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RE: Audio System Performance (a rant)

Posted by Presto (A) on December 6, 2012 at 15:32:11

In Reply to: RE: Audio System Performance (a rant) posted by Goober58 on December 6, 2012 at 05:43:34:

"Though stereos should allow you to know about how a recording was made or assembled how it sounds (good or bad) 100% depends on the stereo."

No. It really doesn't. The stereo is not a separate entity. A stereo that is 100% of the "sound" has no recording and has no listener and has no room.

Room + speakers + system + recording + (listeners hearing and emotions and biases) = 100% of sound.

Also, when I sad "bad/good" recordings, I meant "subjectively bad recordings" and "subjectively good recordings", aka how they SOUND. I don't care that there might be a technical disaster of a recording that sound subjectively good and a technically prestine recording that somehow sounds bad. I also was not referring to quality of performance - a bad performance can be recorded well OR poorly, as can a fantastic performance. With performance, we only blame the musicians and maybe the conductor!. I definately did not mean a "technically bad" recording that sounds "subjectively good" and vice versa. I mean: no matter how it was contrived, bad recordings are the ones that SOUND bad and good recordings are the ones that SOUND good.

The kind of detail rendering audiophiles want is never a bad thing; it's only bad when they can tolerate this detail level on some recordings and not on others.

My stereo very often reveals to me the limitations of poor recordings. Fortunately for me, the genres and groups I like more often than not have a wide variety of excellent recordings. Those who are love with vintage blues that was recorded with highly compromised equipment or transferred from highly compromised formats (some vintage 78 RPM record transfers for example) may not enjoy such a wide selection of QUALITY recordings. They might capture very moving and rare and fantastic music, but to say it is CAPTURED well is just simply incorrect. It's band limited, midrange forward, sometimes off pitch, and filled with cracks and pops. That cannot be good for the sound, except in the rare case the "bad sound" is part of the actual subjective aesthetic of the music.

Like that horrible "country crackle" paint, which I believe was borne of a bad production run and someone took some home and it caught on with the "Martha Stewart" home DIYer set.

Some recordings should be played back on a grammaphone or 78 RPM phonograph with a nail for a needle. At least that way, you have synergy between the bad recording and the bad equipment...

Cheers,
Presto

Edits: 12/06/12

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