Why most recordings sound like crap....

[cogsncogs]

Because of this, some amateurs often made much better recordings with very rational techniques….

I could do it with my eyes shut! But nowadays it's done with THEIR EARS shut! If they can find'em. Azimuth? Whaaats that? Just make sure it's loud, everything!

Wayne

[phase_accurate]

I remember a famous recording engineer saying: "Don't make it as good as posible, you have to make it only as good as your customer wants !"

Regards

Charles

[Bojan Hajdinjak]

Be sure…
People want better recordings
That’s only apologies of studios because it’s so simple to made bad recordings

[phase_accurate]

People want better recordings

If you mean you and me by "people" then I agree.

If you mean the average musician and producers then I completely disagree.

Regards

Charles

[Bojan Hajdinjak]

I agree with

But, we are customers...

What musicians and producers want to made? Recordings for them selves?

I think that's (and the internet) is the chance for some of new producers (they are comming )

[thoriated]

From my understanding of the issue, the problem with CD is not the bit depth but the sampling rate.

IMO, it's both. Considering that Bell Laboratories determined a long time ago that 13 bits dynamic range was needed merely to reliably transmit intelligible speech with the resulting development of u-law and a-law voice codecs for telephony, it's not reasonable to expect very high sonic quality from a 16 bit linear PCM standard, particularly considering that with the generational and digital processing resolution losses and jitter in both recording and playback, you're usually back at 13 bits or even less effective dynamic range for most commercial releases.

And I doubt that many care to listen carefully to the highly distorted least significant 6-8 bits of that 13 bits, anyway.

[Bojan Hajdinjak]

I don’t agree with. Some of the oldest audio DACs (like some of TDAs,….. there are plenty of this on the internet) sounds better then any DAC from the new production. Secret of the good sound isn’t in sampling rate not in bits. DAC is important but almost perfect technology of this exists for more than 15 years.

Secret of the ultimate sound (relaxed, fluid sounding, like the best turntable combinations) is in the synergy of all components inside of CD player. Output amplifier stage (of CDp) is maybe the most important thing in the case; we have DACs who doesn’t generate parasite harmonics into sound.

[bigparsnip]

Originally posted by thoriated


IMO, it's both. Considering that Bell Laboratories determined a long time ago that 13 bits dynamic range was needed merely to reliably transmit intelligible speech with the resulting development of u-law and a-law voice codecs for telephony, it's not reasonable to expect very high sonic quality from a 16 bit linear PCM standard, particularly considering that with the generational and digital processing resolution losses and jitter in both recording and playback, you're usually back at 13 bits or even less effective dynamic range for most commercial releases.

And I doubt that many care to listen carefully to the highly distorted least significant 6-8 bits of that 13 bits, anyway.

From what I have heard (and yes, I have done tests) you can quite easily make out wahat people are saying even with as few as two bits of information per sample so long as you keep a decent sampling period fpor the signal. However, I would have to agree that this siganal is far from good qality, merely audible.

However, what supprised me most about looking at this sort of thing was that reducing the sample rate by a factor of two had a far greater impact in sound quality terms than simply reducing the bit depth by a factor of two. Although perhapse, if more things were recorder which used the full dynamic range of a 16 bit CD this may nor be quite so true, as you would be loosing more of the signal information than if you were to look a a modern rock/pop disk.

[ble0t]

I figured I'd drop this in here for the heck of it...it's a good excerpt on mp3 encoding, but it most definitely applies to almost any lossy medium (which would technically include CDs, although to a lesser extent) and their encoding/decoding.

Link

[cogsncogs]

Hi all

Do you think the target consumer 12 - 18 year old teenagers really care about sound quality? They just want their music loud and rockin' in their ear-buds! And their Car Stereos! The "Suits" have been 'sneaking' in highly compressed CD's in the past decade or so. Since their "target" hasn't complained, there you have what we have today.
The analogy is Coca-Cola, they began using-adding corn syrup to their formula (started back during the sugar shortage in the 70's) and since their 'target' hasn't complained they (and all others I may add) have kept it in their 'original' formula. That comes straight from a Coke spokesperson. Remember the "New Coke" vs. the "Original Coke" war/debate?
During the sugar shortage candy bars went from 10 cents to 25 cents, they (the industry) promised to lower the price back down when the shortage was over; they didn't. Instead when the consumer complained they made the bars slightly bigger (using corn syrup of course) and raised the price again. Corn syrup is cheaper and their production lines are 'geared' to use it.
This is 'The Industry' dictating/influencing what the consumer wants or expects. Most of the newly remastered CD's over the past decade has become more and more compressed to follow the trend of the day. Some are actually horrible! The recording company execs don't care about quality they care about the bottom line, Money!
Not taking into account the newly released digital music of today, I think one of the main and overlooked problems of the Digitally Remastered music of yesteryear, is the analog front end. The tape deck used and it's alignment including the 'Dolby NR' calibration. And then passing the analog signal through banks and banks of hundreds of 741's, LM1458's LM324's and if you're lucky NE5532's (not to mention all those 'lytics!) of their consoles with the engineer's and producers with their fingers on the EQ pots and sliders, trying to make yesterday sound like today!
Keeping in the same vein; one reason why some CD's of past sound different than the original LP is because when the 'Master' was sent to LP mastering studio it was re-EQ'ed to make it compatible with (sorry to us vinyl lovers!) the limitations of the LP and the LP mastering engineer's taste. I still prefer the sound of the LP in most cases. Rush's "Caress of Steel" comes quickly to mind.
As far as DAC's are concerned I have two older CDP's that 'sound' much better than my newer (and cheaper) CDP and DVD player. I blame the use of newer all in-one DAC/Output chips. Most of us here at DIY Audio forums do care about sound quality otherwise we wouldn't be here! If the consumer complains loud enough, changes will happen!
By the way I still drink original "Coke" he he. Beer used to be better too, before all those mergers and take-overs! Anyone remember "Burger" beer?

Cheers
Wayne