Quality of modern recordings

[garyrc]

The consumer demand isn't there. They aren't selling millions of copies of SACD's every month, unlike Apple iTunes, which sells hundreds of millions worth of MP3 music every quarter.

If someone is going to record in DSD anyway, would it kill them to
put out a Hybrid? They might find that the market is better than they
thought. I have begun to avoid remasters that aren't SACD, and have
begun to collect multichannel new recordings in SACD. I would buy more
if a greater variety was available.

The marketing for hi rez
formats has been half hearted on the part of the industry. A local store urges people to bring in a
MP3 version of something and play it over one of their good sound
systems. If the store happens to have the same recording on CD or SACD
they will play that for comparison. That works. Most people notice
differences.

There wasn't a big market for expensive audiophile
recordings in the '50s & early '60s, but one kept running into them
in bins, even at Safeway! It is true that people are unlikely to buy
something they don't know about. My high school friends "Went stereo"
in two big waves. The first was in 1959 when Walt Disney broadcast one
of his shows in three channel stereo (TV, FM, & AM -- multiplex
wasn't available yet). It was all the talk at school the next day. The
stereo Lp didn't quite exist yet, so people tried to score a stereo
tape deck (Viking or Ampex) to play prerecorded stereo tapes, which were
even less plentiful than SACDs are now. The night of the Disney broadcast,
my future wife, who I met 11 years later, then 400 miles away set up
stereo for her family to experience the show "the right way." Before
most of my friends had saved up for a stereo tape deck, the stereo
record came out (later that year). In those days, record manufacturers
cautioned you not to play a stereo record with a mono cartridge, so
people had to read the fine print to make sure they were getting a
compatible record, but that didn't stop them. Movie theaters returned
to their earlier practice of hanging a silk banner outside that said
"Stereophonic Sound" when they received a stereo/mag print. The second
big wave was when James Gabbert broadcast the soundtrack of Exodus in
stereo in 1960.. Those who didn't have stereo yet pooled their
equipment to hear that broadcast. As Gabbert put it, stereo was the next best thing to sex. Soooo... this format almost nobody
was initially equipped for became a hit in a period of 2 years or so.
IM0, a big reason that happened is that it was publicized, advertised
and championed.

[joshnich]

There is a lot of truth in what you say. The industry did an incredible crappy job at marketing SACD's and DVD audio for that matter. You had to be pretty aware and interested to even know that they existed. The fact that people do not buy their music in music stores certainly has has an impact on the success of these formats.

But I think that there is hope. As more and more people build or buy hard drive servers and memory is cheap. Hi res digital could become more popular. I know that is the case for me. Love the server and the ability to download hi res audio from HD tracks.com Im sure there are other sources as well.

Josh

[holtrp]

Excellent thread and lots of good discussion / information. I really didn't get into SACD and hi-res audio until about 5 years ago when I built my first house and made a sizable investment in audio equipment that I could actually crank up outside an apartment. When I was growing up, I had cassette tapes. I switched all the way over to CD's in 1992 because of the sound quality and the ease of changing from track to track, by that point and probably a bit earlier, the writing was on the wall. Pearl Jam Ten and Ministry Psalm 69 were my very first CD's.

My interest in CD buying lasted for about 10 years. You had to replace a CD every now and then that got scrached, but there was a healthy secondary market where you could get pretty much anything you wanted for $5. I had a couple big books full of CD's I carried around in my vehicle where I could blast MB Quartz speakers, MMATS amplifiers and Image Dynamics subs

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. Not only that, Napster and the internet had stuff that you couldn't buy at any store. Dave Matthews concert bootlegs, B-side singles that didn't get wide distribution, mash-ups, club-mixes, etc. Why go hunt for a used CD, one that you already purchased new, just because one song is scratched up when you could just download the song off the internet. Sure, they might not be as clean as the CD, but for $0.00, how could you possibly beat that? Everything could be had for nothing off Napster! Plus, for the first time you could rip your entire library to your computer for a back up and make your own CDs. In fact, I still have a huge amount of MP3 music I downloaded from Napster days that I never even listened to. I was completely hooked and actually still am in a way. I love MP3's for what they are.

There is a level of convenience there that is every bit as impressive as a remastered SACD 5.1 mix.

[skonopa]

I've read a lot of all this going on and on about MP3s and crappy recordings in general.

The thing is that excellent recordings are still around and can be found. However, you pretty much have to go to the small independent labels and artists to find them. That is, the ones that still really care about thier recordings and not just making something "radio friendly". I've got some really incredible recordings in my collection, such as the newest Haken album, that sound absolutely phenomenal. Hell, this brand-new Nightwish album is just incredible, and that only just became available last month in the US.

I have plenty of MP3s in my collection (some 12,000 of them actually), and very much enjoy listening to them as much as listening to the CD as well. Not only that, there is no denying the convenience, plus many of them actually sound really good on my rig. Certainly helps that I am playing them through a $3,800 music server with some pretty hefty DACs and built-in interpolation algorithms that actually do an excellent job of "filling in the missing parts" yeilding a very good sound in the end. With 320 kbps MP3s played through thing thing, people will be very hard to tell it apart from the full resolution CD. Also, a lot of the music that I do like to listen to, I can sometimes only get it via MP3 unless I am willing to spend a consideral sum to get it imported from overseas. Lets see, $6 for the MP3 off of eMusic, or $40 to import the CD?

Not only that, there are sites around were full-res/lossless formats are available. In my chosen genres of prog rock and metal, I've found a lot of awesome music at Mindawn.com, which offers albums in FLAC. Bandcamp also is a good source. The aforementioned HD Tracks is another good place as well.

Yeah, there will be the anal retentive types (and there are few of those on here) that think the only good quality recording is a vinyl LP played through tubes on big corner-horn speakers, but I am not such a format snop to deny myself a lot of my favorite music just because I can only find it as an MP3 download.

[T.H.E. Droid]

There is a lot of truth in what you say. The industry did an incredible crappy job at marketing SACD's and DVD audio for that matter. You had to be pretty aware and interested to even know that they existed. The fact that people do not buy their music in music stores certainly has has an impact on the success of these formats. .....

Josh

Amen to that. A few years back when I was thinking about getting a SACD player, all I could find for source material was rereleased old stuff like Dark Side of the Moon. I just concluded that the music I want to hear wasn't available on SACD.

[skonopa]

There is a lot of truth in what you say. The industry did an incredible crappy job at marketing SACD's and DVD audio for that matter. You had to be pretty aware and interested to even know that they existed. The fact that people do not buy their music in music stores certainly has has an impact on the success of these formats. .....

Josh

Amen to that. A few years back when I was thinking about getting a SACD player, all I could find for source material was rereleased old stuff like Dark Side of the Moon. I just concluded that the music I want to hear wasn't available on SACD.

Same issue I got - the music that I want to listen to is just simply not available on SACD for me either. In fact, the ONLY SACD that I have in my entire collection happens to be The Dark Side of the Moon. How I wish some the music that I do listen to was on SACD. That new Nightwish album, Imaginearum, would be incredible on SACD, for example. Even both of the Haken albums I have would be awesome as well! Now, admittedly, I would not mind finding a copy of that Holst, The Planets SACD that I've heard before at a Pilgramage a few years ago.

[Quiet_Hollow]

Sure, they might not be as clean as the CD, but for $0.00, how could you possibly beat that? Everything could be had for nothing off Napster!

...And that's when the hammer dropped. I recall MP3's gaining popularity on the campus file sharing networks in 97-98, then Napster, and all heck broke loose with the music industry giants. [N]

I think this needs to be brought to light a little, and I might get roasted for saying this, but unless an album is multichannel, SACD doesn't offer significant advantage in sound quality over Red Book.

Lemme explain...Most people are hearing a difference in the recording's dynamic range, which is grossly under-utilized on all but the most boutique test CD album. Ever heard a CD recorded using 40+ dB of it's 90+ dB range? Most are 1/4 of that at 10 dB, if even. Get an album like Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" or Peter Gabriel rolling in at 14-20 dB and people get all gushy about how awesome it sounds. Which it does quite frankly, but only because everything else electronic audio in our daily lives is utterly squashed in comparison. I get a kick over folks getting their pants in a wad over SACD when CD isn't even used to it's fullest potential. It's not the sampling rate, it's the dynamic range that's makes a playback really stand-out on a capable system. [8]

[garyrc]

I think this needs to be brought to light a little, and I might get roasted for saying this, but unless an album is multichannel, SACD doesn't offer significant advantage in sound quality over Red Book.

Lemme explain...Most people are hearing a difference in the recording's dynamic range, which is grossly under-utilized on all but the most boutique test CD album. Ever heard a CD recorded using 40+ dB of it's 90+ dB range? Most are 1/4 of that at 10 dB, if even. Get an album like Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" or Peter Gabriel rolling in at 14-20 dB and people get all gushy about how awesome it sounds. Which it does quite frankly, but only because everything else electronic audio in our daily lives is utterly squashed in comparison. I get a kick over folks getting their pants in a wad over SACD when CD isn't even used to it's fullest potential. It's not the sampling rate, it's the dynamic range that's makes a playback really stand-out on a capable system.

Some SACDs seem to sound a little warmer than their CD versions of the same recording, IMO

There are many multichannel disks with less than the usual 5 or 5.1 that still sound better, IMO. For instance, remasters
of old three channel orchestral recordings (Living Stereo
classical and other) seem to sound better than
the two channel versions with a derived third channel in the home.

Even HDCDs can sound better when played with
HDCD decoders than when straight ("compatible") undecoded CD. Two
examples are The Glass Bead Game and a Reference Recordings Copeland disk (I can't retrieve
the name at the moment).

I wonder who the idiots are who decide to compress, or fail to use, the dynamic range of any medium when musically appropriate. I can't imagine the performers or composers asking for that. Maybe they need to form a stronger association to demand artistic control (including control of the dynamics).

I listen to Classical, modern orchestral,
Jazz, soundtracks, and sometimes Pop & Rock, in that order of
frequency. The first three seem to use a lot of the available dynamic
range. Soundtracks are often a little compressed or otherwise mucked up
on CD, but usually have much better dynamics on the DVDs or BDs of the
movies they come from. Pop & Rock, to my ears, are pretty squished.
This seems to be true of both old and new works. My disappointment
in the technology and the skill with which it is often used going
downhill -- especially with Rock (and related) -- is epitomized by Surrealistic Pillow
sounding terrible and punchless and lacking some grand and slow crescendos on
CD. It was much better and more dynamic on Stereo LP with my old moving coil Ortofon. Of course selections from it will
never sound like they did with '60s technology, in Golden Gate Park, up
close, with a huge stack of speakers that quite literally moved the earth (nearby), for free.

[DrWho]

I wonder who the idiots are who decide to compress, or fail to use, the dynamic range of any medium when musically appropriate. I can't imagine the performers or composers asking for that. Maybe they need to form a stronger association to demand artistic control (including control of the dynamics).

Those "idiots" are actually being driven by business decisions. The notion that louder is better is just as true in the audiophile industry as it is the mass market (just go to any audiophile gathering and note the SPL). They absolutely know that it is not good for the art of the music, but when a consumer is comparing CDs to listen to in a crappy listening environment (either super low bitrate mp3 samples online or crappy headphones in a store), the consumer usually ends up picking the "louder" one - because in that environment, the louder sounds better (way less background noise). There's this notion that the record industry is this big giant making a ton of money, but overall that's really not the case.

Trying to create a high-end shopping/listening environment is simply just too expensive.

We also have to be very careful about the music era that we grew up in - as the inherent artifacts of the source material become part of the musical expectation. People that grew up listening to LP's expect that "warmth", which the modern digital era would refer to as distortion or mush. Everyone growing up with the mp3 just learns to hear through the swooshy HF. In fact, the other day we were listening to music and a huge mp3 head friend of mine felt the CD sounded thinner and more lifeless than the mp3. It's all a matter of where your expectations are. The LP generation can't fathom the mp3, and the CD generation can't fathom the LP.

That's why we gotta get out and listen to live music. That said, even live music shouldn't be the end all be reference because the recording medium offers the possibility for sounds that would otherwise never be heard in nature. Art is all about finding new methods of expression, so just limiting to a live performance isn't art in my mind - that's more like a documentary. Recreating a live performance in a recording is probably one of the hardest things to do though (because there is such a good reference to compare to).

[garyrc]

People that grew up listening to LP's expect that "warmth", which the modern digital era would refer to as distortion or mush

I expect warmth, but can't imagine the warmth of really good Lps being thought of as distortion or mush. For instance, there was that great set of the Beethoven Symphonies recorded by K.E. Wilkinson, one of the all time great recording engineers, and conducted by Leibowitz. On Lp, with good equipment, it sound warm, with detail that was almost luminous ... the same recordings transferred to CD (by Chesky!!) are less detailed, with less of a feeling of air and warmth.

[Adoremusic]

Hate to break it to you but Napster has been shut down. Did you ever go into a music store and steal a bunch of cds?

Excellent thread and lots of good discussion / information. I really didn't get into SACD and hi-res audio until about 5 years ago when I built my first house and made a sizable investment in audio equipment that I could actually crank up outside an apartment. When I was growing up, I had cassette tapes. I switched all the way over to CD's in 1992 because of the sound quality and the ease of changing from track to track, by that point and probably a bit earlier, the writing was on the wall. Pearl Jam Ten and Ministry Psalm 69 were my very first CD's.

My interest in CD buying lasted for about 10 years. You had to replace a CD every now and then that got scrached, but there was a healthy secondary market where you could get pretty much anything you wanted for $5. I had a couple big books full of CD's I carried around in my vehicle where I could blast MB Quartz speakers, MMATS amplifiers and Image Dynamics subs

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. Not only that, Napster and the internet had stuff that you couldn't buy at any store. Dave Matthews concert bootlegs, B-side singles that didn't get wide distribution, mash-ups, club-mixes, etc. Why go hunt for a used CD, one that you already purchased new, just because one song is scratched up when you could just download the song off the internet. Sure, they might not be as clean as the CD, but for $0.00, how could you possibly beat that? Everything could be had for nothing off Napster! Plus, for the first time you could rip your entire library to your computer for a back up and make your own CDs. In fact, I still have a huge amount of MP3 music I downloaded from Napster days that I never even listened to. I was completely hooked and actually still am in a way. I love MP3's for what they are.

There is a level of convenience there that is every bit as impressive as a remastered SACD 5.1 mix.

[artarama]

Hate to break it to you but Napster has been shut down. Did you ever go into a music store and steal a bunch of cds?

Exactly! And now the guy who founded Napster is now going to make a ton of money for his work with Face Book. I don't discount the ingenuity but have to question the ethics. Pretty hard to sort that out.

Equally hard IMO for a record company to allow crap recordings to go out the door and charge just like they were a great recording. I may be wrong but I don't think it has to cost that much more regardless of music style or medium.

Seems to me a quality recording is inherantly what the customer is paying for, not just a recording. Maybe the bean counters in the "industry" and some consumers as well think there is a justifiable trade off between quality and convienience. I don't see it, I don't think you should have to settle. And I don't think there is any ethical justification for doing business that way. JMR (Just My Rant).

[holtrp]

Hate to break it to you but Napster has been shut down. Did you ever go into a music store and steal a bunch of cds?

Napster might be dead, but like the Hydra, cut one head off and two more grow back in it's place. I never did steal CD's from the store. I was always afraid of getting caught. Is downloading an MP3 really stealing? Is it really on the same exact level of sneaking a CD down your pants and walking out the front door of a store without paying?

I don't think so. I always envisioned 'File Sharing' as more of a virtual swap meet where people could simply choose to give copies of there belongings away to each other. Someone paid for that song, and now that person chose to take his own personal property and give copies of it away to strangers over the internet. What is the big deal? And to be fair, music is played for free through FM radio 24/7 in this country and there is no law against recording the music off the radio and using it. I do disagree with pirating, I don't think people should be able to take copyrighted material, make copies and then turn around and sell it for personal gain, that seems a bit disingenuous. But sharing your music with other people, why can't I do that? I paid for it and I should be able to share it with whomever I like.

And if I buy a CD that gets scratched, why should I have to go buy another CD? What is wrong with using my personal computer to store a copy of the CD so I can simply burn another copy if / when mine gets scratched or simply download another CD off the net if mine gets stolen or lost? The artist and the recording company got my money, why should the consumer have to pay up twice? So these doped out wipe out ex-rockstars can continue to collect royalty checks every month and keep them in blow and hookers for another 20 years? These rap moguls and rockstars, 10 years after Napster was shut down, are still making millions of dollars every year and file sharing is alive and well, so I don't think it is hurting anyone.

The internet, streaming media and solid state technology is eventually going to bury brick and mortar CD stores just like it has the phone book and encyclopedias.

[artarama]

The internet, streaming media and solid state technology is eventually going to bury brick and mortar CD stores just like it has the phone book and encyclopedias.

YEH! Let's rush to that end. Then we don't have to pay as many taxes on our purchases either (Heck why do I want to support the stupid Libray I don't use it... anymore...) Then we can all sit in our own private 5' x7' space and enjoy life to the fullest..... as we know it.... virtually.

[runninshine]

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?

[garyrc]

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 -- the 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.

[DrWho]

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.

[Bubo]

Where is the delete button? Chrome does not format at all. Reposted below with Explorer

[Bubo]

IMHO there are a number of issues:

Some recording artists are excellent musicians, some suck

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

Some recording engineers are great at their jobs and some suck.

Some producers are great at their jobs and some suck.

Assuming that you take all of the above at great, and compress the recording down in bit rate you get what is known as quantinization error. As the points get spread out the processor and software are making bigger and bigger assumptions and averaging to produce a sound. As a rule no compression good, compression bad.

The best sound that I have heard bar none, is DTS master audio. I wish everything were available on DTS.

As to the IPOD MP3 market, people without much money who listen to bands and songs that I don't feel particularly attracted to. Look at the top sellers, all of the above are targeted towards the MP3 device and audience.

I had a college girl sell me the Yamaha integrated amp (mint totl) for $70 that her father had given her along with the #2 Yamaha tuner of the time for another $30. She had a basic I-phone with stock cheapo ear buds and had zero interest in her fathers gift. 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.

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.

My two cents...........

[fenderbender]

"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. Damn wives, spoil all of your fun! LOL