[Mr. Blonde]

More good stuff on the RS Web site about it, including artists sounding off.

[Afronaut]

I have never heard the word "SOUNDSTAGE" used in recording these days. I have seen and heard the abuse of saturation in many modern mixes.

I have spend many long hours in recording studios and have sat next to some of the greatest producers/engineers of our day. To paint a soundscape with 48 tracks is an art that is all but dead. Modern recordings are done on laptops in the first class sections of Airplanes.

The other part is that most live shows these days are mixed with the kick drum and the bass. I don't want to pay 100.00 bucks to have my head assaulted with with a kick drum that is sequenced to a digital sound into a 5 thousand watt system.

If you have ever had the chance to hear a playback with 2" Ampex 499 tape (analogue) in a studio, you be as infected as I have been with the quest of great sound. The sound of a vinyl on a mid-priced system kills any digital playback that I have ever heard.

[Dysart]

[supercat]

Perhaps what’s needed is an audio format with some side-channel information that can be used by end-user equipment to implement whatever degree of compression the listener happens to want at that moment. I suspect even audiophiles would probably want compression when they’re listening in a noisy environment, but when listening in a quiet room it’s better to use more dynamic range. While it would be possible for a player to handle compression by itself, a player could do a better job if it had some ‘help’ from a human in the studio.

[scott says]

Great article.I am totally into music and high end gear. My favorite recordings are actually “bootleg” recordings that I have taped or got from friends. A field recording that is done with high end equipment can produce unbelievable results.
My best tape ever was Roy Buchanan’s last concert on August 7 ,1988 in my hometown of Guilford,Connecticut.My buddies and I set up a 10 foot mic stand with 2 Nakamichi CM 300 mics twenty five feet from the stage and recorded on Sony portable cassette decks.The result is BETTER than practically most officially released Live albums. The proper equipment placed in the proper place can be awesome.

Todays overproduced “music” is mostly garbage. Throw into the mix the compressed signal....no thanks. When I listen to music its gonna be a Live Concert taped by someone who had the killer mics set up..too many to choose from for me.

[protest1]

Excellent article

[Gay State Conservative]

I can’t understand why so many people are so satisfied with MP3-quality music....not that there’s much that’s been released in the last 20 years that’s worth listening closely to.CD-quality....and SACD and DVD-Audio quality is what I want for my favorite music (50’s & 60’s).

[sauropod]

read

[Drango]

My stereo dial goes up to 11.

[ovrtaxt]

Personally, I’m a headphones guy when I’m not driving.

As for recent releases, I think anything by Porcupine Tree is mixed extremely well.

[Yardstick]

Rush Limbaugh is a huge fan of compression. Every now and then he'll go on a tangent about how much he loves it. He actually recompresses his albums -- reburns them to CD after a trip through a maxed-out compressor -- because the original compression isn't enough for him.

Of course he's got those cochlear implants, so who knows what that's doing. But I think Rush was a compression fan even before his hearing problems began.

An interesting case study in compressed versus (relatively) uncompressed is ZZ Top -- their mega-platinum 80s albums versus their earlier ones. In the 80s they wanted big pop hits and it shows in the production. Gimme All Your Lovin is a perfect example of radio-friendly super squash. That song sounds great in a car or on a dance floor.

But to compress a symphony or a jazz quartet of course would be sacrilege. Compression can be good or bad depending on the type of music.

[listenhillary]

From Fark, just this morning.

[Nowhere Man]

Some do say that they had better fidelity when they used amplifiers with vacuum tubes than with transistors. I have a 1964 Sherwood amp with 9 tubes and it has a good sound to it. I just need to add some components to it. Still, I have a JVC-S100 receiver and a Panasonic RA-6500 cassette/receiver that has good sound too even if they are solid state. Most of my stereo equipment is 1970's vintage although I do have a CD player I found dumpster diving, it is a GE component player made in 1984. I also have a 1964 Sony reel-to-reel tape deck.

Maybe I'm a little off the subject, but I always liked to listen to music over AM radio, maybe because I never really had an FM radio until I was 12 (1978). Still, I like to listen to the oldies show WABC, 770 kc, out of New York City plays every Saturday night on my Grnadfather's bakelite 1953 Philco 5 tube radio and the sound is beautiful. Even the sound is great from my 1965 8-transistor "Maggie" (Magnavox) AM only radio. One thing I learned from that oldies show is that in the 1950's to even the early 1980's, they mixed the music in a way that it would sound good over AM radio.