Are You Happy?

What got me started on this thread were comments elsewhere by Twl and Justacoder. I appreciate the fact that they chose to respond. I hope they didn't take my comments as personal attacks, since that was not my intent. I was merely trying to learn and encourage civil conversation.

I am an equipment junkie (yes, the first step is to admit you have a problem) and I get pleasure from configuring and endlessly reconfiguring my music system. However, the enjoyment of music trumps any equipment related considerations. In the past there have been times when I probably lost sight of this truth, but an incident two years ago got me back on track. I heard a 1931 recording of "Stardust" by Louis Armstrong. It's the most amazing piece of music I ever heard, yet it has absolutely zero audiophile content. It's bandwidth limited, filled with crackles, mono, numerous crackles etc. I've come to the conclusion that great music makes everything else irrelevant.

BTW, for those recordings that are overly bright I use a digital equalizer. There's really nothing you can do about over compression.

Seandtaylor99 - I agree with your percentages - that's exactly how I'd break down my CD collection. There are definitely CD's I'll never put on again, but it's a small %.

I disagree that alcohol can't improve a bright, overly-compressed recording. If it changes your mood, lightens you up, and gets you to take the focus off the recording and put it back onto the music, it has "improved" the recording. Drink enough, you might get out of the sweet spot and dance around the room :-)

Twl & Tube> Definitly tongue in cheek. Just remembrances of a misspent youth. Concerning poor recordings, I was truely let down the other day when a friend brought over a cd of The Righteous Bros. Best Of. I love Unchained Melody but this was terribly bright. Quite a let down

I find 90% of my CDs to be listenable from 11pm to 5am. The figure drops down to 10% from 11am to 7pm.