Is Recording quality the real culprit?

I have argued this point many times.  Sure a better system makes good recordings sound their best, but as the saying goes, Your Can't Polish A Turd.  You can only reproduce what's on the recording.  No amount of money spent is going to change that.  IMHO.

We spend the money on the system because we already know how to find top quality recordings.

If only recordings were rated for SQ, like movie ratings are for content (G, PG13, R).  The music reviews in Absolute Sound have separate stars for performance and sound quality, though I have not found these to be close to reliable.

You need good equipment in order to be able to properly assess the quality or nature of specific recordings.

The trap to avoid is thinking that a better system will magically transform all recordings into something you want them to be rather than merely what they are or are not .  

The ability to enjoy details of all recordings and appreciate each for what it is or is not is a big part of the joy of hifi for me.

Maybe this speaks to the continued desire to improve the system you have in hopes things might get better and after all it probably is due to Recording Quality not being where it needs to be.

That’s why so many people divorce and remerry all the time. And in the end there’s not much you can really do to fix the problem.

You get a good quality system to better appreciate the musical performance.  The recording quality is not the main focus. 

Poor recording or mastering  makes a good musical performance sound crappy.

It may sound crappy, but it's still a good musical performance.

BINGO! Blaring Sirens going off. DING DING DING! You win the big prize. Bigtwin is correct and so are you. I have had media in different formats. CD, Vinyl and tape recordings, BUT the most glaring and obvious quality differences has been heard in the recordings themselves. The artist, the sound engineer, the label and many other factors play a role. In fact, some music artists have really spent more time in the studio, think Steely Dan, Boston, Diana Krall, Pink Floyd and many, many others. Think of some great audio masters like Rudy Van Gelder, Lee Herschberg, Elliot Scheiner, Bruce Swedien, Geoff Emerick, Don Landee, Alan Parsons, Ken Scott, Todd Rundgren, George Martin, Quincy Jones, Tom Dowd, Phil Spector, Bob Clearmountain, Bernie Grundman, Brian Wilson, Eddy Kramer, Tom Scholz, Trevor Horn.

Consider yourself lucky when you mention many artists do things well when it comes to recording quality. In my experience it is unfortunately the other way around. I venture that less than 20% of music recorded between the sixties and today are what I consider well recorded. And I'm very generous. But that still makes for thousands of great albums, it's just a huge undertaking to find them.

In fact, just now I discovered a Jazzraush Bigband album named Bangers only! A German big band mixing jazz with electronics from Germany. Take a listen, very well recorded and good fun upbeat music.

Jazzrausch

The sonic presentation of systems are vastly different given the same source material. If the system is tuned to maximize detail, with a lean midrange to become a microscope on details, then the resolution of the source material becomes really critical, and unless perfect can sound bad. Systems like this tend to lose the music… the gestalt because of the missing dominance of the midrange and as a consequence the rhythm and pace.

A system that appropriately reproduces the audio spectrum and gets the gestalt of the music will not be very sensitive to the recording… the focus on the music not on details and micro imaging. Also, importantly, there are systems at most levels of in investment the can achieve this gestalt (generally tubed) and greater levels of investment do lead to greater detail and imaging… etc, but they are carefully crafted to keep the overall balance so not to lose the music.

This makes me think of using sharpening in digital imaging. Beautiful and emotional images are created using a small amount of sharpening, but more and the image get sharper but attenuates the emotional connection, more and it creates fatigue just looking at it. More and it looks terrible.

I’ve owned systems with spectacular detail, transparency, and speed. Great scientific instruments that completely missed the point of musical reproduction. I would listen to the system and recording instead of being drawn into the music. My systems are now musical first and typically I don’t notice the recording quality unless really bad.

It may sound crappy, but it's still a good musical performance.

Okay, but if you don't care what it sounds like, why spend the $ for good equipment?

Let's be honest.  Who else had to google the definition of "gestalt"? 🤣  But has the point been missed?  An engineer piles everything into the center or worse, takes a trio and places two instruments in each other's lap, right in the center and pins the third in the middle of the left speaker.  The entire right side of the sound-stage is empty.  I don't believe any system can improve these issues in recordings.  I often wonder, didn't the artist listen to the final mix before it was shipped? 

I have some recordings that were made using just one, stereo microphone that sound fantastic.  I also have some albums that were recorded with just a few microphones that everything is just plain off and I can’t get a listenable image of a singer or an instrument.  

Your Can't Polish A Turd
 

But you can.

https://youtu.be/yiJ9fy1qSFI

Conversely, a sub par recording can't kill great music. 

Conversely, a sub par recording can't kill great music. 

Well, it does for me.  But that could be just me.  

I have some recordings that were made using just one, stereo microphone that sound fantastic. 

@curiousjim , I can think of at least a couple also.  Without going back and looking for others, the two I am thinking of are the Cowboy Junkies first and second releases, Whites Off Earth Now and Trinity Sessions.  

@ibmjunkman ....I suspected such, but thanks for the low down on exotic waste treatment and the means to do so....

One can apply the same routine with different means to the end with recordings, and it likely happens more often than one might think or even notice in a listening sess.....  The means to do such is not typical except for the most rabid of 'philes, and would require really deep pockets to be able to 'remaster' and mop up the mess one hears to their approval....

Best common example:  Movie sound tracks.

Waiting for AI to be turned loose into those mixes.... ;)

"Hal, why did you redo that break at 11:40?  I thought we'd agreed tha..."

"Well, Dave....I was reviewing the previous 5:40 and it seemed to me to not have enough cow bell...."

YES

Interesting on how so many agree on the original post and go into detail on why they agree yet, when you speak about equalizers in your system it's against all "Audiophile" beliefs.   Ask the question about having an equalizer in your system and you will have hundreds jump down your throat that it's not pure, you aren't hearing the music the way it was intended, blah blah blah.

My argument to that for many years has been not all recordings are not engineered well, the engineer isn't in your room, doesn't know your system etc...  Many of the imperfect recordings can be resolved with an equalizer or at least make them listenable which can expand your play list.  

Pretty much the same discussion different with responses. 

Well don’t we all need just a little more cow bell…LoL! You want to hear a recording done right…. Check out:

St. James Infirmary by Baba Blues on Glimer of Gold

@immatthewj - that’s exactly where my mind went when @curiousjim mentioned single mic recordings. The Junkies also cut their third album as a single mic recording in a church (like Trinity Sessions) called Sharon. However the record execs didn’t like the product and it was only released by the band in 2022. Sharon has several songs that wound up on Caution Horses (Tuesday Morning, Cheap is How I Feel, Powderfinger) along with other songs. I’m a Junkies junkie so maybe I’m not a good judge but it’s not clear to me what the issue was with Sharon. I think I’ll play it next to see if I can find the problem(s) 😀

Matt

I still sing along in my car with a subwoofer under my seat. It's all beating a log with a stick. The real question is why we enjoy it so much. Too many equate audio as some sort of search. It can be but to some it is a sad intersection of insecurity and cash/debt.

There are so many good recordings nowadays but you have to pay the premium.

My biggest issue is with vinyl pressing quality. I can't even hear what they intended in the studio because most modern pressings are so poor. Sure there's a few high fidelity companies and people trying to push the envelope, but there's just so much horrid vinyl out there it makes the music unlistenable for the modern music fan. 

I believe you have to consider the mixing and mastering as well as the recording.  I have some originals on vinyl and CD that do not sound nearly as good as the remastered version streamed on Qobuz.

Comparing car audio to a HEA system with vinyl playback is ludicrous!

When I was a young person over half a century ago I thought that a bad recording was doomed to provide an unsatisfying listening experience too.  Then I got a pair of Stax electrostatic headphones, SR-5s.  One night, after enjoying Workingman’s Dead in its glorious Wally Heider produced stereo sound, I put on a Chess reissue of Howling Wolf…More Real Folk Blues…and was flabbergasted that these crude, raunchy, monaural recordings, often displaying gross mic overload, sounded thrillingly alive and immediate.  I learned that a truly linear, cohesive, distortion free transducer, like electrostatic headphones, could let any recording shine.  This was before punk rock, of course!  Having speakers that do this trick is a more challenging task.

Excessive compression is easily number one culprit, luckily I don't listen to a lot of this overly produced drivel. Perhaps recording quality has helped subconsciously steer me towards less commercial artists. Still, I'd say unlistenable recordings few and far between, I can usually hear past the warts and get into the music.

I'd suggest the ability to listen to lesser recordings says as much about us as our systems. Quit the critical analysis of sound, accept it as presented, once you get past this you can enjoy the performance.

Before the age of streaming we were at the mercy of the recording quality. 

With streaming, and millions of recordings so easy to access we can populate our favourites folders  with music that is wonderful and well recorded as well.

For example, This week I wanted to listen to some Ella Fitzgerald. A tidal search offered up well over 200 albums, including the Clap Hands Here Comes Charlie! which Analog Productions released as a 2 LP set.

Now I have a bunch of Ella to listen to without having gambled on buying any albums that sound poor. Audiophiles and music lovers have never had it so good!

Considering some people believe a digital signal can sound better or worse depending on a cable or "connection" material, it wouldn't be surprising to find that some of them would believe their system could improve the sound of a poorly recorded song (but they'd be wrong about that too).

Album quality is of course hit or miss, depending on who the recording engineer was, the producer, the mixing and mastering engineer, and the label. Ironically most young artists don’t have a clue and go with the flow of whatever those with "supposedly" better technical knowledge tell them. [I still wonder why Adele’s "30" sounds so bad].

Steve Gutenberg recently mentioned that a 1959 live recording of Harry Belafonte sounds "audiophile" with a great soundstage and imaging, along with dynamics, while a 1970s recording of Al Kooper sounds compressed to hell, but both can be enjoyed.

I mean yeah you can eat a quality steak, but you can still enjoy hamburger. You just have to let go of the idea that everything is going to sound great.

Many popular albums for whatever reason, done in the 1970s are "thin" sounding. I can usually make these sound a bit fuller with a touch of EQ and I do. At least in the 1970s most of the albums weren’t compressed to hell as happened later on during the evil spawn from Hell, ’loudness wars’ done for freaking AM and FM radio.

Think of your audio system as a TV. Maybe 8K and maybe you have it tweaked to the best picture quality it is technically capable of, but then you watch something like The Blair Witch Project that was recorded on a VCR with 240 lines of resolution. LOL. No, you can’t polish a turd, and if you try, you most likely won’t like the result.

@searchingforthesound 

I don’t want to wonder into a fight, but an equalizer will do nothing for an over driven microphone, to much compression, or tape hiss. If someone wants to put EQ into their system, more power to them.

In my experience all recordings sound better on a good system than a poor system.

My system is pretty resolving and has cause me to understand there are a lot of crap recordings out there

Music is an art.  So is the mastering that goes into making recordings.  Everyone does it differently.  
 

Science and technology provides the tools used to both create and playback recordings.    That part is not an art.   There are right ways and wrong ways to do it.  
 

If it’s done right, you get to hear all the artistry that went into making a recording.   You can also then season to taste so that as a whole it sounds good to you.

I struggled with this for several years and finally came to the conclusion that it's more the recording rather than the equipment that gives you the separation and sound stage. I wondered why all sound engineers didn't record in audiophile quality to make it sound really good...... Then it hit me.... it isn't us the audiophiles who buy the most music.... it's the kids with not so good sounding equipment so they realize they don't need to record for quality. Another possible reason is to cover up the singing quality of quite a few famous singers who really don't sing that well so mediocre recording helps cover that up. When a famous singer has the backup singers singing along with them on most of their recordings, you know that is one.

@feldmen4 , I was totally  unaware of Sharon.  I guess I'll have to order a copy.  I discovered the Junkies rather late (right after Natural Born Killers came out on VHS) and then I bought everything I could find by the CJ.  Which at that time ended at Crescent Sun Pale Moon.  at that time there was one song on Caution Horses that really really got me--Sun Comes Up It's  Tuesday Morning, but the reast of the CD was never my favorite.  At that time Black Eyed Man was always on my playlist when ever I fired my system up.  Southern Rain was like my reference song when I was auditioning new equipment.

As far as WOEN and Trinity, the SACDs are sublime.  They are works of art.

Anyway, thanks for the heads up on Sharon.  It is now on my list, and it is a short list.

As long as you take a passive approach to music reproduction through your system, then yes. You are stuck with the sound quality baked into the source. My approach to music listening is more reactive, so I do what I can to compensate for poor productions of great performances by expanding the dynamic range of overly compressed material, adding room tone back into overly dry recordings, restoring the bottom octave of commercial releases that have had it whacked out to "fit" the medium, etc.

No, all this manipulation doesn't make a crummy recording sound as great as a truly well-produced release, but it does improve my enjoyment of it, and that's my goal. Before I start catching a ration of shite about altering the musician's intent, let me remind everyone that most release approvals are phoned in, so the musicians rarely have any idea of how the end product actually sounds.

@asvjerry 

Interesting about AI influence on recordings.  is another aspect of AI going to be how it will influence Recording sessions? Since no one really understands AI, probably too early to know but no doubt it will become more common with what we listen to in addition to all the musical aspects of it, and now it's the Recording studio influence.

Maybe AI Will help design better speaker crossovers. And DSP Control of Systems.  Currently I can't stand DSP interfaces being so difficult to work with.

I’m basically done with having put together my system. At this point, I buy the best quality recordings that I can find, and try not to worry about the gear anymore.

I always find it odd that there are so many poor classic rock recordings from the 60’s through the 90’s but so many great jazz recordings from the 40’s through the 60’s. It’s like recording quality got worse as technology got better. 

H%$! Yes. Whenever I've advised a newb regarding equipment, I always begin with that issue. Nothing they can do with that. Plan to set things up for the good recordings. Just live with the rest if you like the music. 

Waiting for AI to be turned loose into those mixes.... ;)

AI will be the true savior for a "music first" audiophile. I suppose it wouldn’t matter for the gearheads who have 3 audiophile recordings of lousy artists on repeat all year. In consideration of how lousy some mastering technicians are and the sheer volume of trash recordings out there (did too many great artists so wrong)...these guys need to be FIRED as soon as it’s feasible.

@searchingforthesound ....Ever since I ’graduated’ from Treble+Bass, to adding Loudness and later Midrange, what I heard in the spaces I’ve occupied has only tended to improve as my ’tempered’ use of eq became more....’broadened’.

The advent of DSP, even when done manually, was a Great Leap Forward in dealing with random rooms with porschitt acoustics...when it went to more (11>31) channels of fq to being able to push 100 and more,....

...which....finds you spending over an hour over a 3.5 minute snip.....'Just 'cuz it annoys you.....'

Pick your depth.....no holding your breath..... ;)

@emergingsoul is where I see AI getting into the ’mix’, as it was and became.

Obviously, a long learning curve awaits, but AIs’ are being a surprise on many levels; something us ’amateurs’ really haven’t grasped yet.

Generational Programming is already in progress for AI: One ’teaches others’, who ’teach others’....’scaling’ in that sense...

...on about the 4th >5th generation....’they’ Forget ’things’....!?

"I can do that all by myself, Thanx HAL....(*sotto voce* "...’springhead, fu2....")"

I look forward to ’discussions’ with my audio and general purpose ’puters.....

’Pulling the plug’ Is Not a Threat anymore....

@ibmjunkman  Good One 🤣

As for AI entering the picture, I was very interested in George Martin's son using AI to dissemble and then re-mix the Revolver LP.  I assume if the time, money and interest were there, they could take a four channel recording and re mix it using a 32 or 64 track console and create a whole new and improved version of some classic LPs?  Will this be the next frontier of re-mining the archives?  Will it be done in stages?  First the 16 track version on 180 gram vinyl for $125, followed shortly by the 32 track version for $170 and so on and so on........    The list is endless of recordings that could be new and improved.