Music for testing Audio Equipment

[The_K-Man]

On 4/28/2015 at 12:23 PM, oso said:

Hi Pap

great list.

I took the Carmen Gomes ''I'm on Fire'' file and played it on various equipment around the house; speakers, headphones, and it was just like you described, on lower quality speakers and phones the lower notes of the bass and the bass drum becomes a low end mess,

but when moving up in quality they become two separate instruments playing along in beautiful unison.

And it was quiet fun to hear how slowly the whole thing opened up as I moved up in quality.

 

I then repeated the process with an old favorite of mine Cassandra Wilsons ''Love is Blindness'' which has the same kind of problem frequency, bass and bass drum but now the problematic low end remained. It kept on being a bit muddy.

So I get your point, the ''I'm on Fire'' file is a great test for low end clarity.

 

 

 

Wilson is  a dead ringer for Diana Krall in this example!

[The_K-Man]

On 10/27/2019 at 9:21 PM, PAP said:

Please explain further.

 

Uhhh hullo?

 

Cassandra's voice sounds similar to Krall's, in that posted song.

[The_K-Man]

7 hours ago, PAP said:

 

I think Krall sounds similar to Wilson🙂.

Wilson was first😊

 

They sound similar - fair enough?

 

(can't stand Millennial nit-picking!)

[The_K-Man]

On 11/4/2019 at 4:26 AM, blue2 said:

Here's another ECM jazz album with excellent SQ. You might not like the whole album but don't skip "Journey Of Life"! 24/96 or RBCD on Qobuz

 

Title of the album would be appreciated  😉

[The_K-Man]

34 minutes ago, k-man said:

 

 

Thanks for clarifying by circling it.  Wasn't obvious as such.

 

'Tord Gustavsen "What Was Said" cat# ECM-2465, rel. Jan 2016'

 

For those want more detail.

[The_K-Man]

13 minutes ago, austinpop said:

How many K-men are there on this site? Do you all live on the Cayman Islands?

 

And "Cayman" really is, locally, Cay-MAN, not "Cay-mihn".

[The_K-Man]

17 hours ago, oso said:

They don't make covers like that no more😊.

 

Who is that on the cover.  Even in '71 Serge couldn't look that young, lol!

[The_K-Man]

17 hours ago, PAP said:

I don't hope this will influence his voice😁

But Tom Waits  hasn't had a drink for more than a decade

 

I didn't have stop drinking - I saw what it did to members of my family...

 

 

And I never f-king started!

[The_K-Man]

On August 7, 2015 at 7:35 PM, Milan said:

from wikipedia;

But that's alot of compression, good song and performance though.

 

On August 8, 2015 at 6:16 PM, RPM said:

 

I agree, but its a very good mix and with volume a nice low end kick.

I also just Love her voice so I may be biased on this one...lol

 

I'm not a fan of over-dynamic compression myself, but are you guys kidding?

 

That McVie song breeeathes in comparison to pop material thirty years newer!  

[The_K-Man]

On February 8, 2020 at 5:12 AM, Rexp said:

Thanks, your link goes to the 24/96 version which I tried and didn't like much, the 24/192 sounds good though IMO:

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/coltrane-58-the-prestige-recordings-john-coltrane/w3v0gzcgneavc

 

Just remember, any difference you hear between the 24/96 and the 24/192 is 90% attributable to the mixing and/or mastering of each.

[The_K-Man]

On March 1, 2020 at 4:13 PM, sandyk said:

 

 Barry Diament disagrees with that. He says that 24/192 gets very close to what he hears through his microphone feed, and is virtually indistinguishable. This is why all his recent recordings are 24/192 , not 24/96 of the earlier recordings

 

If Barry Diament disagrees with what I said then Barry Diament himself can come on these forums and say so.

 

I'm sticking to what I said: HOW a mic is used in a particular project has far more impact, audibly, than what format is used to capture it.

[The_K-Man]

On March 1, 2020 at 2:07 PM, PAP said:

I believe the most important factor is how the source was recorded. The DXD recordings mentioned in this thread are superior in SQ to all my other recordings.

 

"DXD" - Direct to disc?

[The_K-Man]

4 hours ago, ted_b said:

K-Man, DXD is the industry's acronym for 24/352k PCM.  It developed out of the need to edit within a DSD workflow, and 24/352 was chosen.  Over simplified.

 

So it's just another format - just what I suspected.  Again, content, session procedures, choices of mics, amount/types of processing in post, all matter far more than format.

 

You don't know me that well, do you...

 

Allow me to introduce myself,

 

-The ANTIFORMAT...

 

[The_K-Man]

42 minutes ago, PAP said:

DXD is Pcm.

And here is a free format comparison sampler:

Test your DAC! Free Format Comparison

 

 

 

 

Splittn' hairs.  Anyone who can honestly hear a difference probably eats Alpo and chases squirrels.

 

-The ANTIFORMAT

[The_K-Man]

3 hours ago, PAP said:

what are your suggestions K-Man? Would you have a few favorite albums for the thread?

 

My tastes probably aren't high-brow enough, but here goes:

 

Aaron Copland - Greatest Hits(Fanfare For The Comman Man, El Salon, etc.)

 

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

 

Michael Jackson - Off The Wall, Thriller

 

The Police - Oultlandos d'Amor, Ghost In The Machine, Synchronicity

 

Rossini - any Greatest Hits that includes William Tell and Barber of Seville

 

Steely Dan - Aja

 

Donna Summer - The Dance Collection - LP or CD (Proof that dance music doesn't need the SCHITT compressed out of it!)

 

 

Ninety-nine Percenter stuff, y'know?

 

-The ANTIFORMAT

[The_K-Man]

On March 29, 2020 at 11:33 AM, PAP said:

Which recording?

 

Telarc cat# CD-80334

[The_K-Man]

15 hours ago, PAP said:

Thanks!

 

This is one of the tools I use to teach Millennials about DyNaMic RaNgE.

[The_K-Man]

2 hours ago, blue2 said:

I don't have both versions to compare but I'd

recommend the 20th anniversary version on SQ.

 

Always the original for me! It's closest to original studio intent.

 

Not a matter of which 'sounds better', but of authenticity.

[The_K-Man]

5 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

I certainly appreciate your second statement but I can't go

along with the "Always" in the first.  There are many instances

in which the original, despite the best intent and efforts, is

handicapped by technical constraints.  

So, I am in tempered agreement with you.

 

A lot of the reason is illustrated in my profile avatar.  I listen mostly to music for the m'asses(!!!), and I have been burned accordingly when it came to the purchasing of so-called remasters.  

 

I have, over time, replaced them with original issue CDs of those albums

[The_K-Man]

2 hours ago, Summit said:

 

Well I think remasterings is not bad per se. It can be superior. The reason for so many lousy remasterings results is that they just don't know how to do it properly. 

 

In the popular realm(rock, hip-hop, country, etc), I have found it to be mostly increasing the apparent volume level of the reissued version.  My waveform profile avatar represents that.

 

I even noticed in an EMI Classics reissue of a classical performance I purchased on CD last year.  It was released in the late 1990s, and I remember not being able to turn the volume up as high as I have on older classical CDs(from early to late 1980s).

 

I believe remastering should be an audibly transparent process - minor level and EQ adjustments, IE: correcting a left-right channel imbalance. Or, re-digitizing original master tapes at the correct speed, if the original CD master was found to be off a bit.

 

There is no need to perform the destructive process(over-compression, brick-wall limiting, cranking up!) illustrated in my avatar, on legacy(pre-1990s) works.  Let them breathe!  Let their original dynamic ebbs and flows shine.  No need to make them sound like something from the last ten years, or to match that production volume level.

[The_K-Man]

19 hours ago, christian u said:

But if the remaster is done by the original engineer

using better equipment, would that be acceptable?

_______

It depends on what that original engineer is doing, or just as importantly what, if anything, surviving band members want them to do with it.  

 

Is the remaster going to be a simple clean-up, and removal of any existing wow/flutter, left-to-right channel imbalance?  Or will it be an all-out, slammed-to-digital full scale squash-fest, like the majority of top forty material since around 2000, and remasters of legacy stuff have been?  (see my profile avatar) 

 

So for me, it doesn't matter as much who is involved with the remastering project, but what they are doing.  What the end goal is. 

[The_K-Man]

4 hours ago, PAP said:

It is a difficult subject. I remember finding some of Rudy

Van Gelders remasters of his own recordings better for

some albums and again on other albums I preferred the

original.

 

It really just boils down to 1) The wishes of the original artist, 2) The intentions of the project - restorative vs modernizing the sound, etc, and 3) the technique and skill of the mastering engineer/s involved.  

 

Since most of the music I listen to is for the 'm'asses', so to speak, the results usually fall under 2) - B - modernization of the sound: IE: EQ, DRC, and peak-limit the phecque out of it.  Hence on that priniciple alone, I avoid anything with the phrase "Remastered" on it, along with addtional copyright dates later than the original issue/release date on it.  IE: 1997 or 2009 on a Beatles CD or vinyl.  Next!  lol