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Are todays digital recordings engineered to sound best on a smartphones?

I finally found some new hard rock that I like. Greta Van Fleet. I found them on YouTube and they sounded awesome on my LG V30 and some modified Grado SR60s. On boy I thought how they would sound on my 50k system. Strolling through Wal-Mart I saw both their albums and got them. I enthusiastically slid the disc in my SA-10. RIGHT BEFORE MY EARS I had one of my most anticlimactic disappointing musical experiences. It sounded flat and compressed with the vocal mix farther in the background. Pretty much uninvolving. If I had heard the CD first on a decent home system I wouldn’t have bought it. I will try my headphones into the SA-10 and see how it goes. Is YouTube streaming hi-rez I wonder???
blueranger
blueranger's avatar
blueranger OP
719 posts
 
Thanks for your response. I listened to them on my Grado PS 500s and wow. I don't think the compression matters as much with headphones. What is your opinion on that? Also the Grados are midrange forward and that explain some of it. Id like to hear them through a Klipsch horn! I'm hearing their first album now and I have the same experience. I also hadn't heard my headphones in a while. Maybe I have overdamped my room. 
n80
2,133 posts
 
I only have Sony MDR 7506 headphones and don't use them much so can't really say much about DR compression vs headphones.
roberjerman
4,319 posts
 
Pop/rock has always been compromised! Classical and jazz have fared much better soundwise!
n80
2,133 posts
 
roberjerman, That might be true but I have plenty of rock and pop albums that were produced at the highest levels possible and with extraordinary DR. Mark Knopfler and Steely Dan are standouts in that respect.

I am particularly disappointed in Tedeschi Trucks since it is my understanding that they have their own studio so that they have control over the production process and still make overly compressed albums.

Even the hi-res version of the Tom Petty album I mentioned above is produced with very high DR.
gawdbless's avatar
gawdbless
1,235 posts
 
I have Tedeshi Trucks live, Gary Clark Live, and I am listening to Tom petty 'Hypnotic'  right now and I will have to respectfully disagree that the recordings  I have of these three artists are bad. 
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