Analog: Still Better?

[sandyk]

9 hours ago, fas42 said:

Treble sounding shrill, unpleasant is the result of distortion of the replay chain - if you fix this, strong treble content sounds intense - just like it does in real life.

No, not necessarily.

 As John Dyson has demonstrated on numerous occasions it is quite often the improper use of HF EQ, and sometimes used in the earlier days to make some recordings sound better for airplay on bandwidth limited A.M. radio.

This also sounds likely with ABBA, which  BTW, Barry Diament has heard directly from the masters during his time with Atlantic Records. He described them as Shrill sounding and worse .

 If it sounds OK to you, then your system is insufficiently revealing . 😉

 

 Did you try downloading it and playing it locally ? When playing stuff like this locally , which program do you use, and do you play files from System Memory ?

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, semente said:

I doubt that there'll be much more 20kHz HF information... Just look at the response of the typical mics.

 Many of the more recent ones do

e.g. 

Norah Jones-Feels Like Home >30K
Alexis Cole-A Kiss in the Dark >37K

 

  Looks like some earlier ones are fake , with the look of a typical CD cutoff around 21K

 

 

 

[sandyk]

4 minutes ago, fas42 said:

If ABBA sounds shrill, then you have a bad system - that's how it works.

 Frank

 To put it bluntly , that's BS !

I prefer the word from a highly respected recording and mastering engineer, or for that matter John Dyson who apparently also has access to some of the Masters of different recording artists via his Industry contacts.

What you are currently using to evaluate high quality Audio files will NEVER be up to the task.

 I understand however that SWMBO would be unlikely to approve the expenditure on something way more suitable,

just as I can no longer afford to indulge with what I would like to, so I have to go the DIY route a bit at a time. 

[sandyk]

32 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Alex, a recording engineer should master so that his product sounds reasonable on the widest range of playback equipment. So his perspective is very different from that of someone who aims to get best SQ from the recordings he acquires, from whatever source.

 

Note, my playback has always used Redbook standard material - because absolutely nothing I have come across has even slightly made me interested in anything "better", as regards formats. CD quality replay can deliver completely convincing replay, with the speakers being 100% subjectively invisible, no matter how you listen to them - especially, with ABBA! Now, if your rig can do this with any recording that happens to be thrown your way - then what you're saying would indeed be worth investigating. As an example, @ray-dude sounds like he's got it happening - therefore, what he's using is very much of interest.

Recording Engineers who don't have to answer to "the guys in suits" will invariably provide the highest quality recording, and it will STILL sound O.K. on playback gear such as yours, even though it will not be capable of fully doing it justice.

 My gear is transparent enough to basically  output a close facsimile  of what came off the recording, warts and all, although the speakers are no longer SOTA..

 If you can't hear the completely unacceptable sound of many early CD releases compared with even a decent Vinyl pressing of the same recording session via a good vinyl setup, then your equipment is filtering it out, aided and abetted by your brain, the deficiencies of the mastering that was used for the CD release .

 

Simples !

[sandyk]

8 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

And on that, we'll have to agree to disagree 

I strongly suspect that in this area you won't have too many members that agree with you.

 IF you believe otherwise,  you could always start a Poll  to see what % of members agree with your pronouncements in this area . 😜 

 

[sandyk]

12 hours ago, trailblazers_song said:

When the needle touches the LP groove, game over 🤣🤣

Yeah, we can hear Trailblazers song, Amplify it a little and Kellogg's could use it in an ad for Rice Bubbles 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLeqzEUmymU