Poor sound quality in lots of modern recordings.

[telecat]

TonyRPH said:

The big issue here is not the bit depth of the recordings.

Even 24bit stuff can be heavily compressed and distorted.

True but when re-mastering the tendency is to use the band width available and produce a close to master copy. As the master tends not to be compressed you get a better sound. Unfortunately this does not apply to Modern "Remasters" on CD where loudness tends to win. Hence if you can get an original CD release from the eighties you stand a better chance or a good recording.

[TonyRPH]

The sad simple truth is that if you want quality, then you have to search far and wide, and inevitably pay some handsome price for a Japanese* import.

Sure, SACDs can be good - but then you need DSD capable hardware and, well, it's just a hassle if you want portability.

Likewise with DVD / BluRay - there are some good quality music discs out there - but again my primary interest is stereo.

I have a couple of Eric Clapton's Crossroads DVDs and the audio quality on those is very good, therefore when I bought CDs mastered from the same performances I expected the same quality.

How disappointed I was.

• The Japanese music buying public seem to value good quality music, and evidently the record companies over there seem to realise this.

[mp3manager]

telecat said:

In order to bypass the crappy mastering of some discs I tend to buy the SACD, DVD-Audio or FLAC 24 bit versions of the albums. Depeche Mode output up to Playing the Angel is all available in SACD. Queens back catalogue was released in Japan in SACD a few years ago and a fair number of albums were released in DVD-Audio in the early 2000s. Simple Minds, Peter Gabriel, Bryan Ferry, Sting, Propaganda and The Human League all had SACD or DVD-A. Well worth getting if you can afford it. Recently Gabriel amd NUSE amongst others have released 24 bit recordings available to download.

The Propaganda SACD is superb and was one of my earliest SACD discs, although I do like some of the remixes on the 2010 Deluxe Edition.

Edited by mp3manager on Friday 31st March 01:02

[Globs]

tankplanker said:

ave you tried APTX? While I would still rather than a wired connection if possible, APTX, particular the aptX Lossless variant is considerably better on a good system than normal Bluetooth when paired with suitable lossless source media. Now that the next version of Android will have APTX baked in (only a handful of manufacturers did so before) we should see more devices both source and amplification that support it.

I'll have a look into that, thanks for the tip.
I did try Chromecast but kept getting drop-outs with that.

What does work for me is Wifi, so I tend to use remote controlled Android boxes to suck the digital data across on Wifi and then play it down a wire to the amp. That seems to be pretty solid.

[Globs]

telecat said:

DVD-Audio

I've noticed in general that the sound quality is higher on DVDs than CDs, less compression and more ambience.
My theory is that for DVDs they forget to apply 'Loudness War' processing and accidentally give you a decent soundtrack.

I have a few DVDs of live performances and the quality is pretty good on them.

[legzr1]

TonyRPH said:

The sad simple truth is that if you want quality, then you have to search far and wide, and inevitably pay some handsome price for a Japanese* import.

Sure, SACDs can be good - but then you need DSD capable hardware and, well, it's just a hassle if you want portability.

Likewise with DVD / BluRay - there are some good quality music discs out there - but again my primary interest is stereo.

I have a couple of Eric Clapton's Crossroads DVDs and the audio quality on those is very good, therefore when I bought CDs mastered from the same performances I expected the same quality.

How disappointed I was.

• The Japanese music buying public seem to value good quality music, and evidently the record companies over there seem to realise this.

I jumped aboard in the early days and paid the 'early adopter' price of flaky first-gen players and extremely limited choice in media.

In the end I got fed up with having multiple thousands of pounds worth of SACD and DVD-A players and around 6 discs that I actually listened to. I kept a few DVD-A discs (still playable through DVD players giving DD or DTS soundtracks - decent but not 'high-res'.), sold the SACD player (Shangling 200C with valve output that didn't sound as good as the fixed SS output but it looked nice and glowed in the dark...) and all the SACD discs.
The discs themselves went on eBay amd a couple of hifi fora and I was amazed at the money they fetched - Elton John went to NZ for £80 and a MJ Thriller went for just as much.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing though - now we have DACS capable of DSD and DVD-A conversion and software solutions to rip to NAS but I think streaming and downloading of high quality, high resolution and well mastered music is the answer.
Compared to an MP3 from one of the many suppliers they're still relatively expensive but storage and playback of the files costs a fraction of something like the Shanling I mentioned earlier.

I have the Muse album mentioned in an earlier post - it's a 96/24 file and the sound quality is spot on and cost around £6 on offer at HDTracks.
I have a few random files at 176 and 192 but they have to be played through and processed by my AV amp - my 'hifi' DAC won't play them

[legzr1]

Globs said:

telecat said:

DVD-Audio

I've noticed in general that the sound quality is higher on DVDs than CDs, less compression and more ambience.
My theory is that for DVDs they forget to apply 'Loudness War' processing and accidentally give you a decent soundtrack.

I have a few DVDs of live performances and the quality is pretty good on them.

Are you confusing the high-res audio discs (DVD-A) with vanilla DVD?

[dublove]

Here something to think about:

All these high resolution alternative formats SACD DVD-A etc...

What difference are you hearing when the track was recorded and mastered at the studio using a 16bit digital mixing desk..?

Food for thought.

[Funk]

I used to have plenty of 24-bit 192khz copies of albums. With some serious back to back comparison, I couldn't hear any difference in my system so ditched them all for 16-bit versions.

Production and/or remastering makes more difference than higher bit depth and sample rate ever would.

[telecat]

dublove said:

Here something to think about:

All these high resolution alternative formats SACD DVD-A etc...

What difference are you hearing when the track was recorded and mastered at the studio using a 16bit digital mixing desk..?

Food for thought.

Early Digital Desks were 16 bit although most recorded at 48KHZ as the DAT recorders and early digital recorders could record at that level. Reviewers liked them. Most desks these days can record at higher levels. Bill Nelson has a Mackie 24/96 that is virtually prehistoric.