better gear, worse recordings

Here lies the trap of the upgrade / hi-fi bug.

One can climb the ladder of "better components" i.e. "greater detail, more accuracy" but does it make it more enjoyable to listen to i.e. "musically entertaining" ? I think that this is the tightrope that most of us here on A-gon are fighting.

How does one capture all of the detail without having it sound like a sterile, lifeless "hi-fi" system ??? Not an easy trick, as most of us have found out. Assembling a system based on "good" components will typically not yield the results that most of us are looking for. We've learned that the hard way. There is quite a bit of trial and error involved in making a truly "musically accurate" system. If you can do that, you've got the best of both worlds. Sean
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This could potentially be a very interesting thread if enough folks contribute. It points out the double-edged sword of high-end audio, that an utterly revealing system does not always equate to one that is musically satisfying.

Over the past two years, I've done a pretty complete upgrade of my system, and have encountered this same dilemma: some recordings I've always liked sound better, but others sound worse. The most recent instance was last weekend, when my wife and I had another couple for dinner. This other couple used to be pretty interested in high-end audio, and they wanted to hear some of the newer, re-mastered LP's I've bought recently. After listening to several of them, they agreed that most were an improvement over the previous versions, but not all of them.

Then I pulled out some CD's, one of which was the album titled "People Time", with Stan Getz and Kenny Barron. I've liked this album very much in the past -- it was the last recording done by Getz before he died of cancer, and it contains some very poignant, even searing, music. However, on my upgraded, higher-resolution system, the sound of Getz's sax was often very shrill, nearly piercing. It was hard to listen thru the sharp-edged sound to get to the heart of the music. Barron's piano sounded fine, however. The CD is on the Verve label, which normally has pretty good sound on their jazz releases, so the audio quality came as an unpleasant surprise.

I hope this thread gets some responses, because I'm interested to hear what others have to say. I will take some time today and sift through some of the LP's and CD's that have sounded either worse or better than I remember (as heard on my previous audio systems), and post the titles and an evaluation of their sound quality.

It goes both ways. We have discussed before how CDs that area mixed to sound good on portable units and boom boxes, sound worse as the gear gets better.

The opposite is true. Some of my favorite older CDs today are ones that I thought sounded thin and lifeless, years back in my late 20s, when all I had was a receiver, budget CD player and turntable, and bookshelf speakers.

Now today, the old CDs I liked back then, sound bloated with the echo added to make them sound fuller, not to mention the resulting electronic haze that causes listener fatigue.

What bothers me today, is a lot of recording reviewers are evidentially not audiophiles.

For classical music those "DG Originals" reissues of analog recordings sound worse IMHO than the earlier CD reissues. However, every review I have ever read sais the new remixes are a big big improvement over the older CDs. For example: if it is a concerto recording they are boosting the solo instrument and the violins that play the main melody, so they are very audible. Sounds good in the car, but the rest of the orchestra sounds like they are in another room when played at home. The orchestra balance is wiped out.

We should lobby for record reviewers to disclose what their system is composed of.

I have experienced this as well. My take on it is a bit different than those stated thus far, though.

I think the goal of an audio system should be to reproduce EXACTLY what has been recorded. If you assemble a high-resolution system, you will clearly know the difference between a good recording and a bad one.

I don't believe you should use a less precise system to serve as a bandaid for poorly recorded source material.