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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???
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roberjerman
4,319 posts
 
Pop/rock has always been compromised! Classical and jazz have fared much better soundwise!
n80
2,116 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. 
jtcf's avatar
jtcf
1,617 posts
 
Some of us have systems that are very revealing of not so good recordings.Some of us have sensitive hearing or (me) hyperacusis(spelling?) so that overblown frequencies make us cringe.For me I can enjoy certain music on lower resolution devices but never on my rig at home"shudder!"
n80
2,116 posts
 
@gawdbless : I should have been more specific. Both the Tedeschi Trucks and Gary Clark, Jr. albums I was referring to are studio albums. Their DR has been tested and in some cases by more than one person. DR is terrible.

As far as Tom Petty, I was only referring to the CD of "The Best of Everything". But that was just based on reviews. DR testing has not been reported on the CD.

I will also say that compressed DR does not seem to bother some people, even people who seem to be picky about lots of other SQ nuances. It baffles me how though. When DR is compressed nothing in the component chain can bring it back. And when the tonal range is compressed there is ’less’ to hear in terms of tonal variation.

There are some very very experienced people here who also suggest that by room and system tweaking a low DR recording can be made to sound good. I don’t have the experience or knowledge to refute that and none of us has any basis for questioning someone else’s ears but I still don’t see how you can significantly improve something that simply is not there.
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