|
Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
|
|
|
Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
|
In Reply to: RE: I'm admittedly a poor excuse for an audiophile posted by kerr on February 20, 2010 at 08:51:15:
For those of us who make recordings (in my case remaster) it is absolutely essential that our systems sound poor on a poor recording and good on a good recording. To the extent that is is not the case, then any work we do is a complete crap shoot or worse. Now this creates a problem with poor recordings in our personal collections. I have some great musical performances that were poorly recorded. Sometimes these sound so bad that I find it difficult to enjoy the music. However, in all the cases I've found to date I've been able to "fix" these recordings, so as to make them listenable. I'll give two examples.
The first was a CD in the "essential classics" series of Ormandy's Bruckner 4. In the CD mastering the recording had been seriously compressed, to the point where the musical dynamics were wrong and the equalization was terrible, making the recording horribly shrill. I was able to correct both of these problems by "remastering the remaster". It took some time, but I was able to come up with an expansion curve and time constants to make the recorded dynamics credible (taking care to ensure that I erred on the side of too little re-expansion) and EQ to make the high frequencies listenable. The result was a huge improvement, but it did take me several hours of experimentation and processing. (I've since listened to my new version enough times to feel I've repaid my efforts.)
The second (actually this happened twice) was a digital transfer of an original analog recording that had no bass and was shrill. I guessed that the recording had been made by a European radio station using the (European) CCIR equalization and when it was transferred to CD the incorrect (US) NAB equalization had been used to play the tape. A few minutes of Googling came up with the equalization curves and a half-hour's work produced digital equalization settings that compensated. That my guess was correct was confirmed by ear. Subsequently, I informed the person who did the transfer of the problem and they obtained a CCIR equalization tape and re calibrated their recorder and redid the transfer, giving me the new version. The result was (slightly) better than my version, but had this not been possible my version would have been entirely acceptable. Several months later, when another friend send me a CD with similar sonic defects and European radio provenance I recognized the problem immediately and fixed it in a few minutes.
In these cases, the essential elements of my success were: (1) a familiarity with how this music should sound from attending live concerts, (2) a familiarity with how a wide range of reference recordings sound on my system, (3) hundreds of hours of experience with various tools working with dozens of recordings, (4) a certain amount of patience, and (5) above all, a love of the music.
I guess I would call myself a music lover, audiophile and engineer, perhaps in that order.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Follow Ups
- Music lover, audiophile and engineer - Tony Lauck 02/20/1012:19:28 02/20/10 (1)
- RE: Music lover, audiophile and engineer - kerr 13:12:26 02/22/10 (0)
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
