I needed to step out of the food fight on the other thread that MikeL started where he asked a simple question-do you notice more flaws in your recordings as your system gets better? My original answer to this thread was that IMO, as your system evolves and truly gets better, I do believe that your recordings should sound better as a whole and not worse. I used Sonny Rollins Way Out West as an example of a recording that probably no one back in 1957-1958 had any idea of how good it really sounds.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think that some people were going to jump in and say WOW is really not a very good recording. I never tried to say it was the best recording ever made, but I will stand by my remarks that it will still put to shame many modern recordings. Which leads me to my next thought:
I think as a genre, Jazz has always been some of the best recorded music we have and I certainly find that on average, most jazz recordings sound really damn good. I can't think of a another genre of music that routinely captures so realistically the sound of drums and cymbals. I find it very common to hear air coming off the cymbals as they are struck in jazz recordings-lots of air. The sound of acoustic bass, piano, and horns also sounds really good meaning they sound very natural.
I am very much a Johnny-come-lately to jazz and certainly don't have a large collection (yet). I am still dumbfounded however by how great jazz sounds that was recorded in the 1950s and 1960s. Some people on this forum don't want to give any credit for the final sound quality to the gear that was used to record the albums which confounds me and defies common sense. In these days of loudness wars and 0dB recordings with no dynamic range brought to you in a perfect digital recording, I find jazz recordings to be a breath of fresh air to the ears. When I put on a jazz recording, I expect it to sound very good. That doesn't mean it is always so. However, I don't make that assumption with other genres of music.
mep
Never in my wildest dreams did I think that some people were going to jump in and say WOW is really not a very good recording. I never tried to say it was the best recording ever made, but I will stand by my remarks that it will still put to shame many modern recordings. Which leads me to my next thought:
I think as a genre, Jazz has always been some of the best recorded music we have and I certainly find that on average, most jazz recordings sound really damn good. I can't think of a another genre of music that routinely captures so realistically the sound of drums and cymbals. I find it very common to hear air coming off the cymbals as they are struck in jazz recordings-lots of air. The sound of acoustic bass, piano, and horns also sounds really good meaning they sound very natural.
I am very much a Johnny-come-lately to jazz and certainly don't have a large collection (yet). I am still dumbfounded however by how great jazz sounds that was recorded in the 1950s and 1960s. Some people on this forum don't want to give any credit for the final sound quality to the gear that was used to record the albums which confounds me and defies common sense. In these days of loudness wars and 0dB recordings with no dynamic range brought to you in a perfect digital recording, I find jazz recordings to be a breath of fresh air to the ears. When I put on a jazz recording, I expect it to sound very good. That doesn't mean it is always so. However, I don't make that assumption with other genres of music.
mep