[complin]

This seems totally alien to me.  Some of my favorite and most treasured recordings are live like
Jazz in the Pawnshop, Three tenors concert, Robbie Williams at Knebworth, Weather Report Live, Judy Garland Live, Jazz at the village vanguard. BBC Proms etc.......

Its because you have the ambiance of the venue and the reaction of the audience that adds to the realism, atmosphere and enjoyment of the event and recording
 
Its precisely that so many modern recordings, particularly some of the popular music offerings are over engineered, the recording goes through six months of mastering and mixing (massacred!) before you get the final product they are so poor.  They are manipulated and compressed to produce an artificial sound that will make them sell and not be life like, but larger than life.  This often includes manipulating and shaping the sound to accentuate certain areas or improving the sound of poor vocalists with weak or flawed voices.
 
I don't want headphones to accentuate the music but be as neutral as possible and relay the sound of the recording as its been laid down without change.  Unfortunately this will mean to many that it lays bare poor recordings that seem to be more common these days.  If you listen to many recordings made in the 1960's and 70's they are often more natural and enjoyable than today.
Quote:

  In general live recordings don't sound as good as the digital variation, since there are people cheering and screaming, there's echo from the concert hall, the singer runs out of breath, etc.  Even if you have the most accurate headphones in the world, the recording goes through six months of mastering and mixing before you get the final product.  Headphones should accentuate the music, not lay it bare.
 

 

 

[WarriorAnt]

My heart just stopped and I couldn't breathe.  I plugged in my LCDs to listen to a new CD of electronic music I just got from my county  library.  There was music only coming out of the right channel.  Then abut 5 seconds later the music drifted from the right channel over to the left channel and then slowly back again.   The recording is made with slow complete pans left to right right to left, left to right right to left. Freaked me right out. I thought the worse for a second.  I think the prime mover is playing games with me...

 

[pp312]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwkarth /img/forum/go_quote.gif

 
You seem to have completely missed my point, but that's ok, you're not alone.  I am more in the minority than you are.
 
 

There was a thread along these lines some time back and I found myself in danger of lynching because I steadfastly maintained that the ONLY standard we should adhere to in both the judging and designing of headphones (or speakers for that matter) was unamplified music in real space. That is, to get as close to the sound of live music should be the goal of hi-fi both as a concept and as an industry.
 
I wasn't saying there shouldn't be phones to suit listeners with other priorities--more bass, more treble, more "fun"...whatever; simply that there needs to be an ultimate standard, a sort of "mission statement", if you will. Unfortunately this was not a popular concept and the concensus was that the only standard should be what sounds best to each individual; that my concept was a form of "elitism". I was accused of being stubborn, which is certainly true, but especially in matters of absolutes, and the thread got more heated and went on for longer than it should have. Needless to say I haven't changed my stance, and though I still allow for the individual preference concept, I also still believe we can only use unamplified acoustic music to judge headphones--not electronic music, not live venues where speakers are used, and not other headphones.
 
Of course the argument always comes up: "How do we know what the sound was like during the recording anyway?" Answer: we don't, but if we're familiar withv the sound of live music we can have a pretty good idea, and unless there was something very odd about the acoustics of the recording studio or hall or church, we will know which headphone is giving us a fair approximation and which is unduly enhancing or subtracting. It's not scientific maybe, but this isn't really a scientific hobby, as attempts to pick headphone sound from measurement has proved. It's just that there has to be standard or there's just chaos, and what other standard is there?      
 
 

 

[dagothur]

Quote:

1960's and 70's are often more natural and enjoyable than today.

Digital recording is bulletproof in a way that analog recording can never be.  The recordings from then were usually mono, so the soundstage ends up being awful, which is compounded even worse with headphones that have even slightly good soundstage on their own.

 

[Frank I]

Quote:

Digital recording is bulletproof in a way that analog recording can never be.  The recordings from then were usually mono, so the soundstage ends up being awful, which is compounded even worse with headphones that have even slightly good soundstage on their own.

All my 60 and 70 jazz and fold and classical recordings are classical and pretty much blow away most recordings today. Even better were the RCA and Mercury recordings of the 50's all stereo and analog. SACD is only digital that competes with those and some well mastered recordings today but to say most 60 and 70 were mono is wrong/ Ver small percentage were mono

 

[dagothur]

Quote:

All my 60 and 70's jazz and classical recordings pretty much blow away most recordings today.

  I've yet to hear a recording from that time that didn't suffer terribly from crossfeed issues.  Unless you have purely high-quality recordings from that era, I'm sure you've encountered the same issue.
 
 

 

[Permagrin]

I'm pretty sure the mono guys don't even own headphones. I've experienced how discomforting it can be to try to listen to mono on headphones. Beatles masters anyone? Get out of my right ear John!

I'm a little miffed that I just found out (yeah I'm slow) that all (sic) music these days is digitally recorded at 24/88. I want it that way, even if it is brickwalled!

 

[Rally555]

Yes, Frank I totally agree!  Jesse here in San Antonio, I do live jazz recordings on a Nagra IVS and it is unbelievable.  I keep it very simple, just two track recording.  When I transfer analog to digital 16 bit for the students I hear less of the music especially the hiss.  I believe that it is called compression.  Even though digital may sound good, it still compresses the music.  I do a lot of university recordings and I have a Nagra IV mono that I will be using this next semester for my own personal use.  Mono recording is unbelievable.  I'm getting the full track.  

 

[Frank I]

 
Quote:

  I've yet to hear a recording from that time that didn't suffer terribly from crossfeed issues.  Unless you have purely high-quality recordings from that era, I'm sure you've encountered the same issue.
 
 

I can name thousand that were well recorded int he 60 and seventy what genre do you listen to try some fleetwood Mac reumuorsa for one and  all Decca classical and Columbia albums and tell me they were 1 mono and two poor. I have been listening to recordings  for 35 years and i will put  those up against any. try all the RCA shaded dogs from the 60.s and  Columbia albums and see if they were poor. yes some were but most were actually very good and not many were mono most were stereo. How about all the Pink Floyd albums from the  70's listen to an analog record and see how good they were. All the Cat Stevens recordings from the 70's  and by the way no mono just fantastic recordings all of them. I have yet to hear a digital copy od dark Side and the Wall sound as good as the vinyl counterparts all analog and all stereo.But do check otu some of the jazz albums from that era and the Columbia NY Philarmonic with Bernstein and tell me what issues there were with those stereo recordings. I can do this for days with album after album
 

 

[MacedonianHero]

Quote:

I have recently had the thought that there seems to be 2 groups of people in all the debates about treble, etc (not really that simple, but just for the sake of explanation) with 2 different goals.  One goal is accuracy to real life, which I think is what the LCD-2 strives for, and the other goal is a kind of hyper-reality, where the emphasis is usually on clarity and detail rather than overall accuracy.  The headphones sound more detailed, and more airy, and more everything than real life could.  And for these people, the HD800 sounds better, with it's heightened sense of detail, clarity, air and soundstage. 
 
Neither one is wrong, but people with these 2 contrasting goals will never agree on what sounds best.  This is why, IMO, the HD800 vs LCD-2 thread went on for so long.  Both headphones sound right to their respective listeners, yet both headphones sound completely different because they are trying to achieve different things. 
 

I just thought we all need to read this one more time.

 

I can name thousand that were well recorded int he 60 and seventy what genre do you listen to try some fleetwood Mac reumuorsa for one and  all Decca classical and Columbia albums and tell me they were 1 mono and two poor. I have been listening to recordings  for 35 years and i will put  those up against any. try all the RCA shaded dogs from the 60.s and  Columbia albums and see if they were poor. yes some were but most were actually very good and not many were mono most were stereo. How about all the Pink Floyd albums from the  70's listen to an analog record and see how good they were. All the Cat Stevens recordings from the 70's  and by the way no mono just fantastic recordings all of them. I have yet to hear a digital copy od dark Side and the Wall sound as good as the vinyl counterparts all analog and all stereo.But do check otu some of the jazz albums from that era and the Columbia NY Philarmonic with Bernstein and tell me what issues there were with those stereo recordings. I can do this for days with album after album
 

Some of my go to reference material are still Rush and Pink Floyd albums...simply fabulous. I'm actually listening to Hemispheres by Rush right now with my HE-6s and it is incredible!

 

[Frank I]

Quote:

Yes, Frank I totally agree!  Jesse here in San Antonio, I do live jazz recordings on a Nagra IVS and it is unbelievable.  I keep it very simple, just two track recording.  When I transfer analog to digital 16 bit for the students I hear less of the music especially the hiss.  I believe that it is called compression.  Even though digital may sound good, it still compresses the music.  I do a lot of university recordings and I have a Nagra IV mono that I will be using this next semester for my own personal use.  Mono recording is unbelievable.  I'm getting the full track.  

Great gear and still 2 channel recordings are my favorite. Digital has come a long way in the last 25 years but some of those direct to disc recordings were un real especailly the Sheffield stuff Lincoln Mayorga and Doug Sax did in the 70's all classic.

 

[Frank I]

The LCD2 will let you hear differences in the recordings as all reference can do well. For me its all about quality recordings and I can listen to poor qualitry on any reference can but one thing the LCD2 did was hide sibilance i still cant figure out how that was done.

 

[Phasey]

Quote:

I'm pretty sure the mono guys don't even own headphones. I've experienced how discomforting it can be to try to listen to mono on headphones. 

Since I have started to really get into listening to headphones, I have noticed that some of my favorite CDs have one or two song in mono.  For example on Gillian Welshes Time the Revelator 'Everything is Free' and one or two from Jack Johnson's In Between Dreams CD. 

 

[Rally555]

Yes Frank, digital has come a long way.  As one of my backup machines, I use the Sound Devices 702 digital two track which sounds good.  But nothing like true analog master recordings.  I'm really looking forward to recording mono.  I have DT48 mono headphones that I will be getting a lot of use with this year.  I also have the new Hifiman HE5 headphones speaker out.  They are good but not game changers. 

 

[dagothur]

Quote:

 

Your post was difficult to read, so I'm going to answer what I can.  I've heard Floyd, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Coltrane, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Rush, Parliament, and The Who, and out of all of these artists, none do not suffer from the lack of soundstage or generally poor (in comparison to modern recording) recording quality.  The vinyl versions may sound better because of the warmth and dynamics associated, but there is no reason that digital recordings cannot do the exact same thing.  Digital does not suffer from any of the issues that analog did.  Here's a better formulated response to the whole 'digital is crap' thing: http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf