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RE: I think I'll put a nail in this silly recording quality myth once and for all! (long)

Posted by Presto (A) on February 20, 2010 at 09:34:18

In Reply to: I think I'll put a nail in this silly recording quality myth once and for all! posted by Don Till on February 19, 2010 at 16:34:22:

Don:

You can't call love of specific music regardless of recording quality any more or less silly than enjoying music MORE simply because it is recorded well (the opposite extremes of this issue).

It's ironic that you and I have polar attitudes when it comes to recording quality, yet we both have a disdain for Dianna Krall and a common appreciation for Johnette Napolitano of Concrete Blonde. When she sings "Darkening of the Light" from the Bloodletting album it sends shivers down my spine into my soul - and a I know no other female vocalist sounds like her and few can weave emotion and a certain mood into their performances as she does. I don't know too much about the other albums, but Bloodletting is recorded very well IMO.

My dad likes vintage old-time fiddle recordings. Some of them seem they were recorded using tin cans and a string. To me, they sound quite aweful (recording wise) but nothing gives me greater pleasure than finding a very very old 78 on CD that I can play on my system for my dad. I mean, I get it. The music is part of a lost art - and those playing are the pioneers of an entire musical genre that slowly fades into history before our eyes. And the sound, with hardly any bass and a rolled off high end (sounds like it was recorded through a megaphone), and the scratchy rendering from the old 78 - it all adds up to a very naustalgic framework for presenting the music. The poor recording quality is almost synonymous with the historical time in which it was recorded. Technology was new and clunky. People were poor and just having intruments to play was indeed a priviledge. The fact some had the presence of mind to capture these "at home" fiddle festivals and polka dance parties is almost miraculous in its own right.

Fortunately, some of the greats were recorded in better studio environments towards the end of their careers. This stuff is far more listenable to me - I really enjoy it more. My dad doesn't care. He wants to hear the tune he wants to hear and doesn't care a lick about recording quality. It's true music love with no other considerations.

But for me, I am a different animal. I've always hated bad music playback. I'd rather be in a silent restaurant than one with crappy 2-way speakers spewing shrill garbage from $3 tweeters and far too much distortion from a $50 receiver. And perhaps it's no coincidence that growing up I developed an intense love for certain bands but looking back they all seemed to have one thing in common: very clean recording. A friend of mine, a devout audiophile, likes to play AC/DC through his $50K system. It's quite shocking how clean these tracks are recorded. Simple. Loud. And clean. Another rock album that is just silly - Bad Company's "Ten from Six" greatest hits. Simply amazing.

The problem with audiophilia is that sometimes we're listening to music for the love of music, and other times we're using music as a bloody test signal to appraise audio equipment. So let me put it this way:

- If you love certain music, recording quality probably does not matter much. It might not even interfere with your ability to enjoy the music. But if someone handed you a wonderfully remastered replacement, would you not be extremely excited?

- If you're testing equipment, use your "audiophile" test tracks. Yes, it's only fair to use prestine recordings for the entire audition. But it's also important to use some "lesser recordings" (of wonderful music of course) to see how the system deals with these recordings IF one has a lot of these types of recordings in their collection.

Sometimes when playing wonderful music that is (unfortunately) not recorded very well or contains specific sonic artifacts, I can do without the hyper-detailed inverted titanium dome tweeters and would much rather be listening to a soft dome. My point is I have owned and heard a number of speakers that could be called "fussy" - and they take on a human attitude since they play nice with good recordings and make them sound amazing yet take lesser recordings and shred them beyond listenability. Some would say these speakers are simply very revealing. Others would call this a defect, saying they are hyper-analytical and lacking musicality. I think there is some truth to both takes actually. I don't like fussy speakers very much. I had speakers once that liked to pick music for me - which is why I sold them. I choose the music - not my gear. Granted I seem to have a lot of good recordings, and play good recordings more often. But nowadays I believe there is NO good reason why one can't find loudspeaker transducers that are both accurate AND musical.

But lets get back to the statement about recording quality being "the most important aspect".

Take a scratchy 78 of a specific performance. Now play a remaster with less distracting clicks and pops, better S/N ratio, and more bandwidth at the frequency extremes. Wow. Quite a difference.

Now swap speaker cables. Hmmm. Not so much of a difference.

This is all I am saying when I speak of the significant of recording quality when it comes to FIDELITY. And fidelity, as you point out, has little - or nothing - to do with how much someone loves a particular artist or recording.

At the Asylum, many of us love music. Some sadly only use music as test stimulus. But when we're talking about FIDELITY, we NEED to include recording quality as one of the variables - we can't ignore recording quality "for the love of music". We should DEMAND recording quality for the love of music! It's sad when someone making a recording does not love the music as much as some of the end users will. This would change the world of music as we know it - in order to make a recording, you need to LOVE the music you are hearing. Perhaps it's love that is missing from some of these recordings. The musicians loved what they were doing but the recording engineer DIDN'T. Perhaps it's not so much a matter of technical ability but a matter of giving a damn of what gets stamped at the end of the process.

Does any of this make sense?

Cheers,
Presto

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