Why Do Some Recordings Sound Great and Others Dead?

I agree it’s a great song, so it’s either Radio Paradise or my system that is the weak point.

’’When I Was Older’ by Billie Eilish is a delicate female vocal that sounds great on what I have.  I’ll keep exploring solutions and/or skip songs that don’t sound well.

It’s a common symptom of narrow, but tall peaks in the mid-bass or bass. Clipping them with an EQ/DSP is often the answer.

The reason it affects some recordings but not others is because the peaks are pretty narrow, so many recordings don't trigger the bass node.

While you CAN fix this with a variety of ways, like moving a sub, speakers, bass traps and moving your listening location, these particular symptoms are easy to deal with via DSP. 

Of course, other methods may give overall a better, broader solution.

One more thought, as an experiment you might try removing your DAC from the chain and let the Node do everything to see if you still hear significant differences between songs. 

@erik_squires  Thanks for your suggestion!  I’m not surprised that my room has difficult ’issues’. I would have thought that they would manifest themselves with all recordings rather than select ones.  I’m not very experienced in audio, and not very good at A:B comparisons.  I have 2 sealed subs, a 15in Hsu and a 12in Paradigm.  Generally I think my sub-bass is excellent.  I have them turned down so I don’t have too much of it.  I looked a a minidsp ddrc24, and was put off by what appears to be a very complex process to implement it.  Maybe I’ll look into that or something with Dirac.

I have them turned down so I don’t have too much of it.

This is exactly part of the syndrome!! 🤣

When you clip the peaks, the subs will sound too low and you will want to bring them up in level but now they’ll sound super smooth and natural.

This article I wrote will help you.  It is more about fixing bass problems than avoiding a sub, so if you read through the tech parts you'll know what to do.