... thoughts on Taylor Swift's REPUTATION CD...

New cd from Rosanne Cash on Tidal. Seems very promising. Also really recommend The Teskey Brothers. Superb sound. No db limit. Sure, a plagiat of old soul and R&B but great. The singer is terrifying. Lots of nice guitar. Also comes with recorded noice which I suppose all audiophiles will appreciate.

And you don't need to buy the cd. Quality on Tidal HIFI good enough....

Sure.  They're PMC twotwo.6's.  The brand was recommended to me by Glenn Meadows, a well-known mastering engineer in Nashville who mastered my daughter, Merritt Gibson's first album on some enormous PMCs in his studio. (Played me some Steely Dan, of course;  he mastered some of their compilations.)  I first heard the twotwo's at VintageKing in Nashville, where they played me some tracks from Beck's Morning Phase album, and that remains a favorite.  Since the purpose of monitors is essentially to bring everything right up front and let you hear every part of the mix, anything with a lot going on is fun to hear on good monitors.  Since this is a Taylor Swift oriented chain, I'll mention an older track, All Too Well, from her Red album.  In addition to being one of her best songs, it's really fun to listen to the electric guitar on the left channel on the PMC's.  You feel like your standing next to the guitar player in the tracking room.  It sounds like it was recorded in one take, and knowing how good the session players in Nashville are, it probably was.  The twotwo's are pretty pricey for small near field monitors, but PMC has a new model out, the Result 6, I think, that's a a lower price point and has been getting good reviews in the pro audio community (e.g., recent Sound on Sound review).

dbwalek said:

" Complaining about DR and compression in modern pop is like complaining that rock and roll has too much drumming"

Totally disagree. There is nothing inherent in pop that requires, needs or benefits from DR compression. And there is no reason that pop can't be enjoyed for SQ either.

What I would like to understand is why especially voices often seems to fare so bad under modern compression/digital processing. When Taylor Swifts voice is made louder all her natural voice (which is fine) disappear and we are left with something that hurts our ears (at least my right one). It might of course be the voice itself, but I don't really think so. Very apparent on the Red cd, less so on Reputation. Is it because of some "radio-editing"?