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The problem with the music

There are lots of people who frequent this site that have spent significant amounts of money to buy the gear that they use to reproduce their music. I would never suggest that you should not have done that, but I wonder if the music industry is not working against you, or at least, not with you.

For the most part studios are using expensive gear to record with, but is it really all that good? Do the people doing the recording have good systems that can reproduce soundstage, detail and all the other things that audiophiles desire, or do they even care about playback?

I know there are labels that are sympathetic to our obsessions, but does Sony/Columbia, Mercury, or RCA etc. give a rats #$%&@ about what we want?

Recordings (digital) have gotten a lot better since the garbage released in the mid 80's. Some of them are even listenable! BUT lots of people are spending lots of money to get great music when the studios don't seem that interested in doing good recordings. Mike Large, director of operations for Real Worl Studios said "The aim of the music is to connect with you on an emotional level; and I'd be prepared to bet that the system you have at home does that better than any of the systems we make records on."

Do recording engineers even care about relating the emotion of the music, or are they just concerned about the mechanics?

What do you think, and can/ should anything be done about it?
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Showing 1 response by jeffreybehr

jeffreybehr's avatar
jeffreybehr
805 posts
 
I agree that some or maybe MOST engineers, producers, and music companies don't care much for recording quality. Seems the small labels like Chesky, Reference, Mapleshade, etc. that are owned by ONE caring person do the best jobs. Telarc seems to be doing a great job at creating natural-sounding orchestral recordings, and they use audiofile-grade equipment.

I'm VERY pleased with most classical multichannel recordings I've bought on DVD-A and SACD; I've certainly kept more than I've sold.

I think each of us should e-mail the companies that produced that BAD recording we just listened to and tell them why we won't be buying any more like it. MAYBE someone will listen. I know that Columbia/CBS/Sony finally figured out they were making excrable recordings in the '60s and '70s. Their stuff from the '90s and '00s sounds MUCH better.
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