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Album covers and hype do not stand the test of time.
A perpetual problem for audiophiles is finding that disc that not only satisfies the soul, but placates the brain as well. While pondering last week's question about the value of his music collection, reader Randy Meenach wondered how much of it actually sounds great.
I've been gathering CD's for the last 10 years, and some of the older ones just don't sound as good as some of the newer ones. I don't know if it's the recording techiques or the manufacturing process, but the difference is there. Overall, I'd say about 75% sound great.
I've more better-recorded vinyl than CDs. Stereophile and Hi-Fi News & Record Review's test CDs sound great. Alan Parsons' recent CDs sound great. Few others stand out. Chesky's are nice also. The rest of my CD collection sounds fairly mediocre. Most of my vinyl sounds really good. I'd love for all recordings to be at least in sight of the standards these recordings reach.
it's important to choose your system so that it doesn't discriminate against your favorite kinds of music. This should be the principal occupation of the music-loving audiophile! It doesn't matter how perfect your system sounds unless it can play the music you have and love.
My system is CD only, and upon initial set-up and for years after, not much of my recorded music sounded good. As I have continued to upgrade, the sound has continued to improve.(the greatest improvement came with the addition of an Audio Alchemy DTI Pro 32) Now most (but not all) of mt CD's sound really good, provided I select the proper absolute phase. In my opinion, audiophiles who do not know how to use the absolute phase switch(or, God forbid, don't have one) can despair of ever getting good sound from their system.
Judging by the empirical evidence that for music to be popular, it must be poorly recorded. There are valuable rare exceptions. Why does this happen? Is it that audiophiles tend to be different from the mainstream in tastes, income or some other factor? Or is it chance?
As I only buy mainstream music, I would go out on limb and say some of it, but on the same token, I am going to say that some also sucks. Well for now, I am going to say "some of it". Live Music remains the measuring stick by which any given musical performance is judged. Charles Purvis Kelly, Jr. chaskelljr1_@hotmail.com
Most of the jazz albums... er... CDs that I have sound good, the exception being the sounds recorded before the 50's or earlier. Pop compilations are usually terrible: MCA is a great offender here, issuing a "best" of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers that is almost unlistenable: grain, glare, and spit. Some pop records sound pretty good: The Nightly and Kamakiriad by Donald Fagen are terrific, and the ubiquitous Clapton Unplugged sounds pretty good as well. Most of my 500-odd CD sound pretty good (I have a good Class-B system), but it is really easy to tell a well-recorded and produced effort when compared to a garden-variety pop-off.
Recently, I took up the hobby of collecting master tapes and have now acquired more than 2000 of them. Compared to any LP or CD, they all sound great. This is not to say that there are not differences in quality among them. For example, microphone techniques in some of the recordings might not be optimal. However, you haven't heard true "over-the-top" audio until you have listened to Decca/RCA/Everest/Mercury/Columbia/Vox/etc. master tapes played through a world-class tape recorder (Ampex ATR102) on a world-class system.