A recording is for me something to 'look' at, nothing to bath in. An 'unforgiving' speaker pair provides the better view. I always think of a record as an artifact. Many audiophiles are fools in this regard.

In this sense an otherwise I think we agree.

 

[fpitas]

I think it has become obvious there is no easy answer to the thread title question. If a good speaker reveals all the wonkiness of a certain poor recording, it's doing its job by definition. But that may not sound very good. On the other hand, even some poor recordings may benefit from increased clarity.

 

[goat76]

I think it has become obvious there is no easy answer to the thread title question. If a good speaker reveals all the wonkiness of a certain poor recording, it's doing its job by definition. But that may not sound very good. On the other hand, even some poor recordings may benefit from increased clarity.

Exactly, the answer can be both yes and no, it all depends on what’s wrong with the recording and if the particular fault is bothering you or not.

In many ways, I think most things sound better on my main HiFi system, but at the same time, I can easily hear how things are recorded, mixed, and mastered. Sometimes there can be some aspects that bother me on the production side of things, but if the music has a good quality of its own I can most of the time accept those “faults”, especially when my HiFi system makes everything else in the production sound so good.

 

[garyrc]

The heritage Klipsch can be tough to listen to (even) with good quality program material -- but they can be downright unbearable with poorly recorded, mixed, and/or mastered program.

Beg to differ .... at least with the fully horn loaded Klipsch Heritage ... except once.

My Klipschorns, in my somewhat dead and treated room, with Audyssey Flat, and tone controls set carefully, by ear, are warm, ultra dynamic and great for most, but not all, disks. With orchestral music they sound like the orchestras I have heard or in which I've played. My center channel is a Belle Klipsch, with identical drivers, and modified to have the same midrange horn (K401-- yes, it sticks out the back into a bumpout that goes through the wall). I wouldn't ask the Belle to do a full range job -- it has a small peak at 60Hz, then drops like a rock below that. So, to add warmth to all front channels, the Belle crosses over to a sub at 60Hz, and the Klipschorn at 40Hz. Both crossover points were set by ear, over months,

So, virtually all SACDs and Blu-rays are fine, and most CDs after the initial f**k-up period when they were rushed out (?), as are vinyl and 15 ips tape.

"Once?" In about 1973 I went to an art show, and the Punk band was using a pair of Klipsch La Scalas (the La Scala is much like the Belle). They were, to use mhardy's words, "tough to listen to," and harsh, well, punk in the old, nonmusical definition, sour, hostile and wack. That was the first time I'd heard them. Later, I was in a store and asked to hear the La Scalas. They were fine -- so clean, so precise, fast, tight, all those audiophile words. That has been my experience with them ever since. The Punk people wanted harshness. If that's what you want, if that's the way you mix it, Klipsch Heritage can transmit it well.