CD Revival?

[Macca]

Why is much current music recorded worse than older stuff? I've heard the argument it's recorded to sound good on radio, so was stuff from the 40s 50s 60s ? That's not meant to be argumeantative, I honestly don't get it

Quiet bits don't really work on the radio given that most radios sound pretty poor so pop gets mixed to punch out a bit. They're not really expecting their target market to play it on a quality audio system. So when digital came along you had the loudness wars where everything was banged up to the max. No dynamics just a wall of sound.

This didn't affect proper music so much though until remastering started and they banged all the old stuff up to the max as well. That's why it's usually best to go for the original CD release rather than a remaster or later edition.

[Pieoftheday]

More like the fact that the vast majority of the music buying public only have crap equipment to play music on, so nobody bothers too much about recording and production quality, 'cos most wouldn't notice.

But does that mean the people producing music today don't care? And don't the artists care if what they put out sounds pants? I have a fair few albums from the 80s 90s that sound crap/hard, I've often thought what the fook were they thinking!

[walpurgis]

But does that mean the people producing music today don't care? And don't the artists care if what they put out sounds pants? I have a fair few albums from the 80s 90s that sound crap/hard, I've often thought what the fook were they thinking!

It's not that they don't care. They just don't know better. And as for artists, the pop music business is generally a money oriented machine turning out dross for the masses 'performed' (for want of a better word) by pretty girls and boys, chosen for their looks and not much else. Shortcomings in ability are dealt with in the studio. Proper musicians tend not to feature so often in mainstream music sales, but no doubt some would have input on sound quality.

[Pieoftheday]

It's not that they don't care. They just don't know better. And as for artists, the pop music business is generally a money oriented machine turning out dross for the masses 'performed' (for want of a better word) by pretty girls and boys, chosen for their looks and not much else. Shortcomings in ability are dealt with in the studio. Proper musicians tend not to feature so often in mainstream music sales, but no doubt some would have input on sound quality.

It's enough to give it all up and buy a sonos

[Macca]

But does that mean the people producing music today don't care? And don't the artists care if what they put out sounds pants? I have a fair few albums from the 80s 90s that sound crap/hard, I've often thought what the fook were they thinking!

Which albums?

[Pieoftheday]

Which albums?

All the stone roses, radiohead Pablo honey , im not listing all of them. Toy Dolls Anthology is perfect

[Macca]

All the stone roses, radiohead Pablo honey , 8m not listing all of them. Toy Dolls Anthology is perfect

Don't know if you are talking vinyl or cd but I've got both the Stone Roses albums on CD and vinyl. Agree neither is a top class recording but not hard sounding and neither sounds crap or I wouldn't still play them. Not got any Radiohead or Toy Dolls but I'm familiar with them. Can imagine Toy dolls sounding a bit brash on a 'forward sounding' system but not Radiohead.


Have to say I think it might be the balance of your system James. Although I'll grant that mine swings slightly the other way and is slightly too soft.

[Barry]

A lot of stories were made up over the years and turned into urban myths. But the reality is quite different.
I was one of the 1st group of 10 repair engineers to be trained up by the likes of Sony, Philips etc to service the CD players that they were going to release. And from the outset we were told that the discs were 16 bit, whilst some players were as low as 12 bits due to lack of technical knowledge at that stage to make 16 bit players cheaper. Those lower bit players produced a very bright sound due to their limited D to A capabilities.

There was also a problem with regards to the de-emphasis requirements. HIFI users were accustomed to the RIAA curve from vinyl. The de-emphasis used on CD was alien to the new adaptors of CD, and it had to be eventually changed. Some disc players and even DACs (my TC-7510 for instance) have an extra bit of circuitry to recognize the older discs and their emphasis, and convert it to the later decoding curve.
It's not that they didn't know and didn't care. How would they have known? It was all new and CD engineers were as much in the dark as the sound engineers about how to get the best fro the new medium.

By the way I still have most of my discs that I bought in the eighties, and they sound terrific.

Surely any de-emphasis is performed within the DAC: all CD inputs on preamps are flat line-level inputs with a sensitivity of 1 - 2V for full output.

Certainly there used to be a problem with CD players overloading a line-level input on some '70s vintage amplifiers - leading to a flat and 'grey' SQ.

[struth]

A bit harsh on modern CDs. Most Ive got are very good. A lot of the remixing done also helps with headphone listening too

[Pieoftheday]

Don't know if you are talking vinyl or cd but I've got both the Stone Roses albums on CD and vinyl. Agree neither is a top class recording but not hard sounding and neither sounds crap or I wouldn't still play them. Not got any Radiohead or Toy Dolls but I'm familiar with them. Can imagine Toy dolls sounding a bit brash on a 'forward sounding' system but not Radiohead.


Have to say I think it might be the balance of your system James. Although I'll grant that mine swings slightly the other way and is slightly too soft.

It occurred to me that I havnt listened to those albums(cd) well flac files now,for a long time and probably not on my current set up,so I gave them a whirl today and other than Turns into Stone,they all sound really good, even Turns into Stone didn't sound as bad as I recall so maybe my previous set up or set ups wernt up to scratch, you live n learn