penningtron wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 8:39 am Slightly related: I'd grown accustomed to the down-tuned version of Jumpin' Jack Flash for most of my life (somewhere in the chain it must have been printed at a slightly off speed). In the early 2000s it was remastered with the correct speed and that really bothered me. It was better "borken"!

I have this same thing with Sonic Youth's Bad Moon Rising. I had the cassette for a decade before they reissued the CD. I'm still not convinced the CD has the master playing at the right speed.

I've avoided some great recorded performances over the years because they weren't in hi-fi. I'm trying to change that attitude though.

I've been revisiting the Budapest String Quartet's recordings at the Library of Congress from the early 50s that were all quite good. Different approaches to dynamics back then to deal with the limits of 1/4" mono tape and direct cutting acetates. Their recordings of the Haydn Op.76 quartets are fantastic, as are the Beethoven quartets and Mozart Prussian quartets and quartets dedicated to Haydn.

Interesting to hear performance styles evolve over the last 70+ years too.

I still have the original CD for Oasis - What's the Story (Morning Glory) that was purchased March of 1996. And it still plays perfectly.... Definitely think the re-issue sounded way too compressed to the point of sort of a distorted shoe-gazey version of the album. Prefer the original for sure.

For what it's worth I think the remaster of Nirvana's Bleach sounds much better. It comes off way more polished and studio-sounding to my ears. I'm sure there's some literature out there as to how the remaster was completed. I seem to remember Endino baking tapes?

Does a remix/remaster that supposedly is more hi-fi count for this thread? An interesting case study might be Eddie Kramer who remixes the Hendrix stuff, like Winterland for example, and makes it sound really good.

Depends. It can be a case by case matter. If we're talking digital, usually, a high-definition/24-bit/etc. transfer from "the original tapes" circa the last several years will sound better than one made in the eighties or nineties, etc., but that's provided it isn't squashed to shit at a later stage, or EQ'd in a comparatively less than flattering way. And it hinges a fair deal on the condition of the source material all these years later. I was surprised to hear, not that long ago, that many heads apparently consider the CD version of Are You Experienced? that I'd acquired in 1993 to be the best extant digital version of it out there, likely for these reasons. I still find it hard to believe there isn't a better one on the market now, but that may be the case.

With vinyl, you not only have similar factors, but also the quality of the pressings, which can vary more than the manufacturing of CDs, which take less skill to make at that stage and aren't as prone to anomalies and as easily damaged by the distributor or previous end user, etc. And sometimes a recording tracked in analog had to go to digital first so the record you're getting is basically a CD on wax, which may sound inferior to the straight to CD version.

Then there's the discrepancy of stereo vs. mono versions (mostly a problem for older music), the quality of the playback equipment, the acoustics of the room, and general social context...

I think it's wise to hold onto whatever format/version you've always liked best and not part with it until you've heard the newer, supposedly cooler or better version. Same thing goes with DVDs and blu-rays.

I take umbrage at slammed/loudenated/flattened (re)masters being referred to as high fidelity. They are anything but.

seby wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:12 am I take umbrage at slammed/loudenated/flattened (re)masters being referred to as high fidelity. They are anything but.

100% agreed! the loudness wars is one of the worst things to ever happen to recorded music.

penningtron wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:36 am

seby wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:12 am I take umbrage at slammed/loudenated/flattened (re)masters being referred to as high fidelity. They are anything but.

100% agreed! the loudness wars is one of the worst things to ever happen to recorded music.

That's fair, though the original premise of the thread had more to do with high-er fidelity listening environments. I was thinking about listening to roughly the same source material using (for example) the cheap radios and cassette players typically owned by kids of the 80's vs. whatever equipment those same people might own today. In theory, hearing more detail ought to be better. Sometimes it isn't.

I'd say it's always better - who wouldn't want to listen to something in the best possible fidelity? It's not always my favourite, due to circumstances attached to whichever reproduction I'm emotionally wedded to, but that's a given for us all I imagine.

jason from volo wrote: Wed Sep 08, 2021 7:27 pm I mean, generally better fidelity is preferred during playback. But there’s always an exception.

This

lotharsandwich wrote: Wed Sep 15, 2021 12:14 am

penningtron wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:36 am

seby wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:12 am I take umbrage at slammed/loudenated/flattened (re)masters being referred to as high fidelity. They are anything but.

100% agreed! the loudness wars is one of the worst things to ever happen to recorded music.

That's fair, though the original premise of the thread had more to do with high-er fidelity listening environments. I was thinking about listening to roughly the same source material using (for example) the cheap radios and cassette players typically owned by kids of the 80's vs. whatever equipment those same people might own today. In theory, hearing more detail ought to be better. Sometimes it isn't.

That it was. To this end, I submit Marc Ribot and Los Cubanos Postizos' album, "The Prosthetic Cubans". There was some half-arsed studio trickery done in order to try and make the recordings sound more hifi than they really are. This works when streaming or over a phone etc., but on a good system from a proper source you can see through it all. It's like seeing the stains on a wall through a cheap paint job. The songs and playing are banging, so it's a pity that they did not go for a mix that was more raw. This would have withstood high-end scrutiny.

A friend has a ridiculously fuck off audiophile system (has a whole listening room dedicated to it). It's funny destroying recordings in there. Einstürzende Neubauten's "Ende Neu" got dismembered. Brothers in Arms stood the test, along with Fear of a Black Planet and Sympathy for the Devil. I was surprised by Autechre's "Oversteps". I was expecting it to emerge relatively unscathed, but yeah not so much.

We are under covid lockdown here in Sydney, but as soon as it is lifted I shall head over there again (said friend lives around the corner).

Any requests?! He does not have a DAC so it needs to be something that I have on physical format. I can report back with utterly subjective but likely amusing descriptions of the results : )