Can Bad Recordings sound Good?

[bluesman]

5 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

Sometimes they take a detour/improvisation that seems to say more about  their virtuosity on the instrument than doing service to the song.

Miles (and I and many others) agree with you.  When he thought someone in his band was just wasting time showing off, he’d say, “If you got nothin’ to say, don’t say nothin’!”
 

A lot of wonderful improvisation is musically fascinating but hard for many to grasp, especially if it’s based on scales or concepts unfamiliar to the listener.  But much of bebop was a “cutting contest”, and many top players were stellar technicians with marginal taste and musical judgment.  They knew all their scales and modes, and could pump them out at breakneck speed through long solos without an error. Many wrote such intricate and difficult melody lines just to embarrass and upstage those who couldn’t play them at speed. This is not musicianship.  

 

The fastest-is-best school is not limited to jazz. For example, Liszt was the bebop king of his day.  He wrote technically difficult music for the same reason, and he was a first rate showoff and braggart.  And if you took away their effects pedals, many rock and metal guitarists would sound like middle schoolers practicing scales and riffs.

 

On the other hand, great players feel no need to show off. Randy Johnston is a wonderful guitarist with chops to burn. But he’s a sensitive soloist and often plays simple melodies with little embellishment.  Playing as many notes as you can at every opportunity suggests some combination of insecurity and immaturity to me.  

Herb Pomeroy was a great musician (trumpet) and educator who taught for years at Berklee College of Music. One of his best lecture topics was what he called the time-intensity curve.  At least in mainstream jazz, the most interesting and moving solos usually have some kind of structure.  Some start with simple repetition of a few key notes in the melody and build steadily to the end with faster runs, wider intervals, etc in linear ascending fashion. Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck were masters at this.  Others prefer a U or V curve and dive in with a flurry, throw a change-up of some kind (eg quieter, less frenzied as with quarter notes instead of 16ths, etc), then scream out again to the end. How a musician structures and builds solos is part of his or her musicianship.  Solos with time-intensity curves that look like EKGs are usually some combination of boring and annoying.

 

This approach is also integral to both classical composition and its interpretation by players and conductors. Compare Jose Iturbi’s Chopin to Artur Rubinstein’s Chopin.  They can’t improvise by substituting notes, but they do so in their timing, articulation, dynamics etc.  Everything from vibrato to how a violinist holds a bow against the strings is fair game.  Many classical  composers meant those who performed their works to go beyond the notation.  Brahms is a great example - listen to various performances of his clarinet quintet op 115 to hear how it can be played. Compare Stolzman to Benda to Wlach for 3 different takes on the same piece. 

 

The best players in jazz evolved as artists while perfecting their technical skills.  Before Coltrane and Miles got so far out on stylistic limbs that they risked falling, they mastered their instruments.  There’s a great story about a jazz fan who found a way to get the room next to Charlie Parker’s in a hotel in DC where Parker was playing a concert.  Bird was known to practice in his hotel room - so the fan in question brought a tape recorder to capture what he thought would be an exciting musical treasure.  But what Parker practiced that day was holding long single notes and making them louder and quieter while perfectly maintaining pitch (which is hard to do and essential for top players).

 

[bluesman]

13 hours ago, gmgraves said:

By the way, do you like the sound of bagpipes? Do you see where I’m going here?

It's funny you should mention that.  Personally, I find the sound of most bagpipe music to be annoying in the extreme.  But let me introduce you to Rufus Harley, sadly gone now but a fascinating fellow Philadelphian with whom I had the pleasure of playing a few gigs over the years.  He was a very fine sax player who told me that he suddenly realized he'd have to do something to differentiate himself from other players because there were a lot of very fine sax players.  So he became the world's first jazz bagpiper (at least, according to him).....and a constant challenge to recording engineers.

 

Here's Rufus with the Sun Ra Arkestra playing Coltrane's Love Supreme -

 

 

And here he is blowin' the blues on a 1965 Atlantic release -

 

 

[Bill Brown]

I have really enjoyed this thread.  Lots of interesting ideas exchanged, to be considered, etc.  I caught up this morning and thought of several things:

 

- I have been searching hard for the Leinsdorf Ravel.  I don't stream (in the boonies, contrary to @The Computer Audiophile's impressions of our country's bandwidth mine sucks ), just download when able, so I looked through the ~ 50 albums of his on Qobuz, clicking through the pages in eager anticipation.  Not there :(.  Will keep looking.

 

-  @SJK demonstrated one of the the things I have found.  Many times I have loved a piece of music so much that I have wanted to share it ("check this out, you won't believe it").  It is so tempting, and shows how important music is to us.  Most of the time, though, they don't get it.  I have had to accept that it is ok.  So many differences in taste and interest.  On a side note, with an apology in advance to the females that may be present, I have found that the women in my life have expressed much more interest early in relationships than later.....

 

Many times I have read rave reviews of a piece by people I admire and sought out the musical recommendations, only to find that I admire and respect it but don't love it (as an example with Kiko, aside from a couple of tracks).

 

I have a French brother-in-law on my wife's side who is a brilliant musician, picks up an instrument and learns it, a skill I certainly don't have.  I share something with him and he doesn't get it; he shares a technically stunning artist who I don't think has anything to say and express polite admiration, never to listen again.  I can't stand sentimentality for sentimentality's state or technical wizardry with nothing to say either.

 

-  I believe strongly that almost all of the music that is most important to me, speaks the most deeply, was the hardest to penetrate, perhaps even off-putting initially (lots of Trane).  Inevitably I hear a snippet, then return, then return again, and finally "get it," "hear it."  I think in art that that which initially impresses, that doesn't require depth of study, is eventually found to be fairly superficial.

 

- One of the things I realized with bebop is that yes, the originators were initially trying to do things technically that others wouldn't be able to, and changing the harmonic approach.  With Charlie Parker, though, what I realized eventually is that he is actually playing an intoxicating array of amazing, very melodic elements.  There is a recording where he references Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Dude was a genius.

 

I'll stop my long-windedness and apologize that I wandered away from the original topic.

 

Bill

 

 

[Bill Brown]

Oh, and yes, the entrance to several genres (especially jazz) is made easier through experiencing it live.  It makes sense much more quickly.

 

Bill

[Mayfair]

I can enjoy a "bad" recording of a good performance, for example Artur Schnabel's Beethoven sonata cycle recorded in 1932-33, or Charlie Parker's Dial Sessions, recorded in 1946-47.  I'd love if it their performances had been better recorded, but then I wouldn't be listening to Artur Schnabel or Charlie Parker.   I try to "listen through" the recording to the performance - that's what "sounds good" to me.

 

On the other hand, I can't enjoy a good recording of a bad performance.

[Allan F]

1 hour ago, Mayfair said:

I can enjoy a "bad" recording of a good performance, for example Artur Schnabel's Beethoven sonata cycle recorded in 1932-33, or Charlie Parker's Dial Sessions, recorded in 1946-47.

 

On the other hand, I can't enjoy a good recording of a bad performance.

 

Fair enough. But that was not the original subject of this thread. Rather, it was whether the playback of a bad recording can sound good from a sonic point of view. Somewhere along the way, some have changed the substance of the question being asked, which naturally may change the nature of the answers to be anticipated.

 

I don't believe that it has been suggested that a good performance cannot be enjoyed despite the poor recording quality. Needless to add, a good recording of that same performance would invariably provide even more enjoyment.

[Mayfair]

29 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

Fair enough. But that was not the original subject of this thread. Rather, it was whether the playback of a bad recording can sound good from a sonic point of view. Somewhere along the way, some have changed the substance of the question being asked, which naturally may change the nature of the answers to be anticipated.

 

I don't believe that it has been suggested that a good performance cannot be enjoyed despite the poor recording quality. Needless to add, a good recording of that same performance would invariably provide even more enjoyment.

Hi Allan ,

 

The first paragraph of my comment reads:

 

"I can enjoy a "bad" recording of a good performance, for example Artur Schnabel's Beethoven sonata cycle recorded in 1932-33, or Charlie Parker's Dial Sessions, recorded in 1946-47.  I'd love if it their performances had been better recorded, but then I wouldn't be listening to Artur Schnabel or Charlie Parker.   I try to "listen through" the recording to the performance - that's what "sounds good" to me..."

 

I thought that tied in with "whether the playback of a bad recording can sound good from a sonic point of view." , if not, my apologies.

[StephenJK]

19 hours ago, gmgraves said:

That is a very narrow-minded and egotistical comment. You know nothing about me. I have a very eclectic musical taste. I like everything from grand opera to Sinatra, and from “Bird” Parker and Stan Getz to Beethoven and Shostakovich. I also like Roy Orbison and The Beach Boys. I am also a fan of film scores from Max Steiner and Wolfgang Korngold to Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams with my absolute favorite being Miklos Rozsa. And I love Celtic folk music, and America folk Music from the likes of Joan Baez, and Ian & Sylvia. So don’t presume to tell me that I lead a limited life. 
 

By the way, do you like the sound of bagpipes? Do you see where I’m going here?

Dude. 

 

I wasn't trying to pick a fight with you, I was simply making a comment from my perspective.  If you make grand statements and proudly proclaim that you heard of the Beatles but never heard their music then expect to get called out.  That's like saying you like jazz guitar but don't like George Benson - you like flamenco but you don't like Manitas de Plata - you like blues but you don't like John Lee Hooker.

 

This isn't a political consensus forum, it's a music forum for goodness sake.  

 

The Beatles.  If any one single group on this planet made a distinct and dramatic change in every facet of the pop and rock music business it was them.  Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was a seminal moment and an inspiration for countless musicians up to this day.  

[bluesman]

2 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

With Charlie Parker, though, what I realized eventually is that he is actually playing an intoxicating array of amazing, very melodic elements.  There is a recording where he references Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Dude was a genius.

This is true for many of the greats of bop and jazz in general.  Despite being known for honking horns and dissonance, Roland Kirk had an encyclopedic knowledge of music and was a master of his instruments (even when playing three at once).  Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie and many many others were true masters of their instruments.  Their improvisations were (as you describe it so well) intoxicating, melodic, and truly amazing.  Paul Desmond had an astounding knowledge of music and loved to work brief quotes into his solos.  Interestingly, he too was fond of quoting Stravinsky's music in his playing.

[gmgraves]

13 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

I guess the more "esoteric" style for me is bebop but whatever the style where it sometimes loses me is where a jazz song is playing which I like very much and then each artist has a turn at doing a solo bit. Sometimes they take a detour/improvisation that seems to say more about  their virtuosity on the instrument than doing service to the song. It can mesmerize me when I hear it live but much less so on radio or over a high end playback system.The analogy with some modern vocalists is the vocal "gymnastics" they do, because they can.

 

Sorry, really not trying to offend. Barry Diament is a jazz fan, I forget the style of New York jazz he mentioned but he said "you have to work at it a bit" (me not him).  he plays jazz so I think it opens up different sensibilities.

Well, I’m with you about bebop. I’ve always thought that bebop, as a style of jazz, was more an indulgence aimed at the musicians as opposed to the listener. I’m sure that it’s loads of fun for the player to play, not so sure about the listener. But, obviously there are some jazz aficionados who love it, and although I can listen to it, like avant-garde classical which is atonal and contrapuntal, I’d rather listen to something a bit less intellectual and more tuneful.

[Allan F]

1 hour ago, Mayfair said:

Hi Allan ,

 

The first paragraph of my comment reads:

 

"I can enjoy a "bad" recording of a good performance, for example Artur Schnabel's Beethoven sonata cycle recorded in 1932-33, or Charlie Parker's Dial Sessions, recorded in 1946-47.  I'd love if it their performances had been better recorded, but then I wouldn't be listening to Artur Schnabel or Charlie Parker.   I try to "listen through" the recording to the performance - that's what "sounds good" to me..."

 

I thought that tied in with "whether the playback of a bad recording can sound good from a sonic point of view." , if not, my apologies.

 

There is absolutely no reason for any apologies. Your post was valid and appropriate from how you viewed the issue. Perhaps it's a subtle distinction, but I understood the original post to contemplate the technical sound quality only, and not the quality or enjoyment of the performance. IOW, can a poor recording sound better on a high-end system? The majority opined that it would not because the system would be more revealing of the flaws. A poor recording may "sound good" because of the performance, but not because of good sound.

[gmgraves]

3 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

I have really enjoyed this thread.  Lots of interesting ideas exchanged, to be considered, etc.  I caught up this morning and thought of several things:

 

- I have been searching hard for the Leinsdorf Ravel.  I don't stream (in the boonies, contrary to @The Computer Audiophile's impressions of our country's bandwidth mine sucks ), just download when able, so I looked through the ~ 50 albums of his on Qobuz, clicking through the pages in eager anticipation.  Not there :(.  Will keep looking.

Ok, I am sure it was re-issued several times on CD. The last was when BMG (who bought the RCA Victor catalog - Sony has it now) released it on hybrid SACD/regular CD. Check with Amazon, they may have it.

3 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

 

-  @SJK demonstrated one of the the things I have found.  Many times I have loved a piece of music so much that I have wanted to share it ("check this out, you won't believe it").  It is so tempting, and shows how important music is to us.  Most of the time, though, they don't get it.  I have had to accept that it is ok.  So many differences in taste and interest.  On a side note, with an apology in advance to the females that may be present, I have found that the women in my life have expressed much more interest early in relationships than later.....

Women, in this society seem to have been brought up (or perhaps it’s instinct) to do just about anything to catch a husband. A classic example is the guy with the open sports car. His new love interest is just crazy about the “darling little car” until that ring is firmly on the third finger of her left hand. Then suddenly it’s a smelly, uncomfortable thing that messes up her hair-do and “please darling, sell the sports car. After all we will need a SUV or a minivan soon when junior eventually arrives.”

I’ve also seen the same ploy work on audiophiles, so you audio types out there who are searching for a mate, BEWARE. There, you’ve been warned! 😉

 

*I don‘t mean to offend anyone with that statement, but I’ve seen it happen too many times for it to be merely a female stereotype. Of course as a misogynist and misogamist, I may be more tuned-in to this sort of female dishonesty than most guys (could this be that’s why it works so well for so long? I wonder.)

[gmgraves]

20 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

There is absolutely no reason for any apologies. Your post was valid and appropriate from how you viewed the issue. Perhaps it's a subtle distinction, but I understood the original post to contemplate the technical sound quality only, and not the quality or enjoyment of the performance. IOW, can a poor recording sound better on a high-end system? The majority indicated that it would not because the system would be more revealing of the flaws. A poor recording may "sound good" because of the performance, but not because of good sound.

I tend to separate the two; the technical quality and the performance quality. And I believe in my late friend, J. Gordon Holt, the founder of Stereophile’s axiom “The better the recording, the poorer the performance and the better the performance, the poorer the recording.” What Gordon was saying there (among other things) is that the employees of large commercial recording companies’ (who tend to have the best performers/orchestras under contract) primary concern is NOT SQ!

[Allan F]

17 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I tend to separate the two; the technical quality and the performance quality. And I believe in my late friend, J. Gordon Holt, the founder of Stereophile’s axiom “The better the recording, the poorer the performance and the better the performance, the poorer the recording.” What Gordon was saying there (among other things) is that the employees of large commercial recording companies’ (who tend to have the best performers/orchestras under contract) primary concern is NOT SQ!

 

To quote the late Ira Gershwin, "It Ain't Necessarily So". But it was true far too much of the time.

[fas42]

13 hours ago, Confused said:

 On other occasions, I might listen to something in the car and think "this sounds terrible, it sounds thin and shrill, treble to slice your head off".  I listen to the same track on the home system, and yes, it sounds terrible, thin and shrill, treble to slice your head off, exactly the same issues as picked up on the lesser in car system.  So in these cases this is not in line with the fas42 philosophy, but a more simple "garbage in garbage out", if there are issues with a recording, a decent audio system will simply faithfully reproduce these issues.

 

This is the coalface ... I had this thinking 15 years ago; but lesson after lesson delivered by a "bad" recording snapping into shape weaned me out of it 🙂 ... these days, I go straight to the recordings in this category - they tell me so, so much about what the rig is getting wrong; so, very little time wasted in frittering away at the edges, making "quite decent" recordings sound a touch better ...

[fas42]

19 hours ago, sandyk said:

 I was exposed to the real sound of the Bagpipes as a child at the local Caledonian Society, as my father and grandfather were born in Scotland. The men , including my father also wore a Kilt.

 

There's bagpipes ... and then there's bagpipes ...

 

 

[fas42]

4 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Fair enough. But that was not the original subject of this thread. Rather, it was whether the playback of a bad recording can sound good from a sonic point of view. Somewhere along the way, some have changed the substance of the question being asked, which naturally may change the nature of the answers to be anticipated.

 

I interpret "can sound good" as meaning that all the technical issues that "mar" what the actual performance would have sounded like, had you actually been at the place where the recording was made, are 'masked' completely, or almost so, by the brain being able to hear past the deficiencies ... this is a completely unconscious mechanism  - if you have "to think about it", then it's a fail ...

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

11 hours ago, bluesman said:

Miles (and I and many others) agree with you.  When he thought someone in his band was just wasting time showing off, he’d say, “If you got nothin’ to say, don’t say nothin’!”
 

A lot of wonderful improvisation is musically fascinating but hard for many to grasp, especially if it’s based on scales or concepts unfamiliar to the listener.  But much of bebop was a “cutting contest”, and many top players were stellar technicians with marginal taste and musical judgment.  They knew all their scales and modes, and could pump them out at breakneck speed through long solos without an error. Many wrote such intricate and difficult melody lines just to embarrass and upstage those who couldn’t play them at speed. This is not musicianship.  

 

The fastest-is-best school is not limited to jazz. For example, Liszt was the bebop king of his day.  He wrote technically difficult music for the same reason, and he was a first rate showoff and braggart.  And if you took away their effects pedals, many rock and metal guitarists would sound like middle schoolers practicing scales and riffs.

 

On the other hand, great players feel no need to show off. Randy Johnston is a wonderful guitarist with chops to burn. But he’s a sensitive soloist and often plays simple melodies with little embellishment.  Playing as many notes as you can at every opportunity suggests some combination of insecurity and immaturity to me.  

Herb Pomeroy was a great musician (trumpet) and educator who taught for years at Berklee College of Music. One of his best lecture topics was what he called the time-intensity curve.  At least in mainstream jazz, the most interesting and moving solos usually have some kind of structure.  Some start with simple repetition of a few key notes in the melody and build steadily to the end with faster runs, wider intervals, etc in linear ascending fashion. Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck were masters at this.  Others prefer a U or V curve and dive in with a flurry, throw a change-up of some kind (eg quieter, less frenzied as with quarter notes instead of 16ths, etc), then scream out again to the end. How a musician structures and builds solos is part of his or her musicianship.  Solos with time-intensity curves that look like EKGs are usually some combination of boring and annoying.

 

This approach is also integral to both classical composition and its interpretation by players and conductors. Compare Jose Iturbi’s Chopin to Artur Rubinstein’s Chopin.  They can’t improvise by substituting notes, but they do so in their timing, articulation, dynamics etc.  Everything from vibrato to how a violinist holds a bow against the strings is fair game.  Many classical  composers meant those who performed their works to go beyond the notation.  Brahms is a great example - listen to various performances of his clarinet quintet op 115 to hear how it can be played. Compare Stolzman to Benda to Wlach for 3 different takes on the same piece. 

 

The best players in jazz evolved as artists while perfecting their technical skills.  Before Coltrane and Miles got so far out on stylistic limbs that they risked falling, they mastered their instruments.  There’s a great story about a jazz fan who found a way to get the room next to Charlie Parker’s in a hotel in DC where Parker was playing a concert.  Bird was known to practice in his hotel room - so the fan in question brought a tape recorder to capture what he thought would be an exciting musical treasure.  But what Parker practiced that day was holding long single notes and making them louder and quieter while perfectly maintaining pitch (which is hard to do and essential for top players).

 

 

fascinating and thank you for the masterclass. As you imply improvisation overlaps with interpretation of the music and in either case doesn't give license to butcher the composition, just to express the music beyond its notation. Very nice.I loved the description of structure within improvisation.👌

[Allan F]

11 hours ago, bluesman said:

The fastest-is-best school is not limited to jazz. For example, Liszt was the bebop king of his day.  He wrote technically difficult music for the same reason, and he was a first rate showoff and braggart.  And if you took away their effects pedals, many rock and metal guitarists would sound like middle schoolers practicing scales and riffs.

 

On the other hand, great players feel no need to show off. Randy Johnston is a wonderful guitarist with chops to burn. But he’s a sensitive soloist and often plays simple melodies with little embellishment.  Playing as many notes as you can at every opportunity suggests some combination of insecurity and immaturity to me.

 

I couldn't agree with you more. IMO, your comments apply particularly well to many "shredder" guitarists whose main goal is to impress you with how many notes they can play in a second. Give me a soulful blues bend instead any day of the week.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

4 hours ago, Mayfair said:

"I can enjoy a "bad" recording of a good performance, for example Artur Schnabel's Beethoven sonata cycle recorded in 1932-33, or Charlie Parker's Dial Sessions, recorded in 1946-47.  I'd love if it their performances had been better recorded, but then I wouldn't be listening to Artur Schnabel or Charlie Parker.   I try to "listen through" the recording to the performance - that's what "sounds good" to me..."

I thought that tied in with "whether the playback of a bad recording can sound good from a sonic point of view." , if not, my apologies.

 

5 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Fair enough. But that was not the original subject of this thread. Rather, it was whether the playback of a bad recording can sound good from a sonic point of view. Somewhere along the way, some have changed the substance of the question being asked, which naturally may change the nature of the answers to be anticipated.

 

I don't believe that it has been suggested that a good performance cannot be enjoyed despite the poor recording quality. Needless to add, a good recording of that same performance would invariably provide even more enjoyment.

 

46 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

I interpret "can sound good" as meaning that all the technical issues that "mar" what the actual performance would have sounded like, had you actually been at the place where the recording was made, are 'masked' completely, or almost so, by the brain being able to hear past the deficiencies ... this is a completely unconscious mechanism  - if you have "to think about it", then it's a fail ...

 

mea culpa. I was lightly admonished earlier in the thread for not making the topic more specific, less ambiguous.

 

I  started a related thread some years ago when the motivation was about home Eq.This time it was inspired by Frank's well known assertions. It got me thinking whether there were perspectives that were more mainstream that might either support or explain Frank's view. IOW could Frank be right but just not necessarily for the reasons proferred ? I believe there has been interpretations of my OP question that might support this (but I'm not presuming to proclaim anyone right or wrong).

 

Importantly, I did not want this to be about Frank or his specific views , although they are welcome here in context. Importantly, it is not about Frank's "method", there are other threads about this and that discussion would derail this thread.

 

My intent therefore was closest to what Allan describes but I wanted to cast a wider net. I thought it revealing and interesting how the question could be interpreted and to remain open to those perspectives. I don't think it is possible to consider if a bad recording sounds good without thinking about what is a good and bad in the first place.

 

My apologies for the confusion. To be perfectly honest it is just refreshing not to be debating numbers (in the words of Seinfeld, "not that there's anything wrong with that") 🙂

[gmgraves]

6 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

To quote the late Ira Gershwin, "It Ain't Necessarily So". But it was true far too much of the time.

Of course. Nothing is for certain, nothing is “always“. But yes, it happens more than not. We, on this forum were discussing Chandos recordings earlier. They are a perfect example of “Holt’s Law”. Very good performances very mediocre to terrible sound. Of course, I don’t have Frank’s miracle system that makes Edison cylinders sound like 24/192 high-def stereo*.

 

* Reductio ad absurdem, anyone?

 

[Confused]

6 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

This is the coalface ... I had this thinking 15 years ago; but lesson after lesson delivered by a "bad" recording snapping into shape weaned me out of it 🙂 ... these days, I go straight to the recordings in this category - they tell me so, so much about what the rig is getting wrong; so, very little time wasted in frittering away at the edges, making "quite decent" recordings sound a touch better ...

I did say at the end of my post that "I think it is impossible to generalise with the "bad recording" issue".  So what is a bad recording?

 

Much of my post referred to my own subjective observations.  If there is something in the recording that irritates me, then a decent system will faithfully reproduce the irritation.  What irritates me, may not irritate another.  So someone else may be able be able to listen to the same track on a well optimised system, that is doing such a good job extracting every other detail of the music that the listener can indeed listen past the "irritation".  But when I listen, I still just hear the irritation, if it happens to be something I am personally subjectively sensitive to.  As a different example, others in this thread have mentioned issues with sound staging in recordings.  I love a recording with a decent sound stage, but curiously, recordings with obviously poor sound staging do not irritate me.  So I can "listen past" such problems in a recording, and still enjoy the music and the performance.  For others, the poor sound staging in the recording could be so annoying that the track ultimately becomes unlistenable.  

 

This is me, my subjective world.  As a good example of this, if a recording has truly excessive HF, the recording will annoy me.  It will annoy me in the car, it will annoy me on my headphone rig, it will annoy me using an iPhone and earbuds, it will annoy me on almost every hifi system on the planet.  With the possible exceptions of a hifi system with a treble control that has been turned down quite a lot, or maybe a system that has had the tweeters removed, or maybe a tiny radio type speaker with no HF response anyway.  But on any reasonably well set up system, if a recording has way too much treble, it will annoy me.  A decent system will faithfully reproduce the excessive treble.  With this being an aspect I am sensitive to personally, I will not be able to listen past it, no matter how "well sorted" the system

 

But lets argue this point to the ridiculous.  Lets say you had a truly bad recording.  I mean really bad.  Not a case of a 60's recording that may have a touch of tape hiss or HF roll off, or a modern track that may be overly compressed and the mix a touch hot, but something truly terrible.  Maybe a track that has the treble boosted +50dB, and all low frequencies brick wall filtered below 1kHz.  OK - A crazy example, but surely we can all agree that such a recording would sound bad on anything.  As I said, we cannot generalise either about "bad" recordings or as to how one individual may subjectively react to such a bad recording.

[fas42]

50 minutes ago, Confused said:

I did say at the end of my post that "I think it is impossible to generalise with the "bad recording" issue".  So what is a bad recording?

 

... as has been asked, so many times 🙂.

 

50 minutes ago, Confused said:

Much of my post referred to my own subjective observations.  If there is something in the recording that irritates me, then a decent system will faithfully reproduce the irritation. 

 

The nub of it ... a "decent" system may faithfully reproduce that artifact - but, depending upon the makeup of the individual, the message of the music may override, mask the irritation. I have mentioned an appallingly bad mastering of a Gene Pitney's hits CD I have ... poor quality needle drops, and extremely hamfisted noise reduction applied to mend some of the mess; depending upon the quality, and state of the rig this sounds in the range of unbearably atrocious, through to being very difficult to detect - I find it remarkable that the human hearing system can compensate, when the conditions are right; many won't be bothered going to the effort of evolving a setup to this level, but the point is that this is something that's possible.

 

50 minutes ago, Confused said:

 

 But on any reasonably well set up system, if a recording has way too much treble, it will annoy me.  A decent system will faithfully reproduce the excessive treble.  With this being an aspect I am sensitive to personally, I will not be able to listen past it, no matter how "well sorted" the system

 

The treble may be "excessive" - but the amount of non-liner distortion impacting that frequency area is absolutely critical - do everything to reduce the misbehaviour below a certain amount; the mind then accepts the energy as being valid, and compensates. Yes, this may vary per listener; but so far I've found that if I'm happy with the treble, then those around me have no issues with the sound either.

 

50 minutes ago, Confused said:

 

But lets argue this point to the ridiculous.  Lets say you had a truly bad recording.  I mean really bad.  Not a case of a 60's recording that may have a touch of tape hiss or HF roll off, or a modern track that may be overly compressed and the mix a touch hot, but something truly terrible.  Maybe a track that has the treble boosted +50dB, and all low frequencies brick wall filtered below 1kHz.  OK - A crazy example, but surely we can all agree that such a recording would sound bad on anything.  As I said, we cannot generalise either about "bad" recordings or as to how one individual may subjectively react to such a bad recording.

 

If deliberately damaged to an absurd level, then of course there should be reservation about whether one could put up with listening to it. But assuming that it was mastered with the intention of being worthwhile hearing, then IME it can be pushed to the point of working as a satisfying experience.

 

I have hundreds of tracks, over a huge range of "being difficult", in every possible area that SQ can be unpleasant - complete success would be a rig that could handle every single one of them, one after the other ... turns out that the closer one gets to this point, the harder one has to work at refining things a touch more - I choose to do this; others won't.

[StephenJK]

Deleted.

[Allan F]

On 5/16/2020 at 11:27 PM, Confused said:

I did say at the end of my post that "I think it is impossible to generalise with the "bad recording" issue".  So what is a bad recording?

 

Much of my post referred to my own subjective observations.  If there is something in the recording that irritates me, then a decent system will faithfully reproduce the irritation.  What irritates me, may not irritate another.  So someone else may be able be able to listen to the same track on a well optimised system, that is doing such a good job extracting every other detail of the music that the listener can indeed listen past the "irritation".  But when I listen, I still just hear the irritation, if it happens to be something I am personally subjectively sensitive to.  As a different example, others in this thread have mentioned issues with sound staging in recordings.  I love a recording with a decent sound stage, but curiously, recordings with obviously poor sound staging do not irritate me.  So I can "listen past" such problems in a recording, and still enjoy the music and the performance.  For others, the poor sound staging in the recording could be so annoying that the track ultimately becomes unlistenable.

 

The above would appear, unintentionally or otherwise, to define a poor recording as one that is "unlistenable". Surely it does not have to be that bad to be called a poor recording. The fact that you can "listen past" one obvious flaw and someone else can "listen past" another obvious flaw does not change the fact that both are poor recordings. In each case we have an example of a poor recording that may "sound good" to some, but not because of good sound.

 

On 5/16/2020 at 11:27 PM, Confused said:

This is me, my subjective world.  As a good example of this, if a recording has truly excessive HF, the recording will annoy me.  It will annoy me in the car, it will annoy me on my headphone rig, it will annoy me using an iPhone and earbuds, it will annoy me on almost every hifi system on the planet...With this being an aspect I am sensitive to personally, I will not be able to listen past it, no matter how "well sorted" the system...

 

The example above is different. Virtually everyone would consider a recording with "truly excessive HF" of the type you describe to be a poor recording. The test is not whether or not you can "listen past it". Objectively, it is a poor recording.

 

Having said that, there are flaws and there are flaws. There are recordings with minor ones where only a subjective evaluation would  consider it to be a poor recording. With these, it is a question of personal opinion. But there are many with major flaws that can and should generally be considered to be poor recordings. The fact that some can "listen past" those major flaws does not change that characterization.