Let the best be your guide
All of us have had to come to grips with bad sounding recordings. They can be disabling and make you question your whole system. The trick is to accept them for what they are and not to generalize. I try to listen for the music and skim over the imperfections. When confronted with a clinker, to save my sanity, I play a recording i know to be superior sounding. That restores my faith in the system and brings me back to reality.
It’s a conundrum in that poor recordings exist, and the better systems reveal all the warts. For example the CD transfers of Wilhelm Kempff stereo recordings of Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann are barely listenable on my two channel system (and the one lp I have isn’t much better bud adds the joy of surface noise). When I really want to hear them I use my mid fi systems which are more “forgiving “. DG should remaster these to see if they are sonically salvageable |
Life is too short, I don’t waste my time listening to bad recordings wishing they would sound better. There is a whole world of music out there with Tidal and Qobuz to choose from and discover new talent and genres. I also have many vinyls from the 60’s and up and listen often to the ones that are pleasant to my ears. I invested in a nice amount of Blue Note, Tone Poet, High Fidelity, UHQR etc… and I m good with my analogue .My listening sessions are never short and I enjoy every minute of it. |
@rvpiano It looks like our brains are wired the same way. I do exactly as you describe. Many of my favorite recordings are from decades ago when the technology was quite primitive or later recordings done by independent artists who had a low budget or wanted a "low fi" sound. I love these records and CDs but after listening to one or two I find that I need to put on something that sounds really good. It's like driving my Charger R/T around town for a while, never getting over 35 mph, and needing to get on the freeway and floor it just to make sure that the kick is still there. |
You wonder how these crappy sounding recordings get made. Presumably there are sound engineers who know what they’re doing. Yet some recordings are released with a lack of bass, or shrillness or some other defect. How does it happen? Are they aiming for the lo fi market or what? Hi resolving sets bring out all the flaws. I have a Loki equalizer which I took out of my system because there were getting to be too many wires. Maybe I shouldn’t have. |
