Beware poor sounding media

I think my two primary examples for truly bad recordings are Josh Groban (Self Titled) and Josh Groban Closer. A friend of mine messaged me within the last couple of weeks after an attempt to listen to one of these CDs and lamenting the fact that it wasn’t possible to enjoy the music.

What a pleasure it is though if you can ignore the inferior sonics and get to the performance!  
Even with bad recordings, some of the quality of your system can shine through if you let it.

One example I can give is a 1964 recording of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring by Herbert Von Karajan. The recorded sound is not horrible, but primitive by today’s standards. It has none of the extreme dynamic range of modern recordings of this piece (some recordings from this period do, but not this one.) Yet, the impact is stunning by virtue of the extraordinary interpretation by Von Karajan.  You get swept away by his vision and forget there are other versions that may sonically be much more impressive.

All systems are only as good as their weakest link which more often than not is the source material. One of streamings limitations, despite the claimed hi-rez format, is there is no way trace the source material or the remastering engineer. So 1 advantage of vinyl & CDs is that with a little work you can find out if the recording is sourced from the original master and who is responsible for the remastering. So if you have an originally sourced hard media that is remastered by Steve Hoffman, Bernie Grundman, the late Doug Sax, Bob Clearmountain, or Bob Ludwig. The end result should better than a random CD or LP

I’m new to streaming on Qobuz with my Innuos Zenith Mark II which I’m really enjoyed for it’s ease of use & vast library to choose from. A lot of it sounds good to very good, dynamic, quiet, clean & detailed. Fun!

That all said, when an album is well done, mastered by on e of those guys mentioned & a few others, & in good shape , it can sound excellent! I’ve recently compared the two mediums head to head with same cuts, played within a few seconds of each other. It’s surprisingly close & digital reproduction has come a long way. The bass & lower midrange weight from my analog set up is better, richer, fuller & more enjoyable to me. I’ve have a 20 year old Basis 2500 / Vector 4 arm, new Hana ML cartridge & Art Audio Vinyl one phono amp. Amazing that an over 100 year old technology ( in concept - not in execution  of course) still sounds so good.