As We See It

When the Record Industry Association of America adopted its standard disc playback equalization curve in 1954, hi-fi enthusiasts heaved a sigh of relief and bade fond farewell to years of confusion, doubt and virtual pandemonium. Before the RIAA curve there were six "standard" curves in use, and since nobody seemed to know who was using what, getting flat response from a disc was often more a matter of luck than anything else. The adoption of the RIAA standard playback curve heralded an end to all this.

If record manufacturers had endeavored to install the best available playback equipment, and made their records for use on this equipment, there might be little to choose today between a stereo disc and an original tape. But when hi-fi ceased to be a pursuit of quality and became a pursuit of the Merry Megabuck, the RIAA curve became just another obstacle between the product and the consumer's wallet.

The whole trouble was that J. Q. Public's polished mahogany boombox had never heard of the RIAA curve. Cut a disc to sound natural when RIAA-equalized, and it sounded muffled and distorted to the average record buyer. So, one manufacturer tried making a few minor "corrections" in the sound of his discs, and by Golly, they did sound better on JQP's console. Another manufacturer quickly followed suit, and the race was on.

Hi-fi enthusiasts and critics with good equipment noticed the change, but most of them naively confused more highs with better highs, so the record makers figured they had carte blanche to go hog-wild. They solved JQP's distortion and turntable rumble problems by compressing dynamics until some LPs and stereo discs had less volume range on them than many 78-rpm shellacs. They minimized groove-jumping by filtering out all deep bass, and brought out the "presence" by whacking up the treble, adding a 5kHz response peak, or moving their microphones right in on top of the instruments.

By 1959, the gimmicking of discs had reached such proportions that no tone control could begin to cope with these sonic horrors, so component buyers started choosing "sweet-sounding"—ie, rolled-off—speakers and pick-ups, in an effort to tame the screaming treble. Early LP discs, that actually had been cut to the RIAA curve, now sounded dull and sodden, thus giving rise to the reassuring myth that modern recordings are better than ever before.

Today there are some encouraging signs of a return to sanity, but to pretend that the average stereo disc is made to sound best when reproduced on the best equipment is to practice self-deception. Most record manufacturers still keep a sharp eye on the limitations of the average console phonograph, boosting here, attenuating there, and generally making a mockery of their claims of "highest fidelity" and their recommendations that owners of high-fidelity systems should "equalize to the RIAA curve."

If they all did the same things to their discs, or specified on the jackets what they had done, it might be possible to design equalizers to offset the effects of this messing around. But the nature of the manipulations is always a "trade secret"—most manufacturers won't admit that they do it all—which means that the poor slob of a hi-fi listener is right back where he started, only more so, because now there are no standard curves at all. There's only the RIAA curve, which hardly anybody uses any more.

In short, the relatively few record buyers who are really interested in getting good sound are being sold down the river in order to cater to the imagined needs of the vast, tin-eared public that can't tell good sound when it hears it, and cares less. Until the record manufacturers start giving us the kind of sound they could if they cared to, no amount of expenditure on "perfect" playback equipment is going to make modern discs sound any better than mediocre. There are too few audio perfectionists to have any effect on the sales of recordings, but we can write letters to record companies and the mass-circulation hi-fi magazines, and we can tell less-knowledgeable record buyers what's going on.

Until we can pressure the record companies into thinking in terms of top audio quality again, high fidelity's weakest link will remain the first link in the chain.—J. Gordon Holt