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Great Recordings, Sonically Speaking - and Why.

I think many of us would accept that artists such as Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, and Dire Straits have consistently put out music that was at least originally recorded to a high technical standard. [I'm not too sure what the loudness wars may have done to subsequent reissues, but even so, the tone and timbre thankfully tends to remain intact.]

However there must be plenty of lesser known recordings out there that could be said to be of a high sonic standard.

One such recording that I like to put on in the background whilst I'm doing other things is a piano recording that features wonderfully lush timbre and some delightful tunes.

This one is The Disney Piano Collection by Hirohashi Makiko and to me it makes a lot of other piano recordings sound a little washed out.
cd318
dekay's avatar
dekay
5,555 posts
 
Couple of "live-well recorded" folky CD’s...

"Follow That Road: Highlights of the Second Annual Martha’s Vineyard Singer / Songwriter’ Retreat Held at the Wintertide Coffeehouse"

"Christine Lavin Presents: Big Times in a Small Town"

I’ll probably play one of them today before I move on to Al Green and Marvin Gaye.

Edit:  Why?  Because they sound like you are there sitting in the audience/coffee shop.  

DeKay
skoczylas's avatar
skoczylas
240 posts
 
Two things for me: 
- can hear the tamber of the instruments
- can hear the room or hall in the recording. So you get the ambience of where it was played. 
There are scratchy and imperfect recordings that I turn to time and time again bc they have those two qualities. Many audiophile recordings are technically better but bring no joy. 
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Tamber is a girl’s name. I found a baby name website claims it means music pitch. Whatever. The word you were probably looking for is timbre. Pronouced timber, timbre is the word for the particular harmonic overtone structure of different instruments.

Since timbre is a structure made up of different frequencies, the relative volume between which is the pattern, then it should be clear that dynamic compression does indeed affect timbre. If you compress the loud bits relative to the soft bits, that is exactly what harmonic structure is, and so this too is ruined by compression.


thecarpathian's avatar
thecarpathian
4,361 posts
 
Actually, the musical timbre we speak of on here is in fact often pronounced ’tam’ber. 
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,788 posts
 
Yes @thecarpathian, and correctly so. It is also often mis-pronounced tim-ber by the musically uneducated (no offense intended) . Timber! is what you yell when a tree has been felled. ;-)
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