Sound Quality

[Dexxas]

How much dose the sound quality of the music media your listening to effect your enjoyment .


if for example you purchased a CD and the sound quality was appalling . No matter how good the music was. would it detract your enjoyment would you take it of.


Why do I ask:

I Buy loads of Cd's Music mad I am. I bought Seth Macfarlane "Music Is Better Than words " CD. Quality is outstanding its Big Band High quality Crooner album You know Seth as family Guy Voice.

I went from Seth to Milt Jackson "Goodbye" album fabulous steve Gadd on Skins . Sound quality brilliant.

Lovely big cymbal whoosh in the right hand speaker most of the way through. Reminded me How much I loved the Beatles Version Of "Roll Over Beethoven" For that cymbal whoosh !

Then I thought lets play Some More Milt. I put on "Bags Meets west" Milt Jackson and Wes Montgomery. My goodness the quality so bad and I Love both musicians. I had to Take it Off.

Leads me to ask If you were a recording engineer. Why would you make a bad sounding album. Date on its 1961 . Remember Kind of Blue Made 1959 Superb quality.

Surely at the quality control end. Someone listens to it and must hear what we hear.

This goes for a lot of albums.

Same thing If you played an album that was beautifully made sound quality superb. With music you normally would not listen to, But yet like. Would the sound quality draw you into the music , enlighten your ears and make you listen.

Its food for thought if thats the case you think the quality control at the artist end would be much better . Wouldn't you?

 

[koushik]

Its a mix feelings for me. Good recording does appeals me. Its amazing to hear what your system is capable of. But that is for short period of time.
In the long run quality of the music matters. I will live with good composition on cheap radio than the other way.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

I was listening to some classical orchestral music on my phone, using the phone speaker. The quality was, as one might expect, dire, and I was doing it simply to check out media-player software for functionality. Even so, I found that I was enjoying the music!

On the other hand, there are CDs (and one LP from years ago) that I will not play because the engineers have completely ruined them to the extent that it is not possible to enjoy the music.

I would never listen to something just because of its production quality: that would be like reading a lousy book just because it was well printed. It would be no better than listening to test tones!

The contribution to music listening made by excellent audio equipment is not really necessary, but it is a huge bonus. If not, we wouldn't all be here

 

[Staxxx]

+1 to Thad. I was listening to some piano music played by a very young Weissenberg (1949 - 1955). Such wonderful music making and not too bad mono sound, but nothing of course compared to a modern recording, and I was thinking:...although I am an audiophile...
I would not give up good music for bad sound quality but I would gladly give up bad music even with great sound quality.

 

[koushik]

Staxxx,
I think most of us do that. We are first a music lover and then an audiophile.

 

[arj]

media definitely has a great impact on sound quality and in General, the better the recording the better the enjoyment and if your Source is good then you will notice this even in entry level Hifi Systems.
..but many recordings, even if they appear noisy by audiophile standards have much more musical involvement in them . Eg many XRCD recordings appear very clean and high def but i have found them to be overcooked and the original cd although of lower "Quality" being better.
Completely agree with staxxx and Thad

The best philosophy here is Source first..buy the best source you can afford and play around with the budget for amp/speakers..you will be more rewarded

 

[Dexxas]

Thanks for the input guys

if you have all that equipment to hand and your going to make a recording . why make it a bad recording.

Why do they differ so much

 

[arj]

Well , 90% of the population, if not more will never make it out. Again the master tape usually would be good, it is the individual pressing which is compromised. If you google out the process of recording to pressing you will find there are several steps between mastering to actual stamping where things go wrong.

 

[square_wave]

I would not give up good music for bad sound quality but I would gladly give up bad music even with great sound quality.

+ 1 to this thought

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

if you have all that equipment to hand and your going to make a recording . why make it a bad recording.

For starters, compression. The loudness wars! According to the person who mixed the music, the result is just fine, and as per the industry's requirements. Sadly, it is not per music lovers' requirements.

Secondly, "creative" knob twiddling. Some people just can't leave the damn things alone. Some of my only-fit-to-throw CDs are Balamuralikrishna classical: they are ruined by reverb. Hall designers the world over are trying to get rid of the echo, and he, or his engineers, thinks it is a good idea to introduce it .

Some of the psychedelic rock of the late sixties was ruined by the musicians getting their hands on the controls. However, a couple of famous examples of this, the Grateful Deads studio albums, Aoxa Moxoa and Anthem of the Sun, are actually, for all their weirdness, just fine by me! hyeah:

 

[manoj.p]

Good music will make you feel happy, no matter what the system is. Good music will sound better even on Murphy transistor radio. At that point, you are enjoying the music and not analyzing system. Over 90% of the crowd is like that. But that's nothing to frown upon. I think that's the right way to do it.

We tend to over-analyze sound equipment, speakers, this and that but in the end its the music that matters.

 

[manoj.p]

For starters, compression. The loudness wars! According to the person who mixed the music, the result is just fine, and as per the industry's requirements. Sadly, it is not per music lovers' requirements.

Secondly, "creative" knob twiddling. Some people just can't leave the damn things alone. Some of my only-fit-to-throw CDs are Balamuralikrishna classical: they are ruined by reverb. Hall designers the world over are trying to get rid of the echo, and he, or his engineers, thinks it is a good idea to introduce it .

Some of the psychedelic rock of the late sixties was ruined by the musicians getting their hands on the controls. However, a couple of famous examples of this, the Grateful Deads studio albums, Aoxa Moxoa and Anthem of the Sun, are actually, for all their weirdness, just fine by me! hyeah:

Thad,

It's not only the Audio engineers, listeners can do it too. Some people keep tweaking their system and forget to enjoy the music. You can't leave them alone. It's one thing to get most of your system and another to obsess with tweaks or upgrades. I guess they want to enjoy "tweaking the system" more than the music itself.

That's perfectly fine although, that's where the "audiophile" term should be changed to "Equiphile" cause all they discuss is equipment rather than music.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Yes, that's true, but most tweaks and "up"grades don't actually change the music itself, unless we actually put a DSP unit in there and start twidling the knobs on that!

(Hmmm... I have something in my software pocket, somewhere... frequency-dependent variable delay was sort-of weirdo fun!)

 

[Shivam]

Good music can be ruined by poor recording. I have dozens of Hindi audio CDs (saregama) with excellent music but they sound so horrible that most of the times I can't enjoy them. I use these CDs as background music sometimes over an inexpensive Sony portable boom-box where at least I can softly hum along with the music.

The same albums from HMV which were mastered few decades back (also on CDs) sound better and engaging.
Few such examples - Pakeezah, Umrao Jaan, Guide.


I am especially keeping the LPs out of this since that is a different story altogether.

 

[arj]

Good music can be ruined by poor recording. I have dozens of Hindi audio CDs (saregama) with excellent music but they sound so horrible that most of the times I can't enjoy them. I use these CDs as background music sometimes over an inexpensive Sony portable boom-box where at least I can softly hum along with the music.

The same albums from HMV which were mastered few decades back (also on CDs) sound better and engaging.
Few such examples - Pakeezah, Umrao Jaan, Guide.


I am especially keeping the LPs out of this since that is a different story altogether.

Saregama digitized their entire collection into , I believe , some compressed format and killed music.

 

[COOLDUDE7808]

I had purchased the LEGEND series of Saregama ....Listening to some of the songs i got this feeling that they have been recorded by converting MP3 to audio CD format ...

The older CD's which I have has a far better recording quality than the new ones .

 

[milestoneseeker]

+1. I bought the legend series for Devanand and now I barely listen to those because of pathetic recording.