There is more bad rooms than bad recordings if we listen to classical music ... In jazz there is at least as much bad recordings as there is bad rooms ... For more commercial music the room matter often not or way less because so much recordings are often bad or offensive...
The system/room acoustically translate the recording... A bad translation will spoil the original text so well written it could be... But for a bad text a good translator can improve in decreasing the pain ...
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Chicago II is notoriously known to be a bad recording, or more specially, poorly mastered. "Make Me Smile" and "24 or 6 to 4" are two specific tracks. There are a couple of remixes that sound better, but even with those, you can still hear limitations, with compression and muddiness being the primary issues IMO. My speakers are JM Lab Mezzo Utopia, but you can detect the problems with this album through just about anything. |
Surprisingly, my main listening system has revealed more music interest than often overcomes the technical recorded problems. It is high end and high resolution but a resolution which exposes the music better. The second system has lower resolution and is especially warm and sweet although CD playback only. I've fortunately saved some musically important recordings that had dreadful or boring sound. In the past five years, those recordings have been rescued by the exposure of more of the music, dynamically, color and tonality, etc. Just last night, my friend brought over a John Coltrane and a Grant Green album that he thought were too bland and the latter with a bit of distortion on a few passages. In my system, wow, they were very listenable with only a hint of overload in the Green. He was impressed and so was I! I had a horrible early digital recorded CD until I reheard it on my high end system. The separate threads of symphony, chorus and soloists were greatly enhanced and the rather brittle sound of the chorus was partially reduced with the smoother fuller sounding orchestra. Most of the worst digital recordings tend to be pop and rock while jazz is generally the best, especially when the master recordings were analog tape and not digital (bad mastering/compression, etc). |
@toddalin My experiences with ELP mostly vinyl, I'll have to check out what's available with streams since this my present listening mode. All my vinyl ELP purchased back in the day so likely first or close to first pressings. Perhaps there is a remastered version of Brain Salad Surgery that has better sound quality. I have over 3k vinyl, virtually all purchased back in the day. What I've found is streams may have an advantage in some cases because of remastering, some vinyl produced from worn out stampers and second, third generation or worse masters. My streaming setup has actually increased my enjoyment of many more recordings, what I previously thought were bad recordings often turn out to be ok. |
