Well, I can do both Chopin and YYZ. Of course, YYZ would benefit from a good pressing or good digital version, but then, so would the Chopin. Judging absolute SQ based on whatever version's on Tidal is just wrong.
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Well, I can do both Chopin and YYZ. Of course, YYZ would benefit from a good pressing or good digital version, but then, so would the Chopin. Judging absolute SQ based on whatever version's on Tidal is just wrong.
You have completely misunderstood the entire point!
I am *not* maligning an entire genre of music - notably prog. In fact my good friend General used to deal prog and I have heard some incredible recordings.
The point has absolutely nothing at all to do with prog per se and EQUALLY applies to other shitty recordings of any genre. This point being that designing a system to make bad recordings sound good is flawed.
Sometimes I have no idea why I waste my time on this forum - utterly pointless.
Of course it is, Alex.
YYZ off my revered Japanese pressing Moving Pictures lp beats anything I've heard off Tidal.
And at the risk of contradicting myself, sounds pretty reasonable on the Vyger/Gran Sfera horns at The General.
YYZ off my revered Japanese pressing Moving Pictures lp beats anything I've heard off Tidal.
And at the risk of contradicting myself, sounds pretty reasonable on the Vyger/Gran Sfera horns at The General.
And I just said it's not.
There's degrees of "good". If you're saying that you can't make bad recordings sound like bonafide good ones, then I agree with you. But you CAN make those old recordings sound good, and the truly exceptional ones sound, well, truly exceptional, without having to dumb down or dull the sound.
Naming Chopin and YYZ and saying you can do both misses the point again.
It has nothing to do with poor old Chopin. It turns out that he has been performed and recorded by inept pianists and recording engineers and great pianists and wonderful recording engineers. This equates to crap and good performances and recordings.
If your system is built around making Chopin, recorded badly, sound okay, then your system design philosophy is flawed since it will require severe colouration and an absence of transparency - this yields Lo-fi.
Those “old” recordings means nothing. “Old” recordings are often the best indeed most of my best are “old”.
If you make a bad recording sound good you have added a lot of colouration and your system design philosophy is at odds with fidelity. This might be what you and your clients prefer. That is absolutely fine.
Again, you're just wrong. Folks that know me and the systems I put together know I'm particularly big on transparency and lack of obvious colorations. And I actually object to obviously colored speakers, like Marc's Zus, that my local friend KeithR used to have.
Sorry Alex - you are wrong I am afraid. Not a lot you have written makes sense from the incorrect Chopin analogy to the system building philosophy. But since we won’t agree there is little point discussing this matter with you.
If you think that designing a system to make a bad recording sound good is the correct path then that is your perogative but don’t pretend that it is transparency.
I did try that philosophy around 8 years back but I realised that in the end the true magic was lost with the great recordings.
So Bill, what's it like to live with a system where a lot of recordings may get lost as many recordings absolutely excel?
I'm struggling a little w the concept that this a price worth paying.
I get the logic, and my system is pretty differentiated in highlighting great sounding records (like that Adrian Legg acoustic guitar lp I brought to the Sfera demo), and revealing those that are beyond the pale.
What albums you enjoyed on yr Focals are shown to be a struggle to listen to on the Swings?
I'm struggling a little w the concept that this a price worth paying.
I get the logic, and my system is pretty differentiated in highlighting great sounding records (like that Adrian Legg acoustic guitar lp I brought to the Sfera demo), and revealing those that are beyond the pale.
What albums you enjoyed on yr Focals are shown to be a struggle to listen to on the Swings?
That is a good question. I have worked hard on building and streamlining / refining my LP collection over the last 1.5 years with guidance from the General and doing a lot of research myself. I have focussed first on performance and then on pressings. This has meant that I can now literally swim in incredible musical performances and recordings. When Ked last visited, he can probably attest, that we went from one belter to the next with the odd okayish in between. I am slowly disposing of any rubbish that I have.
I am lucky though that many classical and jazz recordings are such magnificent quality so I don’t feel the need to compromise right now.
I haven’t found an album on vinyl that I don’t prefer on the Swings but I do have the Vyger and Sparrow now so not a fair test really. Also not been listening to much rock of late. I was listening to the latest Goldfrapp album the other night and had a large grin.
I am a music lover first and foremost so if there is music I truly love but crap recordings, I am also happy to hear it on YouTube with headphones. I am just as excited and happy to do that style of listening.
Well Bill, if you ever get over here, I'll try and show things a little from my perspective. Ie that I don't have to lose too much from the my best Ravel to sweeten the pill of the really sonically challenging stuff that makes up over half my collection.
If a system makes a bad recording sound good I would think that perhaps the recording is not so bad after all ...
As the quality of my system improved the number of poor recordings in my collection decreased.
BTW, I address mainly classical and jazz - prog is not my priority, just the very occasional listening of Genesis or Rick Wakeman ... IMHO the main problem using this type of amplified music for system evaluation or building is that no one knows how it is really supposed to sound, we have no references.
Morning Micro,
I also experienced the same situation where as my system improved the number of miserable recordings decreased but that was mainly because my system was fundamentally flawed prior to that.
What is so much more noticeable now is the vast *difference* between recordings hence the transparency of my system has increased dramatically.
In terms of if a system makes a *genuine* bad recording sound good then the system can only achieve this via colouration. If we take a worked example:
Album X was known to have been recorded very hot with a very brittle treble. To correct for this, your system would need to have a very rolled off treble and/or heavily boosted bass. This is a strategy some folks deliberately employ with mushy sounding valve amps. It is fine to do so but that signature will also apply to every recording mastered with a neutral treble.
Bill, I'm at fault here for giving the impression everything sounds fine and dandy here, even the stuff that's lacking.
No, my previous systems from a few years back tended to sugar coat everything, so that each lp and cd was warm and fuzzy, the odd clunker, but very few standouts too.
I was just pottering along at that point with a euphonically pleasant sound, of v few contrasts.
Now, the ante is right up. Those lps that should sound excellent, like Windham Hill label Michael Hedges, original US and UK pressings Miles Davis, original US and Jap pressings John Coltrane, some old Mercury and Philips label classical lps, sound totally open, tonally and timbrally on the money, and full of low level clues.
The stuff that was poor before (80s gated snare early digital recordings) are fully revealed as mushed together and noisy.
The Zus aren't making a silk purse out of a sow's ear here. But they still have an uncanny knack of making even dire recordings remember why you first loved them.
Bill, we're closer than you think despite my perhaps ambiguous descriptions.
No, my previous systems from a few years back tended to sugar coat everything, so that each lp and cd was warm and fuzzy, the odd clunker, but very few standouts too.
I was just pottering along at that point with a euphonically pleasant sound, of v few contrasts.
Now, the ante is right up. Those lps that should sound excellent, like Windham Hill label Michael Hedges, original US and UK pressings Miles Davis, original US and Jap pressings John Coltrane, some old Mercury and Philips label classical lps, sound totally open, tonally and timbrally on the money, and full of low level clues.
The stuff that was poor before (80s gated snare early digital recordings) are fully revealed as mushed together and noisy.
The Zus aren't making a silk purse out of a sow's ear here. But they still have an uncanny knack of making even dire recordings remember why you first loved them.
Bill, we're closer than you think despite my perhaps ambiguous descriptions.
How common is it to know a recording is what you refer to as "a genuine bad recording"? Occasionally I might read such a comment but all in all it's rather unusual. Could there be a list somewhere of known bad recordings?
From my own experience it has not been unusual to find heretofore 'mediocre' or 'okay' recordings sound better as my system improves. That's been the case with certain Philips and DG LPs. Use an Opus-1 or Master Sig and my goodness ... there is a newly heard vivacity, extension and natural harmonic character previously unknown.
While different records continue to sound different, similar improvements across them might lead someone to say those cartridges are adding their own coloration. Or ... they're delivering more information from the groove - the record sounds better than we thought it did.
While there are instances of bad recordings and obvious cases of homogenizing equipment, do we need to split these hairs any finer?
No risk there. I'm very happy to hear some classical and jazz that sounds stellar at Bill's. I have some favourites that will sound great as well, and one or two that might challenge. These won't dominate proceedings.
Blue always tells me how it is. Mani's visit will be great. We have a lot of musical tastes in common, and I'm sure he'll immed pick up on similarities and differences btwn his system and mine.
I never go looking to trip a system up.
Tim, I can't comment massively on good and bad on classical. But on jazz, my original/nr original pressings on Coltrane and Miles outstrip my previous reissues. And in rock, so much Zep, Black Sabbath, Lizzy and Rush can sound poor.
I'm starting to reappraise my dichotomy on horns. It may be more that some albums abs lend themselves better to vinyl than digital. Get this wrong, and good horns act as a lie detector, more than my Zus.
That's why it'll be fascinating to hear a selection of stellar and less than stellar recordings at Bill, on analog and horns, not Tidal and horns.
I'm starting to believe Tidal provenance on horns is maybe more revealing of the differences in digital and analog than the differences btwn horns and Zus.
I'm unlikely to ever come across a horns based system better suited to settle my dilemma more than Bill's room, where lps will be played on the Vyger tt, thru TMayer 46 amps into Swings horns that extend lower than any other horns I'll have ever listened to.
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