"Bridge Over Trouble Water" sounds artificial

Glad I'm not the only one who noticed that about Simon and Garfunkel recordings. And I agree with Glupson about AM radio and some of those songs, and classical for that matter. As much as I love high fidelity stereo there are times when simple mono with limited frequency response from a simple radio just creates the magic somehow. I think it lets my imagination take over more, romanticize more. It's like 24 frame per second film compared to 60 frame per second. Too much information destroys something fancy going on in my head. 

I’m on the side of the fence that says I enjoy hearing what old radio tunes really sound like on a good quality modern hifi rig.. It’s often nothing like what you remember....so many things happening that were obscured prior.

If it’s relative lo-fi like from a car radio 50 years ago one pines for, lots of inexpensive options still for that.

The internet is actually quite useful for researching information about the actual recording of this album.  If you're truly interested, there's even a documentary movie where the songwriter, vocalists, instrumentalists and engineer/producer describe making the album.  They really weren't thinking about car and portable fm radios.  BOTW was a high dollar prestige product from the largest record label at that time.  I wonder what the SQ matrix quad mix sounds like?

I read BOTW was produced using Phil Spector “Wall of Sound” production techniques. Read up on that and explains a lot.

The first part with just vocal and piano is a much simpler production. It sounds like the piano was closely stereo miked which spreads the keys across the soundstage.


I used an original CD release of BOTW album streamed at CD resolution using flac format to listen to and assess BOTW the song/track. 

For the hit pop release that it was intended to be the recording is pretty good actually overall. Just don’t compare it to a good quality classical recording. Apples/oranges. Though the piano/vocal only first part is not radically different from many.

I tried my 1985 CD of Bridge Over Troubled Water.  It says it's a digitally mastered analog recording CK9914.  It definitley is smoother than the hi-resolution version I downloaded from Qobuz, but not natural music.  There is low frequency bass that does not sound like any musical instrument I have ever heard.  Some of the vocals do sound like real human voice and some vocals are clearly engineered.  Thanks.  I will try the LP next.