Best Amp for Crappy Recordings

[regal]

With the music I listen to (blues/jazz based live classic rock) there is an unwritten rule: the better the performance the worse the recording. Seriously the Grateful Dead and ABB were only captured live with a good recording on one or two occasions. Led Zeppelin has 3 decent live recordings. The list goes on and on. What are we left with ? Hundreds of hours of sterile Soundboards with issues like poor mixes, cassette generation, etc. On speakers it isn't so bad but with headphones it is tough to listen. Is there a headphone amp that can help these recording out?

 

[GreatDane]

Maybe an EQ instead ?? I don't see how any certain amp would be better over another for this purpose.

I don't have any bootleg concerts but I do have over 100 DVD concerts and some sound as good as a nice redbook CD when a stereo PCM audio option is available...or I atleast prefer dts over DD.

I just watched a Spock's Beard concert and to me it sounds like mono...not much an EQ can do for that but a lot of live recordings sound dull or lack deep bass, for that an EQ can help...I'm not a purist, I like "live" deep punchy bass and some sparkle on top.

I watch/listen to them on my rig often and finaly broke down and bought a Behringer EQ recently (couldn't let that 20% off Guitar Center coupon go to waste

).

I got it for $103. Most people will flame me for using an EQ but if it makes the music sounds better...

 

[Uncle Erik]

No criticism from me for using the EQ. All the sudios have them, so there's nothing wrong with a little compensation on this side of the recording, either. They can help out some with bad recordings, but you're still going to be left with artificats and other stuff the EQ won't take care of.

I don't know how much an amp would help, either, but you might want to think about a SET (single-ended triode) amp to listen to. They are, arguably, the least analytical of amps. There's distortion (in a good way; some forms of distortion are pleasing to the ear) and tubes generally warm things up and smear the notes a little. It won't fix everything, but it can hide some things.

Another option you might want to consider is running your music through some of the mastering software available now. I'm not familiar with it yet (but intend to, I'm getting a turntable so I can rip vinyl to digital) but the people who rip vinyl can de-click their recordings, filter hiss, and use a number of other tricks to clean up the sound of damaged vinyl. Even if you're using CDs or another digital source, I'd think you could run the files through these programs and clean out some of the noise. That, with a little EQ and a SET, and you'd be considerably happier.