2. misc-audio
  3. 147787-77695

Doncha get bummed?

We put a lot of time, effort, and money into getting really nice systems.

And then we have to deal with crummy recordings made by inept engineers.

Yes, many of the older recordings suffer from being from the early days of stereo, but I've gotten a couple of recent recordings that are really bad.  One even had miscellaneous noises (like scraping chairs and ruffling music pages) at the ends on numbers that weren't even edited out.  Poor mic placement resulting in bloated bass.  Bad microphone choice on the piano making it sound muffled.  These are all well-reviewed recordings, too.  Huh?

Piano in the middle with no width or depth.  Bass out of the right speaker, drums out of the left.  Ho hum.

And microphone choices for female vocals!  Terrible more often than excellent.  Veiled, compressed, metallic.  Blecch.  Sucks the testosterone right out of me.

I have one relatively recent recording where the drums are clipped in every track.  Clipped.  Awful-sounding.

If it weren't for Manfred Eicher at ECM I'd probably shoot myself.

Bums me out.  Maybe I'll go back to a Japanese transistor radio from the 60s.
bbarlow690

Showing 1 response by douglas_schroeder

douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
As System Builder the more superior a system is, the more that will be retrieved from the source. If you wish to have less of the extraneous noise, then you are wishing for a poorer sound quality. Imo that’s not very desirable.

When my system is set up optimally all recordings sound fantastic, and if they don’t then there needs to be more work done on it. I have no desire to enjoy a system where only some recordings are worthy or listenable.

Further, I suggest that if your goal is to make most recordings homogenous, then you are building a mediocre rig. 
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