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mystery muffled mids

I have a year-old setup I enjoy very much. B&W D3 805s and Hegel H590. Sound is really great. Imagining fantastic. every second with it is pleasure until I try to play classic rock. Anything by Led Zeppelin sounds like someone has smushed the sound and it lost the mid range, imagining disappears. I tried playing louder but live with too many people around to be able to do that constantly. And it did not improve anything noticably. 
I normally stream from Tidal via Audirvana. Anything by Bill Frisell, for instance, sounds phenomenal. You feel you can grab the instrument from the air. I mention this since he uses similar instruments to Zeppelin. Bowie's stuff sounds awful, as does Queen. I know they should sound better. Kind of Blue is fantastic. Gaucho, Sea Change, Elephunk, Wildfloflowers, Know what I mean? -- all great. To a friend, I said that this means bad recordings sound bad. The friend said that's not it. what do you say? How can I improve the sound? thank you in advance.
petar3
mofojo
2,311 posts
 
@petar3,

I meant no disrespect with my comment. It was just based on a lot of classic rock is pretty midrange centric. Not a lot of lows or high highs so if there is a dip in that range I was thinking it may sound a little muted. To be honest though I’ve only ever gotten Zepplin to sound descent, not great. 
audioguy85's avatar
audioguy85
2,026 posts
 
Honestly even with the better records pressing of zep 1, not all of the songs sound that great! Some do, but not all. Communication breakdown is muffled imo. I would certainly NOT call any zeppelin album, no matter what pressing, audiophile material. Tom speakes of an unreal guitar solo on comm breakdown, I think it sounds meh....also, it is not much of a solo in my opinion, maybe lasts 12 seconds....to be quite honest, I think any of zeps acoustical numbers sound far better...more open and less congestion. Like the op, I have records that blow zep away as far as how they sound on my current set up.
murphythecat
181 posts
 
any rock with a 2 way using a single 6.5" woofer always sounds bad. it just cannot move enough air.
petg60
1,486 posts
 
@petar3,I think that one answer is to try streaming from another source. Second one would be to try the vinyl and cd versions. Third would be the different versions of both. Somewhere there should be the ones you are looking for. Some search is required but the effort is a worthwhile attempt.
Not all rock bands in the classic period had the best in sound quality, you can discover this even having the original releases, and also there was a good amount of variation in sound quality even though some artists shared the same label. I am not including pressing variations in vinyl to save space.
Better Records as MC suggests, maybe.
But the music and the atmosphere should be right there. Coming back to artists you mentioned, i never found a thin Deep Purple recording (up to Gillan) but only a German compilation done from digital.
And i never found a good Queen II, only respectable on some songs in the original UK release. Sabbath was good to very good (Vertigo). Bowie good to very good (RCA Victor). But i have some Bowie Japanese pressings that are excellent. So it is not that everything will sound perfect but at some point being able to see what the performers are doing and how all this makes a wonderful musical sense.
I do not find generally Led Zep recordings bad, some on the contrary are excellent, but if you like check the BBC sessions for something better of their early period.

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