Musics only job is to engage and make you feel, connect, relate.
Plenty good stuff is farily sketchy on the recordings. Often they just didn’t have budget. Lot of punk is like this. Lot of bedroom recordings. Cody Chesnutts album. Found one recently, Darondo - Didn’t I. So good, but not a great recording.
I don’t care what you do and dont listen to. Just enjoy what you enjoy.
Agreed. I try to find high quality recordings when possible, so I get what @chrisnyc75 is saying, but it’s hardly feasible for all artists and genres. In the end, as long as you’re connecting with the music and are entertained, that’s all that matters.
And sometimes the struggle is part of the genre. Either intentional or a product of folk or DIY production.
lousy recordings sound lousy with any HP…you dont buy expensive HP’s to listen to poorly recorded music even though it is unavoidable…you buy them for the magnificent recordings that sound sublime
Some interesting discussion about music and quality of the recording going on here. I’m of the opinion that you should get equipment that makes music you love sound great. But also that the best equipment isn’t necessarily going to make all of your favorite music sound great.
For jazz and acoustic and classical maybe you want more ear gain. For metal or classic rock, maybe you want more mid bass or an emphasis to the lowest part of the ear gain. Having equipment that makes better the stuff you love is key here. It’s just that we also have to recognize that sometimes the stuff we love is poorly recorded, and then we can either get equipment to accommodate it or shrug our shoulders and bite the bullet on it sounding like a poor recording.
I used to seek out both music and sound that impressed me, but at this point in life, i really only care about being moved on an emotional level, which I find doesnt really require totl equipment or recording techniques, though especially the latter does make it easier to connect.
Often in this hobby I have had to remind myself “Content is King”. The delivery can impact our response to any music, but in the end the music matters most. I’ve been to live concerts where the sound was either terrible or so loud I wore earplugs. That is not high fidelity, but I was often still blown away. I also have a hard drive full of live recordings, or very old recordings, of the great old violinists and string quartets of a style of playing no one can replicate anymore (which is why I love the cross feed function on my RME ADI and my ZMF Eikon!). These recordings sound like shit. But the content is priceless, it engages the intellect, and if you follow closely the yarn they spin, you can forget the fidelity. This does not stop me from pursuing the most elevated fidelity I can afford in gear. But getting closer to that will never negate the value in archival music…IMO.
Sorry to add to the off topic, thanks for the work you do @Resolve!
So I’m in the interesting situation that I both love wonderful recordings of classic jazz, chamber music, great well-recorded indie, folk, classic rock, solo keyboard & cello, etc. But… I also happen to love a lot of punk rock from the 80’s and 90’s, and part of the deal was that a lot was recorded terribly. Many would argue that Agnostic Front or Black Flag or Minor Threat aren’t really music. You’re totally entitled to your opinion. I was at a bunch of those shows, and that energy got me into music, and my musical taste spread its wings later. I don’t listen to it often, but it provides a thrill that few other things could. So I need a signal chain that can accomodate those very poorly made recordings. Thusfar I manage it by putting “sloppy” tubes in my Mjolnir 2 and listening with my HD-6xx which is a very accomodating chain, or else just listening to the glare & craziness with Valvo 6201s/Focal Clears and embracing the chaos (or even Senn HD800s, which is begging for an earache but kind of amazing)… that chaos and crappy recording/venue was the whole point anyways. I have a Folkvangr inbound, and we shall see how I think about that across a number of genres/cans.
Anyone else have a “guilty pleasure” / terribly recorded set of stuff that they have to figure out how it fits into their chain that’s optimized for something else?
Absolutely - I think a lot of us do. I simply still listen to those recordings, just with lower expectations haha. And I still enjoy them, which is the important part.
I put a ton of effort into dealing with suboptimal sources, as that’s the biggest audio chain challenge. The punk/new-wave/hardcore of the 1970s and 1980s is some of the worst technically. But even today there is a lot of stylistic vocal compression and rhythmic modulation (e.g., EDM) that’s not too pleasant to my ears.
See the intro rationale for my 50 track fatigue-evaluation playlist:
It’s not so hard to make a good recording sound good. It can be quite hard to make a bad recording tolerable.
Rammstein, MBValentine, Modest Mouse plus the rest of the classical, Tony Bennett, etc, love it. I needs to create one of these “what I tests with” playlists. Brilliant.
I agree poor recordings suck. But how many here moaning about recording quality are still streaming 320 kbps Spotify?
While some poorly recorded tracks are beyond saving, improving your source files may turn recordings you think to be shitty into something tolerable or even enjoyable.
I noticed a HUGE improvement in my enjoyment of music on good, audiophile cans when I switched from Spotify to Qobuz. Far more dramatic than any other non-headphone source gear improvements, such as cables, DACs or amps.
Pretty much every Oasis album, dude. The recording quality is abysmal, especially the band’s iconic first three records – “Definitely Maybe,” “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory” and “Be Here Now.”
In the 1980s graphic equalizers went mainstream. So, studios boosted the bass and treble and devices boosted it and end users boosted it even more. IMO this caused pop music quality issues until around 2010, as by then digital recording algorithms, hardware, and software matured.
My strategy for Oasis and many others: reverse the studio “U” and “V” EQ profile. Set your sliders/dials to an “A” instead.
I’m a little surprised at this. When I researched streaming services, so many reviewers and people with much better tuned ears than me said they probably couldn’t tell the difference between Spotify and any of the high end options in a blind test.
Not all services rated for 320 are the same apparently… so there likely is a difference. Whether you could hear that difference in a blind test of different streaming services though is doubtful in my view. But it’s worth trying!
But no, going with Spotify 320 as opposed to FLAC or something along those lines doesn’t kneecap your music experience with high end equipment like some make it out to. I personally wouldn’t worry about it.
I will say, however, that I’ve been far happier with the mixes and remastering, especially of classic jazz and classic rock, that are available on Qobuz & Tidal vs. Spotify. I can’t always chalk up my preference to the bitrate / sample rate of a hi-res recording. But, for instance, Zepplin & Creedence Clearwater Revival & Lee Morgan all have much better masters available (& you can tell which is which) on Qobuz vs. Spotify. You can call that audio nervosa, but I don’t. If you’re listening mostly to more modern recordings where remasterings are relatively rare, then I’d feel much less strongly for my own ears.
It’s weird: My ears shouldn’t be able to tell the difference. They’re ravaged by tinnitus and working in motorsports and playing in rock bands for more than 30 years.
But I CAN tell the difference when I A/B identical tracks from Spotify and Qobuz, especially on my higher-end cans. None of the differences are “Holy shit, where’s Charlton Heston to part the Red Sea?” but I notice them, especially on a detailed can like the LCD-X 2021. Not so much on a can like the HD 6XX.
So, I think the sound signature of a headphone definitely affects one’s perception of the difference between lossless and lossy files, especially when the lossless files are higher res than CD quality.
In another oddity, I have AKG N400NC as my TWS earbuds. They hug the Harman curve and have really good imaging and detail for a wireless earbud. Yet … Spotify sounds better than Qobuz on them.
Maybe it’s because Bluetooth codecs just don’t process all of the extra bits in high-res streams as well as the lower bitrate of 320 kbps. I’m not sure.
But my ears and brain don’t lie: Qobuz sounds better on high-end audiophile headphones. Spotify sounds better on my AKG buds. So, I keep both services, especially because Spotify’s social features and in-house and user-generated playlists DESTROY those of Qobuz.
Audio never fails to fascinate, man … 
In blind tests I usually pick the MP3. I conclude therefore that I prefer lossy to lossless.
I’ve played the same albums on 1. Amazon HD (lossless), 2. Apple Music (lossless), 3. Google Music (lossy), and 4. Spotify (lossy). As much as I want to prefer Google and Spotify for often superior search and functionality, both make my ears hiss or ring. Amazon and Apple lossless don’t. I don’t like Amazon’s software but end up using it most of the time.
I doubt that I could tell the difference between CD Redbook at 16/44.1 versus higher bitrates, but fatigue doesn’t lie. My guess is that some of us pick up on mild compression artifacts and hear them as spurious, randomized treble.