Quality of modern recordings

T.H.E. Droid · February 5, 2012

Then Napster and the internet hit and suddenly, I could have any song / album / artist I could possibly think of completely free of charge without leaving my house. ....I love MP3's for what they are. .

That kind of sums up what I've always suspected about the popularity of MP3's. They became popular because it is so easy to steal music, and lower quality is an acceptible compromise for the "something for nothing" crowd. It is sad when people who should know better actually seem to be proud of being thieves.

Bubo · February 5, 2012

Perhaps you need to offer private music appreciation lessons?

Maybe a classic?

For the middle of the day;......... Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries............

The ............. Classical version instrumental

The .................Movie version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGBDWER-wUI&feature=fvst

And ..................the now classic conslusion to the lesson!!!!

For the encore performance......maybe a sing along?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aKAH_t0aXA

................ will keep the neighbors guessing []

"This woman was 26 and a grad student. Smoking hot red head, I was willing to learn to appreciate cheapo earbuds, but her I-pod listening husband wasn't having it."

Ah the smoking hot redhead syndrome ..... that can make RAP sound great through earbuds.....LOL Funny you mention that as we had company over last night, and the "smoking hot redhead" was GUSHING over my main system .....and when I pulled out the vinyl!!!!...... Well what can I say.....MY WIFE WOULD HAVE NONE OF IT. *** wives, spoil all of your fun! LOL

Bubo · February 5, 2012

Are the consumers able to differentiate between "good and bad" peaches?

At what cost are good peaches available in the market and are bad peaches an acceptable substitute?

Is a good peach a good peach if you have no economic way to consume it?

Was SONY Beta better?

SACD players can now be had for $150, this was not always the case.

Are SACD recordings priced the same as CDs?

IMHO the entire CD format needs to go out the window and be replaced with DVD for everyting. I would love 2 ch DTS

This is kind of a beginner question but, how much of this has to do with the actual recording of the music (while in the studio or live) and the mastering process?

I don't know, but I suspect that the original recordings are fine, and HD, and have whatever dynamics the artists invested them with. Then, in the stage we used to call "sweetening," which might now be called "****ing over" I think they compress the dynamic range, transfer the now flattened music at the highest possible recording level, and somewhere in the process reduce the detail and the warmth, etc. Then, if we are thinking of CDs, they transfer it to a 16 bit medium which is may be audibly worse than all of the previous media in the chain.

I guess what I was hoping for was some kind of audiophile version -- they could make hybrid disks with the SACD layer having the uncompressed version, and the CD layer being as squished up, loud, and harsh as they want it to be. Wouldn't this let them cater to two different kinds of consumers at once, having their cake and eating it too?

Here is where Adam Smith's market check on quality fails in the modern world. If the market effectively demanded high quality -- they way people used to taste, say, peaches at a fruit stand, buying them only if they were tasty -- that would be the quality check. But there is only one piece of fruit being offered -- one CD containing a certain performance of a certain group of artists -- or, perhaps more accurately, most of the fruit is bad and if you want a certain song, there is usually no choice, therefore no market check, and the version being offered is not usually exactly a peach.

I don't think it's going to change until someone comes up with a way to make the higher fidelity recording option more profitable.

As a consumer, the only way I know how to do that is to intentionally go out of my way to support the artists that do a good job - and intentionally not buy the artists that don't take control over it.

garyrc · February 5, 2012

I bet for the music she listens to, it sounds the same on a $30K stereo or cheapo ear buds, it was conceived, composed, played and mastered for $2 ear buds

One thing that confuses the issue is that ear buds -- or practically
any headphones -- give the music an exaggerated spatiality that may
partially mask the lack of other qualities .... but soon you begin to
notice the poor reproduction of texture, timbre, dynamics, plausibility
of instruments, front to back depth, etc. of I-phone/ear bud sound,
compared to a moderately priced sound system in a good room. The "good
room" factor is important because many ear bud fans do not have a
good room to listen in -- it's either a bedroom in a shared apartment or in the
house of parents (probably too small and often too cubic), or a living
room in which decor trumps audio. No wonder ear buds sound good to
them. But, as I said elsewhere, comparing MP3 to CD or SACD of the same recording at the local audio store often enlightens them.

IMO,
for music on disks, the long term solution is to give the consumer a
choice by issuing hybrids (which might cost the manufacturer a dollar
more, therefore might or might not boost the msrp by that much) with the
CD layer to the current low dynamic range, low detail standard, and the
SACD layer the way the artists played it (and the artists would include
the mixer who would not be bound by the current market practices). The
music people could emulate the movie people, who, I think starting with
Disney, started packaging a DVD with a Blu-ray, which was brilliant
marketing, IMO, because people feel free to go ahead and buy the movie,
knowing that it won't be obsolete when they finally buy a Blu-ray
player. Speaking of players, several mid priced "Universal Players"
will now play SACD, as well as HDCD, CD, Blu-ray, and DVD and send them
out through HDMI.

Bubo · February 5, 2012

Top 10 iTunes songs in the USA: Sexy and I know it on a $30K stereo or ear buds...............probably ear buds.

DrWho · February 7, 2012

One thing that confuses the issue is that ear buds -- or practically
any headphones -- give the music an exaggerated spatiality that may
partially mask the lack of other qualities .... but soon you begin to
notice the poor reproduction of texture, timbre, dynamics, plausibility
of instruments, front to back depth, etc. of I-phone/ear bud sound,
compared to a moderately priced sound system in a good room. The "good
room" factor is important because many ear bud fans do not have a
good room to listen in -- it's either a bedroom in a shared apartment or in the
house of parents (probably too small and often too cubic), or a living
room in which decor trumps audio. No wonder ear buds sound good to
them. But, as I said elsewhere, comparing MP3 to CD or SACD of the same recording at the local audio store often enlightens them.

Just curious, what headphones / ear-buds are you referring to? We talking about the free Apple Ear Buds that come with the iPod, or $500 Shure In-Ears, and other studio grade headphones also costing more than $600?

It's one thing to prefer one or the other, but there are some things that in-ears / headphones can certainly do better. Studios all over the world always have their favorite flavor of headphone readily available.

cornfedksboy · February 8, 2012

I think poorly recorded music sells so well because so much music is bought by the 16-26 year old crowd. These folks don't have a lot money or experience with quality. They want something, but they can't buy it unless it's cheap! OTOH, this same crowd (males anyway) will pay $60.00 for an X-Box game with cinema like reproduction, so there is certainly a market for high quality if you can advertise it properly.

Now if Apple put out an iPod with a serious DAC and some good headphones, this same crowd MIGHT just demand true Hi-Fi recordings.

Quiet_Hollow · February 8, 2012

Now if Apple put out an iPod with a serious DAC and some good headphones, this same crowd MIGHT just demand true Hi-Fi recordings.

It's out there, but Apple didn't make it and you didn't hear about it.

See: SanDisk Sansa Clip

Didn't take long for the FLAC and WAV crowd to pounce all over this little gem.[8]

garyrc · February 8, 2012

Just curious, what headphones / ear-buds are you referring to? We talking about the free Apple Ear Buds that come with the iPod, or $500 Shure In-Ears, and other studio grade headphones also costing more than $600?

It's one thing to prefer one or the other, but there are some things that in-ears / headphones can certainly do better. Studios all over the world always have their favorite flavor of headphone readily available.

I was not attacking sudio grade in-ear transducers[] --- indeed, I have not heard them. I was referring to the cheap ear-buds like those that come with the iPod, and those that are for sale laminated to a piece of cardboard. The problem is that any ear-buds I have heard -- however cheap they may be -- produce a sense of spatiality that may seduce users into thinking they are high in fidelity. Just one example: someone urged me to hear a choral work on her iPod. I did. It was very spatial, which is something I would want in a large choral work. After a few seconds (or less) I noticed a lack of some kinds of detail, texture, tonal plausibility, and I think I heard a little clipping. It might or might not have sounded better than a typical inexpensive sound system in the average teen-ager or young college student's acoustically questionable bedroom, car, or living room. Later (I know - the fallibility of acoustical memory!) a CD of it certainly sounded better on our sound system in our music room in every way except spatiality. In general, I think people may grow addicted to the spatiality of ear-buds, and not care if they are missing the dynamics, plausible tonality of the instruments, etc. .... so ... bad recordings may not bother many ear-bud users.

As to "good" (expensive) ear-buds, I have no doubt they can perform well. I was only bringing up ear-buds to say that the spatiality of even the cheap ones may make inferior media sound tolerable. And, as PWK said, [something like] "ears can become habituated to false reproduction." Back when I was recording ('70s, 80s), we sometimes checked the sound through a good pair of regular headphones[Koss, Senheiser, etc.] and it often sounded great, with more spatiality than our JBLs, Altecs, etc. could provide in either a control room, or in a larger room. More spatiality, but still a little strange, but hyper clear with a different kind of detail than that from loudspeakers in a room, and without some intangible authority of good loudspeakers. Our headphones then were certainly better than cheap ear-buds now, and would have alerted us to a recording being bad.

I wonder if students who play in a high school or college orchestra approve of MP3, etc. as much as those who don't. It was in such orchestras that I learned what live sound from acoustical instruments sounds like. BTW, before the MP3 era, we informally polled the members of one of our orchestras as to their preference in speakers. String players liked Bozak & other cone speakers, while horn (especially trumpet) players, and percussionists liked JBL and Klipsch. Only one palyer (clarinet?) preferred acoustical suspension speakers

Quiet_Hollow · February 8, 2012

The problem is that any ear-buds I have heard -- however cheap they may be -- produce a sense of spatiality that may seduce users into thinking they are high in fidelity.

This "spatial effect" is the near perfect phase response of a true point source. Easily accomplished with a headphone diaphragm...not so much with a multi-element speaker.

The stock iPod ear bud headphones suck...in every way possible. An $8 pair of MDR-E828LP will take them to the cleaners.

Very good ear buds don't have to be expensive. I'd pit a $20 pair of MDR-AS40EX or Image S2 against the top tier models any day.

garyrc · July 14, 2012

Are the consumers able to differentiate between "good and bad" peaches?

At what cost are good peaches available in the market and are bad peaches an acceptable substitute?

Is a good peach a good peach if you have no economic way to consume it?

My responses:

1. Yes, most people with Klipsch or other good systems can

2. In Adam Smith's fruit bin, the bad and good peaches were equal in price, unless the vendor marked down the bad ones to move them. The cost of SACD hybrids and CDs overlap considerably, with some nice cheap ones on Amazon, etc. In addition, I think most audiophiles would be willing to pay $1 - $2 more, if most of their SACDs sound better or at least more spacious. But I think the industry would be better off -- and make more money in the long run -- by keeping the price the same for both formats. Now that people are buying Blu-ray players to replace their DVD players when they break (often in record time), and many Blu-ray players will play SACD through HDMI, I think those people would buy SACD hybrids, particularly if they were at least three channel, if consumers were just informed of the option (via advertizing). People who haven't upgraded their players should buy SACD/CD hybrids, then enjoy the SACD sound (and multichannel effects, if present) LATER. I did, and with the same speakers, room, and power amps (with only the pre/pro and the player replaced), most of these hybrids sound better, and even the old re-issues have an independent center channel, which sometimes sounds better than a derived one. New recordings, of course, are often either 5.0 or 5.1. I would take the chance on replacing most classical or modern orchestral CDs with SACD whenever they are offered. Bad peaches are sometimes an acceptable substitute, but you will never know unless you hear an SACD version.

3) See above.

Marvel · July 14, 2012

Some recordings are excellent and some suck. Some of the old Mowtown recordings, the singer has more range than the recording equipment.

Considering when Motown music was recorded, this is blatantly false. Even earlier equipment was techinically better than the range than any singer. Nice try though...

They usually had excellent equipment. Having been around studios at the time, I know this to be true.

Bruce

Bubo · July 15, 2012

Bruce,

If as you say is true, what happens when the singers clip out on the upper range?

Over compression?

artto · July 15, 2012

If you want to blame anyone for the abundance of MP3 crap out there take it out on Steve Jobs ~ he provided the path. And the path was determined by what the marketplace wants. And the reality is that most of the market place would rather have thousands of highly compressed lower resolution songs available on their portable MP3 players or cell phones than worry about how much quality they can extract from a recording on their $150 "stereo system" they bought at WalMart. And if you think MP3 are crap, take a listen to mass produced cassette tapes of decades past or the good ol' 45rpm singles with wood slivers and metal shavings or other debris that could be found in the cheapest, most contaminated plastic they could find.

As long as some kind of original high resolution format is available that was used for the original recording I'm fine with anyone listening to whatever crap they want. And let's face it, even a lowly MP3 is major leap in quality from the scratchy old 45's or noisy cassette tapes of yesteryear. On the other hand if you think those sound better, more power to ya!!

(and I'm not saying that the old audio cassette tapes can't sound good ~ they can ~ but that is generally not true of the mass produced stuff)

tube fanatic · July 15, 2012

And if you think MP3 are crap, take a listen to mass produced cassette tapes of decades past or the good ol' 45rpm singles with wood slivers and metal shavings or other debris that could be found in the cheapest, most contaminated plastic they could find.

As long as some kind of original high resolution format is available that was used for the original recording I'm fine with anyone listening to whatever crap they want. And let's face it, even a lowly MP3 is major leap in quality from the scratchy old 45's or noisy cassette tapes of yesteryear. On the other hand if you think those sound better, more power to ya!!

(and I'm not saying that the old audio cassette tapes can't sound good ~ they can ~ but that is generally not true of the mass produced stuff)

This is an interesting point. There's a guy in town for whom I built a pair of mono SEPs a number of years ago to use with his Cornwalls and Wadia CD player. His system is one of the finest sounding that I've ever heard (in part because we voiced the amps in his system/room), and this guy's ears are so attuned to sound quality that I've been giving him prototype amps to audition and critique ever since. He just never seems to be wrong and can pick out extremely subtle variations in amp characteristics better than I can myself. In spite of this he prefers listening to some recordings of older music like Ella Fitzgerald, and lots of the rock oldies, on his boombox because it just does something that he can't attain in his big system. He, who is never at a loss for descriptive words about sound quality, can't define why! And he also asked me to find him an old school style record player on which to play his 45s (the one he had took a powerline spike and got fried) because he really enjoys listening to the pops/clicks/distortion and so on. I can't explain this!

Marvel · July 15, 2012

the good ol' 45rpm singles with wood slivers and metal shavings or other debris that could be found in the cheapest, most contaminated plastic they could find.

My LP of Heartsfield had a piece of paper melted in one of the cuts. Really annoyed me since I really liked the album.

Bruce

oldtimer · July 15, 2012

Define modern.

Marvel · July 15, 2012

Bruce,

If as you say is true, what happens when the singers clip out on the upper range?

Over compression?

It sure wasn't a lmitation with the equipment. Maybe from an engineering standpoint. Could very well be different pressings you heard, too.

As a side story... I used to record at a small studio in South Pekin, Illinois. The owner was a dealer of equipment to studios. He had some Motown folks come to his studios to check out some of his gear (at the time, it was a 16 track MCI deck). He told me the playback tapes were recorded so hot that the meter needles stayed pinned, but the audio was incredibly clean and undistorted.. For one thing, that's something you could do with tape that you can't do with digital.

Back to the regularly scheduled programming...

Bruce

DrWho · July 15, 2012

If you want to blame anyone for the abundance of
MP3 crap out there take it out on Steve Jobs ~ he provided the path.
And the path was determined by what the marketplace wants. And the
reality is that most of the market place would rather have thousands of
highly compressed lower resolution songs available on their portable MP3
players or cell phones than worry about how much quality they can
extract from a recording on their $150 "stereo system" they bought at
WalMart.

Are mp3's really crap? I'm not talking about
their ability to accurately reproduce the original (the ultimate goal of
hifi), but they sure do an incredibly excellent job of reproducing the
heart of music. What then is the goal? To enjoy the system, or the
music? I actually envy the people that can listen to mp3's and not hear
any difference from the best of the sound systems out there. Why?
Because the purpose of music is so much more than accuracy - and I find
that more often than not, the ultimately critical ear ends up with far
less emotional response. There is no sound sytem in the world that will
be without audible flaw.

I started mixing when I was 8 years old
and was training at least twice a week - I've really not known music
without critical listening and I kinda wish I had started later in life
so that I would know what it's like. Instead, I gotta go way outta my
way to zen out and let the music capture me. When that happens, I could
listen to the music on the crappiest AM radio and enjoy the music - it's
just few and far between when that actually happens.

I dunno, I
just think all this elite audiophile stuff is what's killing this hobby
for the younger generations - they don't want to associate with this
kind of "refinement"....and I don't give any discredit to them for it
either.

That said, the youth that I work with every week tell me that they would be intersted in better quality provided they could afford it and not be limited to 5 albums on their iPod. I think 20 to 30 albums would be the break even point since they want to have a few bands for different emotions they're feeling without having to reload everything. Google Play has come out with streaming music from the cloud, so I think it's just a matter of one more swing on the cell phone bandwidth before people will be able to stream any of their music lossless....and then a $100 set of earbuds from Klipsch sounds pretty wicked and better than my hotrodded Chorus II's in some ways (in some ways it lacks too). Anyways, at work we're keeping watch on the newer generations since that's gonna be my bread and butter for the next 20 years or so...will be interesting to see how it plays out.

artto · July 16, 2012

Yes, Mike, MP3 really are CRAP. If you can't hear the substantial difference between an MP3 made from, say, the original 24 bit/96KHz recording then you are deaf. And if you don't think the audible difference in results is substantial, as in emotionally, "from the heart", less involving, then I guess I can not trust your "critical" opinion of what consititutes accurate sound reproduction, nor "emotionally from the heart". The accurate capture of and reproduction of as far as "sound reproduction" goes....comes first. If you can do that, then after that anyone is more than welcome to do whatever the hell they want to with it if it gets them off. What goes on in the musical perfomance itself is another matter.

You ask "what then is the goal?" Not everyone has the same goal. Most everyone is not even aware of what is possible. Nor do they care. I find this especially true of most professional musicians in particular. They are listening to the music. And I also submit that they are so "in tune" with the music that their brain actually fills in all the details that "audiophiles" hold in such high regard.

The "purpose" of music has nothing to do with accuracy of sound reproduction. A musical performance can sound like crap simply because it is performed poorly. It has absolutely nothing to do with "accuracy" of sound reproduction. And you do not, in fact, need accurate sound reproduction in order to enjoy a musical performance. It has nothing to do with "not wanting to be associated with this kind of refinement." They, for the most part don't even know that this kind of refinement exists, what is possible, and even if they did, I doubt they would care much. For most of them its just as unattainable and frivolous as a gold plated Rolls Royce for driving to work if you're an Rolls Royce enthusiast. It's just a hobby, right? The same could be said of my other hobby, model railroading. Most people would be more than satisfied setting up some snap track on the living room floor or a 4'x8' sheet of plywood. Others are not, and build whole buildings to house their layouts. Me, I'm somwhere in between. Some don't even have layouts or snap track, they simply collect. The same with music. Some just collect, even if its just some old scratchy 78's or Edison cylinders. It never even gets played. Big deal. What's wrong with that? Nothing!

So, you think all this "elite audiophile stuff is what's killing this hobby for the younger generations", do you? I've got news for you Mike, it's always been that way. Nothing has changed. And nothing has been killed off. It was this way 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, and even in Edison's day. There were those who pushed the limits of what was possible, and the rest mostly never even knew about it.

For me, yes, its about the accuracy of sound reproduction. And yes, I get pleasure when someone who is involved with music for a living tells me "it's as if I can see the musicians in front of me, its like I'm really there" when listening to my system.

On the other hand does that mean I won't listen to Leonard Bernstein conducting the NY Philharmonic playing Shostakovich's Symphony #5 on CBS Masterworks, just because I have a number of other recordings of this piece that are recorded much better? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Bernstein is always my "go to" for this piece, because of the music.

Personally, I think just because I said MP3 sound like crap, you've somehow construed or confused my interpretation of the issue of accuracy of sound reproduction with the enjoyment of music. The two do not necessarily have anything to do with each other. However, in my opinion, it's a wonderful, and rare thing, when the two can come together. And as far as I'm concerned, for me, that is the goal.

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