better gear, worse recordings

in my experience it's tempting, when getting towards the top of the ladder, to take one or two steps too far. my system is becoming more comforting and listenable as i add or replace just a single component at a time. if i try to put several new pieces into it simultaneously, my "base" or "control" gets lost. i know i've gone a bridge too far when lp's or cd's i've learned to love begin to sound less comforting, musical or "real." recently, i've been experimenting with power "conditioners" and "regenerators." many of these products provide blacker backgrounds and a lower noise floor, but all are flawed in my current setup, since they cause a degradation of PRaT or a slight flabbiness in the mid to lower bass spectrum. i've spent years trying to reach that fine balance between "detail" and "musicality." i, thus, take great care not to let a single new bit act as gravity, forcing me to fall from the thin high wire. -cfb

Well put Kelly. I keep trying to "push" things sometimes and swap multiple components at a time. This is basically a BIG no-no from my experience, but i still do it. I have been hurt ( sometimes drastically ) by doing this too. At one point, i was extremely happy with one of my systems ( it sounded GREAT in terms of both musicality and detail ). I decided to "make it better" and move this cable here, that one there, take that amp out and put this one in, etc... As such, i lost the "synergy" that i had and was never able to get back to that point. While i can remember what preamp, amp, etc... i was using, i don't know what cables i had where. After learning that lesson, i'm now keeping a log book to keep track of what goes where, etc... This way i can experiment and still find my way back while trying to go forward : ) Sean
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Hmmmmm... So we think a system should play back exactly what is on the recording. Tell me; how do we know when we have reached that point?? Unless we were present at the recording session, and we have a perfect memory of what we heard at that session, there is no way for us to tell what we are hearing now is exactly what was recorded then.

There have been cases where instruments were a little out of tune at recording sessions. If we choose one of these recordings as our reference, and we tweek our systems so it now sounds in tune, because we assume it was in tune then, we are in trouble.

Roxy Music's Avalon is the perfect example of this phenomenon for me. I have loved the music on this recording since I first heard it when originally released. As I began to improve my systems over the years however, it quickly became apparent that the recording quality on both my vinyl and CD versions sucked. Now the only time I can bear to listen to it, is when I'm driving with the top down in an older convertible that I have. With so much wind and road noise, I can crank it up and love the music all over again without obsessing over the awful sonic quality.
Cheers,
Paul.

I am speaking here strictly only of big orchestral classical music and here you can safely say, that the art of recording has begun to decline with the introduction of multimiking , dynagroove and more and more electronic "soundshaping". In the glory days of RCA and Mercury the engineers were musicians in their own right and as a rule intimately familiar with the accoustics of the recording venue. They also collaborated much more closely with the artists they recorded on an artistic as well as technical level and both sides knew what they were talking about and what was going on. It was a much closer working together in comparison to what is happening today. So if you wanted good sound from your LPs, it was generally a safe bet to look for the name of the producer and chief engineer as well. Layton for RCA, Wilkinson for Decca and RCA, Bishop and Parker for EMI, Pontrefact for Harmonia Mundi come to mind as examples. I have improved my setup steadily for more than thirty years now and the sound of the early RCA and Merc stereos(until 1962)have improved with it. It is absolutely amazing, how much is on vinyl from the glory days between 1959 and 62. Later, into the seventies, the Brits with DECCA and EMI were a fairly safe bet and those recordings also hold their own until today. Red book CD just will not do for big orchestral music, especially if your ears have been spoilt by listening to the above mentioned gems and also SACD falls short as far as classical music is concerned. So yes, except for the old gems, which hold their own, because at that time the people concerend, knew also MUSICALLY what they were doing when recording, yes, recordings are getting worse as our systems are getting better.