Can Bad Recordings sound Good?

[Rexp]

2 hours ago, sandyk said:

 Not in this case. The Adele 21 recording is clearly OVER COMPRESSED, and NO decent rig will ever make it sound great or do it justice, and that includes yours too, in it's original form.

 It appears to be mastered for listening via ear buds in noisy public transport etc.

I think some tracks like 'Rolling in the deep' were mastered for single release and sound better on a car radio than a high end system. Others like 'One & only' sound ok. 

[fas42]

Rolling in the Deep is fine - however, the rig playing it has to be on its best behaviour... Which makes it an excellent tool for troubleshooting... 

[Confused]

On 5/27/2020 at 12:11 AM, sandyk said:

Confused

Adele-Rumour Has It. This is what SeeDeClip Duo Pro did for this track.

Note the improved soundstage too. It can also be played directly using the Dropbox player

Alex

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zwhkyr2cp3vzfo0/102. Rumour Has It_2.wav?dl=0

Interesting, thanks for posting.  I only got around to listening to this today, but yes, it is subtly better I think.  At first listen I thought it was much the same, it still sounds like a decent but overly compressed recording, but I did notice a better separation and clarity of instruments, in particular some guitar sections were easier to follow, and similar with piano.  To be honest, I would not describe it as transformational in any way, but certainly a touch clearer.  As I said, very interesting, and thanks for sharing.

[Confused]

OK - Here is another track as an example.  I would not say this is "bad" recording as such, but for me it is mixed way too bright, which makes it somewhat fatiguing and unpleasant to listen too.  I also recognise that in all probability, nobody reading this thread would want to listen to Neneh Cherry anyway, but  that is not the point, I offer this as an example of  specific recording mastering issue.

 

There were some posts earlier in this thread that were making a point that I essentially agree with, that tweaking a system to make "bad" recordings sound "good" can potentially be the same thing as adding coloration.  With the particular track below, I can actually make it sound a lot better on my system with the simple act of turning the treble down a few dB's.  In this case I am fortunate that I am running an amp that features tone controls.  In this specific case, I would not class this as "coloration", but a simple case of tweaking the system to compensate for issues in the recording.  A bit of crude "on the fly" remastering if you like.  Plus of course, when listening to a recording that does not suffer this kind of tonal imbalance, the tone control goes back to flat. 

 

Of course if you have a system with treble issues, fundamentally too bright, HF distortions or whatever, then tweaking the system will help improve this track, or any other.  But even if a system reached perfection, the issues in the recording would remain, and tweaking the treble down would help.  Conversely, I guess this track might sound just fine on a system with a few issues, such as intrinsically dull or recessed treble.  A "good" system won't save it though....

 

(as an aside, I also wonder if this might be an example of un-decoded pre-emphasis?)

 

 

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, Confused said:

OK - Here is another track as an example.  I would not say this is "bad" recording as such, but for me it is mixed way too bright, which makes it somewhat fatiguing and unpleasant to listen too.  I also recognise that in all probability, nobody reading this thread would want to listen to Neneh Cherry anyway, but  that is not the point, I offer this as an example of  specific recording mastering issue.

 

You should be better able to judge the mastering from the 529kbps audio

 

P.S.

 According to Sound Forge 9 there is no obvious clipping.

 

Outré Risqué Locomotive-0x0002.aac

[Rexp]

1 hour ago, Confused said:

OK - Here is another track as an example.  I would not say this is "bad" recording as such, but for me it is mixed way too bright, which makes it somewhat fatiguing and unpleasant to listen too.  I also recognise that in all probability, nobody reading this thread would want to listen to Neneh Cherry anyway, but  that is not the point, I offer this as an example of  specific recording mastering issue.

 

There were some posts earlier in this thread that were making a point that I essentially agree with, that tweaking a system to make "bad" recordings sound "good" can potentially be the same thing as adding coloration.  With the particular track below, I can actually make it sound a lot better on my system with the simple act of turning the treble down a few dB's.  In this case I am fortunate that I am running an amp that features tone controls.  In this specific case, I would not class this as "coloration", but a simple case of tweaking the system to compensate for issues in the recording.  A bit of crude "on the fly" remastering if you like.  Plus of course, when listening to a recording that does not suffer this kind of tonal imbalance, the tone control goes back to flat. 

 

Of course if you have a system with treble issues, fundamentally too bright, HF distortions or whatever, then tweaking the system will help improve this track, or any other.  But even if a system reached perfection, the issues in the recording would remain, and tweaking the treble down would help.  Conversely, I guess this track might sound just fine on a system with a few issues, such as intrinsically dull or recessed treble.  A "good" system won't save it though....

 

(as an aside, I also wonder if this might be an example of un-decoded pre-emphasis?)

 

 

Like you say its too bright, other than that its quite good, (listening on Tidal). There is a less bright remastered version that sounds worse. 

[fas42]

12 hours ago, Confused said:

Of course if you have a system with treble issues, fundamentally too bright, HF distortions or whatever, then tweaking the system will help improve this track, or any other.  But even if a system reached perfection, the issues in the recording would remain, and tweaking the treble down would help.  Conversely, I guess this track might sound just fine on a system with a few issues, such as intrinsically dull or recessed treble.  A "good" system won't save it though....

 

"Too bright" to me always means that there is non-linear distortion in the treble region - a bargain basement car radio will sound too bright, when the 'wrong' track is played - and it's obvious why: the sound is unpleasantly distorted; the treble sounds in the mix are miles from what they should be like. And the solution is also the same here - just wind the tone control right down ... the distortion hasn't gone away, you've just made it less noticeable.

 

IME, tracks with even extreme levels of treble content are not a problem with a fully capable system; the ear/brain adjusts quite unconsciously to this 'imbalance', and it's fully enjoyable to listen to. However, all bets are off if that treble material is audibly distorted by the playback chain - it rapidly becomes impossible to listen to; you'll hit the Stop button ... it's, "bad" playback ...

 

[gmgraves]

56 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

"Too bright" to me always means that there is non-linear distortion in the treble region - a bargain basement car radio will sound too bright, when the 'wrong' track is played - and it's obvious why: the sound is unpleasantly distorted; the treble sounds in the mix are miles from what they should be like. And the solution is also the same here - just wind the tone control right down ... the distortion hasn't gone away, you've just made it less noticeable.

 

IME, tracks with even extreme levels of treble content are not a problem with a fully capable system; the ear/brain adjusts quite unconsciously to this 'imbalance', and it's fully enjoyable to listen to. However, all bets are off if that treble material is audibly distorted by the playback chain - it rapidly becomes impossible to listen to; you'll hit the Stop button ... it's, "bad" playback ...

 

Your ear/brain might adjust quite unconsciously to this 'imbalance', but mine rejects it with a “Life’s too short to put-up with lousy recordings” and simply will not accept such recordings. And your insistence to the contrary, no system can “fix” a lousy recording. Nothing can properly “uncompress” a badly compressed recording, not even a fully adjustable DBX unit - I’ve been down that rabbit hole before. Nothing can “undistort” a distorted recording. No system can fix a recording made with a forest of microphones and a myriad of tracks to allow it to sound like a real stereo recording with a real soundstage and actual imaging. Nothing one can do will remove the non-linear distortion in the treble region that people call “overly bright”. Nothing can remove layers of veils of distortion and phase anomalies that plague so many poor recordings. And no system can fix (or any ear “listen around”) a Colpix soundtrack recordings (“The Long Ships“ or the soundtrack to “Phaedra”) for instance. These records sound like they were recorded acoustically with “Little Nipper’s” horn feeding a nail being dragged through a wax cylinder! Why you keep insisting that a “properly set up playback system” can overcome these abominations of studio incompetences, is beyond me. Everybody knows you’re full of crap, here Frank, and that you and your “method” have no credibility (especially on this subject) and it makes me wonder why you continue to foist this ridiculous charade on the rest of us???!!!!!

 
 

 

[fas42]

56 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Why you keep insisting that a “properly set up playback system” can overcome these abominations of studio incompetences, is beyond me. Everybody knows you’re full of crap, here Frank, and that you and your “method” have no credibility (especially on this subject) and it makes me wonder why you continue to foist this ridiculous charade on the rest of us???!!!!!

 

 

Why I do so is because the attitude of people like you, George, shouldn't be allowed to set the standard for playback competence - I have had to suffer the incompetent SQ from sound reinforcement systems for too long, that "pro" people have constantly foisted on us, because they can't be bothered switching their brains on - just plug it in, fiddle with EQ sliders, and let the audience suffer the crap that comes out - is the attitude.

 

Luckily, recordings aren't not so deadly damaged - and a well optimised rig brings out the best in them ... if people want to keep on living in the mud of how "pro's" think about sound, good luck to them - those who want to enjoy what truly clean reproduction brings to the party can rejoice, because that option is always available ... as it always has been.

[kumakuma]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

Why I do so is because the attitude of people like you, George, shouldn't be allowed to set the standard for playback competence - I have had to suffer the incompetent SQ from sound reinforcement systems for too long, that "pro" people have constantly foisted on us, because they can't be bothered switching their brains on - just plug it in, fiddle with EQ sliders, and let the audience suffer the crap that comes out - is the attitude.

 

Frank, this may come in handy when crafting your posts. Pay special attention to the section on fallacies of defective induction.

 

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Why I do so is because the attitude of people like you, George, shouldn't be allowed to set the standard for playback competence - I have had to suffer the incompetent SQ from sound reinforcement systems for too long, that "pro" people have constantly foisted on us, because they can't be bothered switching their brains on - just plug it in, fiddle with EQ sliders, and let the audience suffer the crap that comes out - is the attitude.

But that has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the subject at hand. Yes, SR systems suck. They always have, they likely always will. I have been to concerts where, when walking into the hall, and noticing speakers sitting on the stage, I have walked right out. If I paid for tickets, I demand my money back. I tell the management that if I wanted to listen to amplified music, I’d have stayed home because I have much better speakers there than are on that stage. But that’s not important when talking about lousy recordings!

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Luckily, recordings aren't not so deadly damaged - and a well optimised rig brings out the best in them ... if people want to keep on living in the mud of how "pro's" think about sound, good luck to them - those who want to enjoy what truly clean reproduction brings to the party can rejoice, because that option is always available ... as it always has been.

I don’t know what universe you are in, but it my world, bad recordings are even worse than sound reinforcement, because when a concert is over, so is the bad sound. But the bad recording sounds bad every time you play it! And yes recordings most assuredly are that “deadly damaged”. 

[fas42]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

But that has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the subject at hand. Yes, SR systems suck. They always have, they likely always will. I have been to concerts where, when walking into the hall, and noticing speakers sitting on the stage, I have walked right out. If I paid for tickets, I demand my money back. I tell the management that if I wanted to listen to amplified music, I’d have stayed home because I have much better speakers there than are on that stage. But that’s not important when talking about lousy recordings!

 

Why I mentioned SR, is because I see the same issues at play, at a far more obvious level - the people who set them up can't "hear" that their equipment is doing a bad job of translating the microphone pickup into louder sound; if pointed out, they would just shrug their shoulders and say, that's as good as it gets ...

 

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

I don’t know what universe you are in, but it my world, bad recordings are even worse than sound reinforcement, because when a concert is over, so is the bad sound. But the bad recording sounds bad every time you play it! And yes recordings most assuredly are that “deadly damaged”. 

 

Yes, in your world you have access to lots of recordings which sound bad ... to you - if that was the only world that existed I would have given away audio a long, long time ago. But it's not too difficult to find a number of people, especially these days, who have progressed beyond that ... the arguments will still happen as to whether a particular recording is "bad" or not - I just happened to have worked at this sort of thing longer, and have learnt what's possible ... rather than cling to a set of beliefs which I have had for forever, 😉.

[firedog]

22 hours ago, Confused said:

nobody reading this thread would want to listen to Neneh Cherry anyway,

Why? I like her. Not everything she does is like her 80's pop hits.

 

[Confused]

24 minutes ago, firedog said:

Why? I like her. Not everything she does is like her 80's pop hits.

 

Actually, I just made this statement in an attempt to stop the thread being derailed by going off topic with people responding that they do not like this kind of music or that kind of music..  Rather I was hoping people would focus on the actual point I was making, rather than commenting on genres or whatever..

 

Well, it looks like that backfired! 

 

As it happens, I picked up on this particular recording sounding overly bright, to my ears at least, when listening to it myself recently, I like Neneh Cheery too. 

 

As a rule, I tend not to comment on this forum regarding music I do not like.  I am sure that many on this forum would dislike 90% of what I listen too, and similarly I would not like 90% what they listen too.  But so what?  There is plenty of music out there, and we can all listen to what gives us pleasure, no need to get in an argument about it.

 

So yes, apologies for how I phrased that one, I think I broke my own golden rule, I should have been more careful with my words.

[Confused]

21 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

You should be better able to judge the mastering from the 529kbps audio

 

P.S.

 According to Sound Forge 9 there is no obvious clipping.

 

Outré Risqué Locomotive-0x0002.aac 4.74 MB · 2 downloads

 

As it happens, I picked up on this track sounding overly bright when listening to my own red book version.  I listened to the YouTube version, and with respect to this particular recording annoyance, the You Tube version also sounded overly bright.  OK - my red book version sounds better, but what is interesting here is that the aspect of this recording that I found to be annoying was apparent and pretty much identical to me in a You Tube clip and in a 16/44.1 version, so the recording issue came through regardless of format, and was similarly annoying to me regardless of recording format.  This perhaps goes against Frank's observation that linear distortions in the system itself dictate how I subjectively observe recording issues?  Perhaps true in some cases, but not all I think.

[Confused]

10 hours ago, fas42 said:

"Too bright" to me always means that there is non-linear distortion in the treble region - a bargain basement car radio will sound too bright, when the 'wrong' track is played - and it's obvious why: the sound is unpleasantly distorted; the treble sounds in the mix are miles from what they should be like. And the solution is also the same here - just wind the tone control right down ... the distortion hasn't gone away, you've just made it less noticeable.

What do you mean by non-linear distortion exactly?  If you are referring to harmonics, this will make little or no difference to how bright something sounds in absolute terms.  For me this point is simple, very simple.  If you have a low distortion system, with a flat frequency response, and feed it a "bight" recording, it should sound bright.

 

10 hours ago, fas42 said:

IME, tracks with even extreme levels of treble content are not a problem with a fully capable system; the ear/brain adjusts quite unconsciously to this 'imbalance', and it's fully enjoyable to listen to. However, all bets are off if that treble material is audibly distorted by the playback chain - it rapidly becomes impossible to listen to; you'll hit the Stop button ... it's, "bad" playback …

 

I have never found this.  My ear/brain system does not adjust unconsciously to this 'imbalance'.  In fact the opposite happens, it eats away at me and drives me crazy.  We are not all the same.  OK - you could respond here with something about sorted rigs and non-linear distortions, but this misses the point completely that you have no idea how MY ear / brain system reacts to things, or anyone else's ear / brain system for that matter .  To be clear, I have listened to some very decent and well set up systems, these systems sound fine with some recordings, overly bright with others.  I could just as easily state that your ear/brain system will adjust unconsciously to non-linear distortions in the system, but this would be nonsense, and I would have no basis to make such a statement.

 

I cannot comment on your experience, but it would perhaps be of benefit to you to at least to try to understand that not everyone will perceive things as you do.

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, Confused said:

As it happens, I picked up on this track sounding overly bright when listening to my own red book version.  I listened to the YouTube version, and with respect to this particular recording annoyance, the You Tube version also sounded overly bright.  OK - my red book version sounds better, but what is interesting here is that the aspect of this recording that I found to be annoying was apparent and pretty much identical to me in a You Tube clip and in a 16/44.1 version, so the recording issue came through regardless of format, and was similarly annoying to me regardless of recording format.  This perhaps goes against Frank's observation that linear distortions in the system itself dictate how I subjectively observe recording issues?  Perhaps true in some cases, but not all I think.

 

My system is very transparent and quite low distortion, and like Frank I am left wondering if something in your system may have been emphasising this problem further ?  Yes, it is a bright and dynamic sounding recording with a  wide stereo image.

 Perhaps John Dyson can verify if it has an improperly decoded Dolby-A problem.

 

[Confused]

21 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

My system is very transparent and quite low distortion, and like Frank I am left wondering if something in your system may have been emphasising this problem further ?  Yes, it is a bright and dynamic sounding recording with a  wide stereo image.

 Perhaps John Dyson can verify if it has an improperly decoded Dolby-A problem.

 

What does it sound like on your system exactly?  You say it's bright, is it too bright?  All I am saying is that it sounds too bright to me, and too be honest it does not look like you are saying anything that different.  At what point does bright become too bright?  Plus, it might be a pre-emphasis issue, not Dolby A.

 

One thing I would say, 99% of what I listen to on my system does not sound too bright to me.

[John Dyson]

10 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Your ear/brain might adjust quite unconsciously to this 'imbalance', but mine rejects it with a “Life’s too short to put-up with lousy recordings” and simply will not accept such recordings. And your insistence to the contrary, no system can “fix” a lousy recording. Nothing can properly “uncompress” a badly compressed recording, not even a fully adjustable DBX unit - I’ve been down that rabbit hole before. Nothing can “undistort” a distorted recording. No system can fix a recording made with a forest of microphones and a myriad of tracks to allow it to sound like a real stereo recording with a real soundstage and actual imaging. Nothing one can do will remove the non-linear distortion in the treble region that people call “overly bright”. Nothing can remove layers of veils of distortion and phase anomalies that plague so many poor recordings. And no system can fix (or any ear “listen around”) a Colpix soundtrack recordings (“The Long Ships“ or the soundtrack to “Phaedra”) for instance. These records sound like they were recorded acoustically with “Little Nipper’s” horn feeding a nail being dragged through a wax cylinder! Why you keep insisting that a “properly set up playback system” can overcome these abominations of studio incompetences, is beyond me. Everybody knows you’re full of crap, here Frank, and that you and your “method” have no credibility (especially on this subject) and it makes me wonder why you continue to foist this ridiculous charade on the rest of us???!!!!!

 
 

 

About not being able to 'undistort' a recording....  Once a signal is compressed by a 'loudness wars' DRC compressor, it is impractical to remove the modulation distortion, and matching the compression curves is impractical also.   As a compressor gets closer and closer to inf:1 (whether dB linear or not), matching the compression curve with expansion really does become impossible.

 

I did listen to a copy of the Adele 21 thing, and the compression that I heard and measured was on the order as strong--pe9k=4,-1.5 as the ABBA "The Complete Studio Recordings), but actually sounded worse.   I cannot even guess there there would have been 'artists intent' with Adele 21, and that is very sad.   ABBA music was actually planned to be playable through an AM radio recognizing that it would be further damaged -- the TCSR actually does sound 'okay', it is just that I personally don't like a lot of compression.  (Tretow seemed to know what to do and what not to do to make the ABBA stuff sound good on AM radio.)   Adele doesn't make that kind of music, and some dynamic range seem to benefit her works.

 

John

 

[John Dyson]

--pe9k=4,-1.5

43 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

My system is very transparent and quite low distortion, and like Frank I am left wondering if something in your system may have been emphasising this problem further ?  Yes, it is a bright and dynamic sounding recording with a  wide stereo image.

 Perhaps John Dyson can verify if it has an improperly decoded Dolby-A problem.

 

The brightness added by DolbyA (even when it is used in its unequalized form) isn't created by strong amounts of compression.  DolbyA is damned fast compression, but not HARD compression.   After a signal gets above -10dB, then DolbyA is done with its job.  It does nothing above -10dB at high frequencies, and nothing above -20dB at 100-3kHz.  (Below 80Hz, it is somewhere in between.)   So, if you hear a really hard, peak-limited style compression, that is most likely not DolbyA by itself.

 

They CAN use DolbyA to brighten material artistically, and it was used on Karen Carpenter's vocals, but it has to be done intelligently with some EQ during mixing, because DolbyA will tend to overly brighten the sound.

 

All I know is that I tried to 'decode' Adele21, and nothing that I could do would repair the recording...   The music might have been enjoyable, but the compression and even compression distortion was distracting to me -- very distracting.  I'd have to have already been an Adele listener to have appreciated the music.

 

John

 

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, Confused said:

What does it sound like on your system exactly?  You say it's bright, is it too bright?  All I am saying is that it sounds too bright to me, and too be honest it does not look like you are saying anything that different.  At what point does bright become too bright?  Plus, it might be a pre-emphasis issue, not Dolby A.

 

 It does sound bright, but I was left wondering if it was an artistic intent as it is quite dynamic with a wide stereo spread.

IOW, a high energy recording. Going by your description I did expect to see some clipping, but this isn't obvious in Sound Forge 9.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, Confused said:

What do you mean by non-linear distortion exactly?  If you are referring to harmonics, this will make little or no difference to how bright something sounds in absolute terms.  For me this point is simple, very simple.  If you have a low distortion system, with a flat frequency response, and feed it a "bight" recording, it should sound bright.

 

In the technical sense of the phrase:

 

Quote

Linear vs. non-linear distortion
A linear distortion is defined as a change in amplitude or phase with no new frequencies added.

A non-linear distortion occurs when new frequency components are generated. Non-linear distortions are what is usually meant by "distortion".

As regards the subjective experience, generated harmonics, non-linear behaviour, in the treble are disturbing to the ear - and the recording has, per the Stereophile Glossay,

 

Quote

glare An unpleasant quality of hardness or brightness, due to excessive low- or mid-treble energy.

 

The key word here is "unpleasant" - say, the replay of a trumpet: this could sound "like the real thing", or, severely unpleasant - both are 'bright' as regards the frequency spectrum - again, it's all about how the mind hears the sound ...

 

Quote

 

I have never found this.  My ear/brain system does not adjust unconsciously to this 'imbalance'.  In fact the opposite happens, it eats away at me and drives me crazy.  We are not all the same.  OK - you could respond here with something about sorted rigs and non-linear distortions, but this misses the point completely that you have no idea how MY ear / brain system reacts to things, or anyone else's ear / brain system for that matter .  To be clear, I have listened to some very decent and well set up systems, these systems sound fine with some recordings, overly bright with others.  I could just as easily state that your ear/brain system will adjust unconsciously to non-linear distortions in the system, but this would be nonsense, and I would have no basis to make such a statement.

 

So, the question is, if you listen to live, acoustic music making, where there is intense treble energy - does this "drive you crazy"?

 

Quote

 

I cannot comment on your experience, but it would perhaps be of benefit to you to at least to try to understand that not everyone will perceive things as you do.

 

Obviously, if the "real thing" bothers you, as I query above, then your hearing does differ from mine - which of course is perfectly understandable, because there is a whole spectrum of how the human senses operate for individuals.

[John Dyson]

Okay, if the subject changed to the 'Locomotive' thing, when listening, I heard the woody midrange that is my now strongest indicator of FeralA.  I just did a quick online/realtime deocde, and it shure sounds FeralA.   Below is  a 30 second snippet of a decoded copy.  BTW, the basic compression used before FeralA DOES sound like artists intent.  The stats coming out of the decoder do tell me that there ARE dynamics in the sound.  My guess is that there is compression before mixing, and some careful mixing going on.  I don't think that the material is 'loudness wars' compression of the whole thing.

Outr-demo.flac

[Confused]

20 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 It does sound bright, but I was left wondering if it was an artistic intent as it is quite dynamic with a wide stereo spread.

IOW, a high energy recording. Going by your description I did expect to see some clipping, but this isn't obvious in Sound Forge 9.

I just found the recording to be too bright, which is different to detecting clipping or distortions, which I did not in this case.

 

I am not sure what it was in my description that lead to this conclusion, but if it was the words "fatiguing" and "unpleasant", I can find this with overly bright recordings without obvious clipping or distortion.

[Confused]

3 hours ago, fas42 said:

So, the question is, if you listen to live, acoustic music making, where there is intense treble energy - does this "drive you crazy"?

 

No it does not.  Plus for the record (accidental pun), I have listened to plenty of live music, both acoustic and otherwise amplified.

 

So, I am never bothered by treble energy in live music, but I am on occasion bothered by overly bright recordings.  I am pretty sure I am not unique in this regard either.  Plus I guess treble energy in a live performance could be annoying if it was purposely designed to be so.  maybe I could start a band, the fingernails on a blackboard trio, or something?  But no, I cannot ever recall being bothered by treble in a live performance.

 

As for if it is the linear distortions in my rig or whatever, we will never know.  Obviously systems can be optimised in this regard, but this fact does not logically mean that it can never a recording issue.  What I can say is that when I do find a recording that sounds too bright, it tends to sound too bright in my car, on my headphone rig, my main system etc., whereas recordings I do not find bright tend to sound OK on everything, in this regard at least.  Using the power of logic, it would appear most likely that the irritating thing is in the recording itself.

 

In terms of the track I posted earlier, one person found it bright, another found it too bright, and I found it too bright.  There really is nothing controversial here.