My new gear turned “awesome” to “crap” ! How do I deal?
Oct 3, 2010 at 1:27 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 13

Justin Uthadude

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As my equipment gets better and more revealing, some music that I used to think sounded ‘killer’ now sounds flat, dull and well . . . obviously not that good when compared to the albums that now sound better than ever. Stuff I would rarely give a spin before I’m now listening to again because it’s so well recorded.  Nils Lofgren – Acoustic Live, Bella Donna and Mezzanine were literally covered with dust on a bookshelf and are now in rotation again. I was burnt out on Hotel California, but I find myself listening to the Hell Freezes Over version now. LSD by Enigma reminds me of AM radio quality and actually makes me grimace. Albums by Steely Dan are a hard act to follow now for quite a few of my CDs. There are many others, but you know what I mean. How do you deal with this? Is this one of those take the good with the bad situations? And don’t get me started on what the word remaster means to me now.
 
Oct 3, 2010 at 1:40 PM Post #2 of 13
 
Quote:
 How do you deal with this?

 You just suck it up and be grateful that you're in a position to have gear good enough to be so revealing. You should also keep a pair of lower-end headphones on hand for those times when you need them. I have some recordings that are virtually unlistenable with my HD800's (e.g. bass heavy).
 
 
Oct 3, 2010 at 2:40 PM Post #3 of 13
Maybe I'm exaggerating. It's not that my gear is so good, it's just that now that I'm able to hear when something sounds really good, the stuff that sounds average pales in comparison. The good sounds great and the bad sounds . . .less than.
.
 
Oct 3, 2010 at 2:42 PM Post #4 of 13
Everything sounds great on my HD 485s. . . some things sound like like crap on my HD 650s. Using lesser 'phones might be a solution, I agree with that.
 
Oct 3, 2010 at 4:39 PM Post #5 of 13
Yep, you just have to suck it up. I find that if the music really does it for me, it'll still get its emotion across even if the recording is rather bland, but I have gone off the odd piece of music because of the recording itself. If you come back to those kinds of recordings later, and still find the music doesn't do enough, then it may be as much that you've gone off the music itself than the actual sound quality.
 
Oct 3, 2010 at 4:43 PM Post #6 of 13
Yup. The gear actually changed my musical tastes to an extent. I've always loved classical, but have gotten into it more deeply as I've been exposed to more great recordings. I had never liked jazz, but eventually developed a taste and the great recordings pulled me in further. I've also tried new artists only because they had a disc out on SACD and came to love them.

Think of this more as an opportunity to broaden your tastes. Seek out good recordings by well-regarded artists and open yourself up. There's some badly recorded popular music I enjoy, but my listening pleasure really increased as I opened up.
 
Oct 3, 2010 at 6:33 PM Post #8 of 13
This is why I still enjoy music from my iPod and Portapros. They're just fun to listen to, not to dissect, which happens to me all to often when I listen on my full rig.
 
Oct 3, 2010 at 7:37 PM Post #9 of 13


Quote:
 
 
Maybe your storage mediums are rotting somehow? it's been thoroughly discussed in that thread: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/451369/why-flac-is-better



Is there any weight to that though?
 
OT, but my musical tastes have changed with increasingly better equipment, jazz and classical is still pretty boring tho.
tongue.gif

 
Oct 17, 2010 at 3:16 PM Post #10 of 13
Sadly I'm experiencing this myself. I've always been into music, but only recently gotten into hi-fi. Now that I'm starting to upgrade my gear some of my favorite tracks are stuck in 128-256k MP3's that sound dull on the good gear.
 
I guess my solution is going to be to buy CD's of the stuff I truly enjoy, then rip them to Apple Lossless.
 
Nov 7, 2010 at 9:54 AM Post #12 of 13
 
Quote:
Satellite_6 said:






Is there any weight to that though?
 

Any weight to the idea that FLAC is better than mp3?  Yes.  Some people say 320 and FLAC are equal (I disagree), but anything less than 320kbps is compressed too much to get all of the frequencies your ears can hear.  You can open a file in Audacity and look at the sound spectrum... compare a 256 to a 320 to a FLAC.  FLAC is a lossless codec and the compression does no permanent damage to the file.  Once a file has been turned into an mp3, it is compressed beyond the point of no return and you start losing sound quality.  Heres the wiki page to find out more info on FLAC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flac
All nerdy wordy stuff aside, let your ears do the choosing... FLAC is awesome!  If you are using itunes, you will have to use a program like xld (Mac) to encode the FLAC to Apple Lossless bcz iTunes doesn't support FLAC.  It's an Apple stubborn thing... Apple Lossless is their lossless codec and they want to support it and not someone elses.
 
 
 
Nov 7, 2010 at 10:14 AM Post #13 of 13


What he said. Really opened me up to different genre's of music due to the sonic quality of the recordings. Jazz and classical were last on the list ......well actually i never listened to either until i seeked out the ultimate pleasure of why we buy this gear, and never looked back
wink_face.gif
 Cheers.
Quote:
Yup. The gear actually changed my musical tastes to an extent. I've always loved classical, but have gotten into it more deeply as I've been exposed to more great recordings. I had never liked jazz, but eventually developed a taste and the great recordings pulled me in further. I've also tried new artists only because they had a disc out on SACD and came to love them.

Think of this more as an opportunity to broaden your tastes. Seek out good recordings by well-regarded artists and open yourself up. There's some badly recorded popular music I enjoy, but my listening pleasure really increased as I opened up.



 

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