2. amps-preamps
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Isn't it really about quality of recording?

Are most of us just chasing our tails?

I mean you listen to a variety of recordings and some sound a lot better than others. Your system has limited impact on how good recordings can be. I am awestruck how some music sounds and clearly my system has nothing to do with it, it all occurred when the music was produced.

We talk about soundstage and imaging and I am not sure all the effort and money put toward a better system can really do that much for most of what we listen to because the quality is lesser than other recordings.

You can walk into a room and hear something that really sounds good and you say wow what an amazing System you have but no!!! It's the recording dummy not the system most of the time. Things don't sound so good it's probably the recording.

The dealers don't wanna talk about Recording quality no one seems to want to talk about it and why is this? Because there's no money to be made here that's why.

 

jumia
ghdprentice
7,048 posts
 

Let’s see, I would say 98% system and up to 2% recording. Depends on how you look at it, 99% makes sense to me… as a great system can make bad recordings sound better. About 85% of recordings are average, 10% great, and 5% real stinkers. In the fifty years I have been pursuing high end audio my system an the playback of, for instance the anlbums I bought in the ‘70s, have sounded better and better, by an order of magnitude.

 

If you hold your system at one level, then the difference in recording becomes the major factor.

russ69's avatar
russ69
3,520 posts
 

The idea is to get your system sounding it's best for the music you like to listen to. 

Post removed 
sns
3,265 posts
 

Certainly there is wide variation in recording quality, but IME system quality has great impact on all recording qualities. A great/good system can't make poor quality recordings sound good, but it can make a much larger variety of recordings sound better than with lesser system.

 

I have over 2500 cd rips, these are recordings I've owned in some cases, well over thirty years. Point is I've heard these recordings over many years with different systems, some portion of these recordings I thought unlistenable with prior systems. With streaming system improvements I've made over recent years, many of these recordings I thought dead  have been brought back to life. For instance, just the other night I listened to Deep Purple's, Shades, 1968-1998 4 cd box set from 1999 for first time in a long time. I long considered these recordings pretty unlistenable, small sound stage, extreme panning, pretty poor timbre, compressed dynamics. Well I chose 1st cd, so early 1968-69 stuff, what  a revelation over prior listens, the added resolutions/transparency of present system vs. priors made this rather mediocre recording come alive in listening room. Sure the inherent limitations of recording remained, but I was now fully engaged where this couldn't happen prior. And this exact thing has been replicated many times over past few years, new life to formerly thought dead recordings.

 

Bottom line for me is as system improves so should estimations of recording quality. A good/great system should be able to engage you with a wider variety of recording quality than lesser systems.

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