[LazerBear]

Hey all,
 
I have quite a weird issue that I'd like to get some opinions on. I'll state preemptively that I'm honestly not trying to create any kind of controversy, I know the topic is quite dividing, so please keep civil if possible 

 
So.. I never really listened to Neil Young before (yeah, yeah, I know..) and I'm a relatively recent entry into the audiophile world. My equipment is not great, but I think it's quite decent entry-level, consisting of a Fiio X3, Amperior and Sony XBA-A1.
 
Well, with all the noise lately about Pono and Neil, I decided I wanted to try and listen to some of his albums. I got a friend who's a huge fan and a Pono owner to lend me a Greatest Hit cd and.. I found out I really liked the music but that the mastering quality seemed to be crappy (distortions, clipping etc.). Now, I'm not the best judge of that, having a limited experience in the matter (my main reference album for distortion is Death Magnetic.. god that's terrible) so I guessed that a quick way to be sure was to listen to some of the new remasters that Neil did to promote Pono.
 
I went back to my friend and had him copy me some of the pono remaster flacs, specifically from "Everybody knows this is nowhere" and "After the gold rush". To my surprise, the tracks seemed to have the same issues of the cd. What I perceive as common issues are: clipping/distortion on most drums, distortion on vocals, especially during coruses (esp. in Down by the river, Southern Man), a weird hiss on left channel also in Down by the River and some flatness in some vocals which kinda sounds like dynamic range compression but probably is not since the DRDatabase gives a good score to the remasters.
 
What I want to know now is.. am I imagining things? Is it my equipment? My ears? Or is really the quality of the recording/master not so great? I would love for anyone that has listened to the albums to chime in, regardless of the opinion because I'm genuinely puzzled.
 
Thanks in advance for any and all feedback!

 

[Lord Chaos]

I'd recommend doing some step-by-step elimination. Go over to your friend's place with your headphones, and listen to the same tracks on his system, with your 'phones. If they sound clean that way, move on to the next piece of equipment. If you get clipping and such, try another set of headphones. Once you have found a clean way to hear, then swapping parts of the system one-by-one will find the problem.
 
Another question: Do any tracks sound clean on your existing system? If so, what kinds of files are these?
 
The one track by Neil Young that came with my Pono sounds very good.

 

[LazerBear]

I'll try and do some more testing, although I also checked with my Note 2 and I can still hear those weird issues. I can also confirm that I have plenty of tracks that sound great, in fact I got to know about distortion and bad mastering through this thread here: http://www.head-fi.org/t/468831/best-mastered-albums-of-the-decade and have since acquired a bunch of the albums mentioned, such as Tool's Lateralus and Pidgeon's Retrospective. Both sound amazing to me ripped to 16/44 flac.

 

[Lord Chaos]

It could be that you are sensitive to artifacts that your friend doesn't hear in the problematic recordings. People use various recordings to test equipment. I've heard some of the recordings and think to myself "Why do they use that record? To me it sounds terrible, with distortion and dynamic range compression." When you look into how human hearing works, it becomes a wonder that any of us hears with any similarity. It's even more of a wonder when you add up the years of aural abuse that we all experience in daily life.
 
There are many disagreements about mastering quality in the thread you mentioned. People hear differently, focus on different things, and perceptions change through time and experience. I like the way Hyperion Records masters their recordings, but someone who doesn't like classical music, or a perceived "Hyperion style," will disagree with me.
 
There could be faults in the copies from your friend. Do you know how these were made? While I doubt there is anything miraculous in the Pono store's remastering, I also doubt they would sell anything with major unavoidable faults. It might be worth buying one of the problematic albums, or a track, direct from the store.

 

[hogger129]

I feel it's just a lot of nonsense to get consumers to shell out $18-25 for music they already own.  These 'sometimes' might be separate masters than what's on a CD, but CD is still most cost effective, legal, option out there.  
 
I disagree completely with him that CD, MP3, lossy formats, are 'underwater' and sound bad.  I have a number of Mastered For iTunes AAC albums that sound wonderful.  
 
I also get somewhat annoyed that when all these comparison come out about how much better higher resolution is against MP3, they never stop to consider that there are more advanced, better, lossy encoders out there such as AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, just to name a few.  
 
So...  That's my two cents.  I'm not willing to shell out $18-25 for albums I already own, in bit depth and sampling rate that falls outside the range of my hearing, because it's 'what the artist intended."  
 
Mixing and mastering seem to be the most important aspects in how the final product sounds.  I do agree that going below a certain bitrate 16/44.1 affects the sound quality, but these guys are making out like CD and the better lossy encoders are crap.

 

[FFBookman]

It's really simple, it's about bandwidth.
 
I'm currently listening to music at 5000k bitrate. It sounds very natural, full, big, and about as good as I know it to ever sound. I have been in recording studios both as a listener and as a performer.
 
NOTE  - I also have a proper digital rig, not a phone or laptop, to render this sound. If you listen from a phone or computer you are hearing $5 of signal chain hardware. Debates about HD are useless if you don't have the rig to play it.
 
 
The next album that comes up on my playlist might be around 1000k bitrate (CD quality). It will sound "fine", but it won't sound just as good as the program at 5000k. The next single could be an mp3 at 256k or 320k. Bottom line is they strip a ton out of that recording in the name of 1995 portability.  It sounds like a paper bag compared to the 24/192 files. It's literally 10% of the content.
 
Creators have adjusted and they use hundreds of limiters in parallel on every track, every stage of the recording, to eek out as much volume and emotion out of this terribly limited medium of mp3, and they did the same for the limitation of the Cd before that, and the vinyl album before that.
 
My point is -- do you want the format to be expansive and provide space for creativity, or do you want all know-how going into making a paper bag sound good?

 

[Ruben123]

That kind of acoustic music sometimes has those artifacts, sometimes even on purpose, sometimes because the records are really old. Listen to Bob Dylan and you know what I mean.

 

[hogger129]

 
It's really simple, it's about bandwidth.
 
I'm currently listening to music at 5000k bitrate. It sounds very natural, full, big, and about as good as I know it to ever sound. I have been in recording studios both as a listener and as a performer.
 
NOTE  - I also have a proper digital rig, not a phone or laptop, to render this sound. If you listen from a phone or computer you are hearing $5 of signal chain hardware. Debates about HD are useless if you don't have the rig to play it.
 
 
The next album that comes up on my playlist might be around 1000k bitrate (CD quality). It will sound "fine", but it won't sound just as good as the program at 5000k. The next single could be an mp3 at 256k or 320k. Bottom line is they strip a ton out of that recording in the name of 1995 portability.  It sounds like a paper bag compared to the 24/192 files. It's literally 10% of the content.
 
Creators have adjusted and they use hundreds of limiters in parallel on every track, every stage of the recording, to eek out as much volume and emotion out of this terribly limited medium of mp3, and they did the same for the limitation of the Cd before that, and the vinyl album before that.
 
My point is -- do you want the format to be expansive and provide space for creativity, or do you want all know-how going into making a paper bag sound good?

 
There is no audible difference between 24/96, 5000kbps bitrate and the same thing at CD quality.  There just isn't.