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Quality of recording while evaluating speakers

Melody Gardot, Diana Krall, and others.

The above recordings are done so well they sound absolutely Great in most systems. And then there are recordings that are not as open and have trouble filling the room enjoyably and yet the melodies are very good and it's unfortunate they didn't do a better good job in the recording studio.

So how do you evaluate a speaker other than to be familiar with a recording on how it sounds in your system versus how it sounds in another system.  Basically we are at the mercy of Recording quality when we listen to our systems.

Even more painful is home theater streaming when the music is wonderful but the quality sucks and once in a while it sounds really good but this can be rare which is sad.

So speaker manufacturers have to deal with these issues and we put up with poor recordings and how does this factor into your decisions when evaluating new speakers?

So we end up buying really nice speakers knowing that so much of what we will eventually listen to Will not have been recorded very well making things a bit frustrating at times.  There's only so much that can be done to make things sound better given these limitations. So how does one cope with all this?

 

emergingsoul
zlone
648 posts
 

@ghdprentice has reached the pinnacle of this hobby, having built a system that plays pure music. I just hit a new plateau this year turning over the majority of my system and moving to a new room. I am getting closer, but I still have some work to do to reach that level. All that said, I am not ashamed to admit I like listening to my system, rather than music, just because I am a gearhead. One day the system will disappear, and it will just be music. 

yesiam_a_pirate's avatar
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yesiam_a_pirate
190 posts
 

Speaking of lousy recordings I think Thriller is amongst the worst.  Sad, too as it’s a record that gets the girls dancing.  

howaanders8's avatar
howaanders8
22 posts
 

Shaboozey!

aewarren
643 posts
 

@czarivey 

In the opposing camp are the people who spend thousands of dollars on audio equipment to listen to crap. There is no right or wrong, we were all blessed with different tastes.

bipod72
134 posts
 

I listen to a wide variety of music and in different media (streaming, CD, vinyl) all the time. I happen to own Calexico's latest release on vinyl and high-quality digital format. The two iterations sound vastly different on my system. The streaming version via Spotify sounds better than the vinyl! Yet the high-quality digital copy on my HD sounds the best whether listening via speakers or my headphones. I'm a music-first audiophile so for me it's really about having a great-sounding copy but also not fretting about having multiple copies in the search for the best. My wife wouldn't understand why I would need 4 copies of DSOTM or Astral Weeks. I find my vinyl copies of certain recordings sound better than the streaming/digital versions and vice versa for other recordings. At the end of the day, I want to enjoy my music and not stress myself out about it. 

I plan to upgrade my speakers later this fall and will try and not let myself fall into the trap of searching for newer/"better" copies of my favorite albums. The step up in my speakers will be such that my entire collection should sound much better but won't change at all during headphone listening sessions.

I'd say find a handful of your favorite recordings and do some listening tests with headphones and the speakers you want to evaluate vs the speakers you have. The headphones can act as a neutral control session and give you a listening base to reference when evaluating the new speaker choice.

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