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The real HiFi killer

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Bobby D.

Active Member
It amazes me how much people nit-pick over HiFi equipment, when the real HiFi killer, IMHO, is bad recordings. My musical taste tends towards "pop" music, maybe that is my problem. It seems like equipment reviews are always done with classical or jazz music.

A lot of the early CDs are pretty bad. When CDs first came out I made the mistake of throwing out my record collection, and replacing them with CDs. This is NOT a complaint about the CD format. Both LPs and CDs can sound great. (IMHO, CDs have the edge due to their superior S/N - no clicks and pops.) Many of my replacements CDs sound just awful. Why is this? Maybe the record companies did sloppy remixes using 10th generation analog copies. Anyway I get the feeling that they did "quick and dirty" re-issues just to cash-in on the wave of CD popularity. This is especially evident on "Greatest Hits" CDs.

Even some of the new stuff is flawed. The bass is so heavy on many new pop recordings that the bass notes are clipped into square waves ON THE CD. (Just look at the wave form with Cool Edit.) How in the world do they manage to clip in this age of digital, 100 dB dynamic range? Seems that the recording studios never got over the "Jukebox" mentality of trying to be the loudest kid on the block.

When I want to hear how good my system really sounds, I turn to Capitol's Ultra-Lounge series on CD. These are recordings from the 50's and early 60's. Despite their age, the fidelity is awesome. Anyone tried these?

Bobby D.
 
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I agree with you. Recent recordings - CD or vinyl - are so compressed and bass heavy that I find them nearly unlistenable. Many analog recordings of the '60s through the '80s used so much reverb to make them sound better on poor equipment and the result is that they sound unnatural on good equipment. It's a catch 22... I've upgraded my equipment to get more enjoyment out of music, but too often the upgraded equipment simply highlights the previously unnoticed deficiencies in the recordings. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it's all about the MUSIC.
 
Some are looking at Blu Ray as the answer, 2 seperate recordings on one disc, one for mass consumption and one for folks who care how it sounds, might be cool if it ever catches on.,....I am just glad I dont like pop so this isnt a big issue with me.
 
I am in the same boat, most new recordings suck, so im giving sacd a try and hdcd. though the sacd is hard to come by, to me its worth the effort. I didnt spend all this time and money learning about high quality audio to listen to crap.
 
Im no expert,but agree. Most new release,pop, and rock music,is firmly aimed at the
i-pod mp3 generation. The record companies pay thousands to record an album,probably sounds great in the studio,everyones happy with the sound,then they go and compress
the crap out of it and release it on cd etc. There has to be lots of famous producers
and engineers out there towing the corporate line! The crunch comes when these artists play live,i for one dont want to hear a carbon copy
of my bands fav cds,but a lot of acts are getting away with it!
 
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add me to those who agree.
One thing I have noticed is that my work car is a Nissan with a standard Nissan 6 disc CD player and probably the cheapest speakers they could source. often I have popped a new CD in on the way home and thought it sounded great in the car , its going to sound fantastic at home only to be disappointed.
It is true the other way as well ,CD's that sound great at home get over whelmed by the noisy environment in the car and the car system has no hope.

Perhaps a lot of music is mastered for these types of environment????

Perhaps
 
I can't say I share this experience, but all the music I listen to from CD has already been ripped onto my computer and is being played back as high-bit-rate mp3. I don't notice anything, but I've grown up doing this, and have never done any kind of comparison.

More importantly, +100 for Ultra-Lounge.
 
Last night we listened to a CD my daughters boyfriend made for her. When it started playing I thought "damn, my system kicks out the bass". Then I realized that the highs and lows are boosted while mids/vocals were left alone.
I think most mainstream people/kids think this sounds great.
It didn't sound bad, but the vocals seemed lost behind the music.

I agree that these recordings are for car stereos. Mids/vocals must not get lost in a car like highs and lows.

Rob
 
Most pop/rock bands have maybe four instruments. It never ceases to amaze me how messed up pop/rock recordings sound. Four instruments, how do you screw that up? I think you have to try.
 
Luckily we have some companies like MFSL that actually care about the sound..

I have some cd's i can't listen to their so loud....
 
unfortunately i think we are not a major portion of the market. seems like most music is now being sold to sound good on crappy ipod docks and cheap HTIAB systems.

luckily for us, there's plenty of records and old cd's around.
 
I have an early (first) CD release of the Beach Boys' Endless Summer. It sounds terrible!

I wonder perhaps if early on engineers mastered the CDs using the RIAA curve (for phono) instead of something more appropriate to the CD format?
 
I've often wished that classical music producers made pop/rock recordings too. There just seems to be such a difference between the way contemporary classical music is produced versus the average pop/rock record. You guys are probably right that the popular stuff is being produced for car stereos and ipods, but sometimes the production is so bad ... bassy, compressed, fuzzy ... that it isn't even worth listening to.

— K.
 
When I hear a new release that is mastered well, recent Beatles' releases for example, I'm disappointed by the lack of effort in other releases that sound like crap. With a little effort more recordings could sound great. But I guess a little effort takes $$ and it hurts the bottom line. Why not save a few dollars when most of the consumers couldn't care less or tell the difference.
 
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