Everything recorded has a defined audience, a place it is intended to sell and be heard. If the intended market is car FM radio or earbuds, you as th4e engineer and producer make it to sound as good as you can on those playback methods. The effort to target specific markets or groups of people and the systems they most often use is usually the reason it does NOT sound good on your expensive stereo system.
Contrary to modern belief, music is NOT created to hit some universal sound quality standard. There are no scientists running around checking things or somewhere you have to send your record for approval.
Katy Perry "Teenage Dream" (2012) was meant for kids listening on earbuds or the car, and it does sound great there. On your 150K stereo system at home not so much. You are now hearing what was done to make it sound good on $10 earbuds and FM radio. They have to boost the bass, boost the treble, compress the crap out of it so its louder than other songs, all which sounds positively awful at high resolution. This is a bit of over simplification, but you get the idea. An audiophile might say that Katy Perry record is awful, but Id say it did exactly what it was supposed to do- got enormous airplay and sold like hotcakes to kids on their ipods. An Audiophile would never have been the buyer of that record even IF it sounded amazing.
So I think blanket statements like "modern recordings are awful" is a complete myth. Recording is better now than it has ever been and the analog and digital technology applied is WAY ahead of where we were in the 80s or 90s. While it might be true there are some bad recordings, the recordings intended for listeners like me- how about Hiromi "Firefly"- are amazing records! That record was not possible 20 years ago. I think this "awful recording" comment points out that that recording was intended for someone other than you.
Brad
Contrary to modern belief, music is NOT created to hit some universal sound quality standard. There are no scientists running around checking things or somewhere you have to send your record for approval.
Katy Perry "Teenage Dream" (2012) was meant for kids listening on earbuds or the car, and it does sound great there. On your 150K stereo system at home not so much. You are now hearing what was done to make it sound good on $10 earbuds and FM radio. They have to boost the bass, boost the treble, compress the crap out of it so its louder than other songs, all which sounds positively awful at high resolution. This is a bit of over simplification, but you get the idea. An audiophile might say that Katy Perry record is awful, but Id say it did exactly what it was supposed to do- got enormous airplay and sold like hotcakes to kids on their ipods. An Audiophile would never have been the buyer of that record even IF it sounded amazing.
So I think blanket statements like "modern recordings are awful" is a complete myth. Recording is better now than it has ever been and the analog and digital technology applied is WAY ahead of where we were in the 80s or 90s. While it might be true there are some bad recordings, the recordings intended for listeners like me- how about Hiromi "Firefly"- are amazing records! That record was not possible 20 years ago. I think this "awful recording" comment points out that that recording was intended for someone other than you.
Brad