[TheGame21x]

I consider myself an audiophile and I listen to EDM all the time.

 

[Asr]

I'm interested in hearing about some badly-produced electronica. So how about it, can anyone give any examples of badly-produced electronica? Because I don't seem to have many of them in my own CD collection.
 
I think a list of well-produced electronica albums would also be informative, so I'll start by listing some that I think fall into that category. Would like to know about others too!
 
Global Communication - 76:14
Laika - all of their studio albums to date
Massive Attack - all of their studio albums to date
Orbital - all of their studio albums to date
Portishead - all of their studio albums to date
The Crystal Method - all of their studio albums to date
The Future Sound of London / Amorphous Androgynous - all of their studio albums to date
The Prodigy - Music for the Jilted Generation, The Fat of the Land, Invaders Must Die (I don't own all their studio albums)
Trifonic - Emergence
Tripswitch - Circuit Breaker
Various Artists - Wipeout XL
Various Artists - Wipeout Pure (well, only some of the tracks - but I like this CD regardless and wanted to give it a mention)

 

[Smeckles]

was just listening to Ulrich Schnauss's very good "A Strangely Isolated Place" and the title track has really disappointing bass that just turns to mush.  Strange because the rest of it is well done. J
 

 

[adamlr]

well we can definitely add "tomorrows harvest" by boards of canada to the well produced list. ive just finished listening to it for the first time and the quality is truely astounding 

 

[SoundFreaq]

Quote:

I'm interested in hearing about some badly-produced electronica. So how about it, can anyone give any examples of badly-produced electronica? Because I don't seem to have many of them in my own CD collection.
 
I think a list of well-produced electronica albums would also be informative, so I'll start by listing some that I think fall into that category. Would like to know about others too!
 
Global Communication - 76:14
Laika - all of their studio albums to date
Massive Attack - all of their studio albums to date
Orbital - all of their studio albums to date
Portishead - all of their studio albums to date
The Crystal Method - all of their studio albums to date
The Future Sound of London / Amorphous Androgynous - all of their studio albums to date
The Prodigy - Music for the Jilted Generation, The Fat of the Land, Invaders Must Die (I don't own all their studio albums)
Trifonic - Emergence
Tripswitch - Circuit Breaker
Various Artists - Wipeout XL
Various Artists - Wipeout Pure (well, only some of the tracks - but I like this CD regardless and wanted to give it a mention)

 
Well yes, those are all single musician/producers that are putting out good stuff. Thats what I said. 
 
Add Infected Mushroom, Autechre, Ticon, Solar Fields, Man with No Name, nhato... so many. 
 
In my post about how electronic music can be badly produced, I explicitly mentioned DJ mixes, not studio albums, where you have 15 tracks from different producers at varying levels of production, and then all those different tracks mixed together, then the whole mix mastered all over again to sound the same across the mix. Obviously you can see how that is a train wreck (no pun intended : ). Even DJ Mixes with big budgets like AVB's A State of Trance is bright. Of course there is stuff like Sasha's Involver stuff that is hyper-studio mixed, but that stuff is a far cry from a true DJ mix. 
 
 
Quote:

was just listening to Ulrich Schnauss's very good "A Strangely Isolated Place" and the title track has really disappointing bass that just turns to mush.  Strange because the rest of it is well done. J
 

 
I listened to that yesterday. Not bad, but I agree about the bass...
 
Quote:

well we can definitely add "tomorrows harvest" by boards of canada to the well produced list. ive just finished listening to it for the first time and the quality is truely astounding 

 
Definitely add. Listening to it now, been listening to it. Terrific stuff. 

 

[razor5cl]

I think a lot of stuff like ASOT is kind of mixed to sound good on relatively low end stuff, maximum an HD600. that's kind of what I meant in the OP, that if you're a fan of stuff like that, like me, then there's no use going TOTL.

 

[splaz]

Quote:

Because they are snooty!
 
When I listen to new gear I tend to listen with music I know very well and have listened to many times.
 
Although not always the case, electronic music that I hear has pretty poor mastering and squashed dynamics so there's that working against the overall goal. 

I've found the opposite, as if the tracks have not been mastered with the consideration of listening through cheap gear, some songs can say sound flat and lifeless but on good gear much fuller and lively.
 
Just a thought, as if they haven't listened to what they've produced beyond the monitors or headphones they're producing it with. I may be way off base but that's how it seems to me.

 

[marone]

Yeah the only thing that has the dynamic range of classical music is classical music. 

Real sounds in the real world have the same dynamic range. Your voice, the traffic in the street, a bus horn, the sound of the beach and gulls and waves and then the sound of your friend pulling up in his car, honking his horn and slamming the door - wide dynamic range.

There are 1000x more listeners than performers so the audience perspective is what will be real to almost everyone. If you want the sound to be that of you playing a violin in your chair, then pick it up and play it and listen to it in your chair because if you walk 6 feet it won't sound the same to me across the room. Electric guitars sound exactly as the output of the guitar/effects/amp at the output of the speaker on the amp. That is how they sounded before PA systems became used in the late 60's and early 70's.

Led Zeppelin did, in fact, play it's early shows in huge arenas with only their equipment amps. Beatles, Kinks, Who. No PA.

Classical music audiophiles aren't snooty, they have requirements for music that include melodic complexity, intellect and depth of compositional difficulty that 'classical' music has and no other music does.

Rock and Jazz are awesome but none of it compares in melodic complexity and compositional complexity to classical - even the most demanding prog rock such as Yes or ELP and that's their point. Note the ease, and boredom, with which any symphony can play any piece of rock and roll. It's just not as melodically complex.

If you value melody and natural timbre, and that's what they do value, then classical crushes all other forms.

 

[Malfunkt]

I've had the opportunity to listen to some very high end audiophile systems. Capturing the natural timbres of acoustic classical instruments is an art in itself, then add the art of the mix and mastering engineers together, never mind the performer and composers contribution; this is what can take classical music into one of the highest achievements in music.
 
Audiophiles listen to a wide range of music though, and as long as there are artists, they will take the art of sound to any genre. 
 
An 'audiophile' experience with electronic dance music it is not necessarily listening with a pair of B&Ws and Classé amps, but in an open field with massive speaker stacks assaulted by psytrance where the bass and design of the sound completely floods the senses. 
 
For quieter electronic listening try some of the ambient artists such as Tim Hecker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ambient_artists 
 
Listening to John 00 Flemings podcast on my EX600s right now, the poor man's audiophile experience

 

[GrindingThud]

Had an opportunity to hear Blue Man Group perform live in Vegas and again in Chicago. Hands down it was the cleanest, most dynamic, loudest performance I'd ever heard. The bass was so loud at times it seemed to modulate my retinas and wiggle my vision....but somehow was so clean and pure and undistorted it was magical. Wow, if I could get my head-fi or home system to sound like that........

 

[Dr4Bob]

I listen to an eclectic mix of music: jazz, lounge, ska, ambient, reggae, big band, some classical- almost everything save country... and electronic is perhaps my favourite genre.
 
I think the points made regarding the dynamics and generally (but certainly NOT universally) better recording and mastering in classical music reveal the subtleties in
equipment better than other genres are important. I believe equipment that does well with the demands classical music will perform at least as well with other types of music
and perhaps this, and reviewer familiarity with certain classical tracks on a wide variety of equipment, is why it is so often used in reviews.
 
It does not matter to ones enjoyment of music if  "electronic is overly compressed" or "poorly mastered". Art is art and speaks to each of us individually. Beauty in music is in the
ears and mind of the listener.
 
Cheers.

 

[329161]

I consider myself an "audiophile" and I listen, almost exclusively, to electronic music. Listening to Autechre on headphones is quite an experience.

 

[jonyoo]

Anybody listen to di.fm? I personally don't like streaming my music. But I go there to find a lot of good stuff.
Love the Trance channels.

 

[bpeng]

As you can see, there are plenty of audiophiles who listen to electronic music. For myself, I find the timbres of well-played acoustic instruments to be the most beautiful sounds in the world. So I make my decision about high-end equipment based on what reproduces these the best. Since different reproduction devices have different properties and strengths/weaknesses, it is normal that you would find some equipment to lend itself better to electronic music and some to classical music. Etc.
 
If you look at one property of playback, bass pitch definition, consider what gives bass instruments their pitch. It's the distribution of energy among the harmonics, essentially. In electronic music, generally (but depending on the synthesizer) you will find those harmonics all in phase, and shifting with relative amplitude in a fairly simple way. It depends on how they are synthesized, but in general this will contrast with the way pitch is created in an acoustic instrument (say a tuba). The harmonics may have a more complex pattern of phase and amplitude relationship.
 
Or consider the relationship of timbre to dynamics. An acoustic musician can be said to have good dynamics when they have learned to present large dynamic changes with ease and small dynamic changes with clarity. One thing they are doing is creating a relationship of timbre to dynamic level. An electronic synthesizer may also change the timbre as it changes dynamics, but it's going to be a different thing (depending on how it is programmed).

 

[colaturka]

fostex th900 my friend?