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Thread: Audiophiles or Audiofrauds? Whats the concenus.

  1. #76
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nijinsky Hind View Post
    Not Rock but these sound amazing... RCA Living Stereo too... capitol had the Full Dimensional stereo. I wonder if any of our favorite rock albums were these. I know Elvis had an RCA Living Stereo or two. beach boys had pretty good sound on capitol full spectrum stereo records.
    The Elvis early 60s albums were remarkable for their time and still hold up now, in terms of stereo instrument/vocal placement. I think it was the same engineer who did The Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison's work of the same period.

    The Beach Boys...a lot of their best work was never mixed into stereo at all back then. The single 'I Get Around' and basically every album/single from 1965's Today! through to Smiley Smile were only mono. Some have been given stereo mixes since.

  2. #77
    Member StevegSr's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nijinsky Hind View Post

    So it seems to me that a real "audiophile" would likely want to dispense with the needle and the digit altogether and go for the tape... No?
    I'm not an audiophile but a retired recording engineer that has an old Studer 24 track recorder matched to a Neve mixing console used_neve_5300_console_angled.jpg with a set of Altecs as monitors (ala Abbey Road) in my basement/studio. But this is not where audiophile sound is concentrated at for the reasons stated previously by Robert. Good quality tapes were notorious for eating up both time and money, and get eaten up themselves with continual use. I stick to decent sounding vinyl, played through a tube amp of course, to get my audiophile on.

    And both Elvis and the B Boys were well recorded for their time and still sound good. IMHO.
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    Last edited by StevegSr; 03-04-2016 at 04:51 PM.
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  3. #78
    Quote Originally Posted by JJ88 View Post
    The Elvis early 60s albums were remarkable for their time and still hold up now, in terms of stereo instrument/vocal placement. I think it was the same engineer who did The Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison's work of the same period.

    The Beach Boys...a lot of their best work was never mixed into stereo at all back then. The single 'I Get Around' and basically every album/single from 1965's Today! through to Smiley Smile were only mono. Some have been given stereo mixes since.
    You may be right... I do remember a beach boy duophonic mix. Maybe this one was a later re-release? image.jpg

    In all honesty, I really don't expect much more than a clean scratch free LP with good highs and lows. Not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination, I really like LPs more than CDs but have no real beef with either medium. My stereo equipment was medium expensive when new (JVC system) and still rocks me well enough. I do not like headphones at all and I probably miss a lot without them. As I get older I am finding some classical music interesting and am usually impressed with the sound recording on many of those... I have a Stokowski living stereo LP from the 60s that tops the list when it comes to "living stereo".

    I always loved the sound of DSotM though... Never sounded flat to me, just dark and spacey... (In a good way) I'm guessing that was the intent with that particular record.
    Last edited by Nijinsky Hind; 03-04-2016 at 05:00 PM.
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  4. #79
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nijinsky Hind View Post
    .. capitol had the Full Dimensional stereo. I wonder if any of our favorite rock albums were these.
    Yes, some of them were.
    http://www.capitol6000.com/stereobanners.html

  5. #80
    I boxed up all my albums almost 30 years ago. I don't miss them.
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  6. #81
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nijinsky Hind View Post
    You may be right... I do remember a beach boy duophonic mix. Maybe this one was a later re-release?
    The earlier Beach Boys albums were in stereo, yes, and are decent (certainly when compared to some of The Beatles' earlier ones!). But Pet Sounds, 'Good Vibrations'/the Smile material, no. Indeed, when Smile finally came out, it was mixed into mono only- no stereo mix.

  7. #82
    That's Mr. to you, Sir!! Trane's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by simon moon View Post
    This is not true.

    Sure, some high end equipment is a bit on the "audio jewelry" side of things. But for the most part, it does sound substantially better than medium priced equipment.

    I have regular exposure to some very high end gear, and there is an overall effortless reproduction that goes beyond just having enough dynamic range, full frequency response, and low distortion. The music has a very real sense of real musicians, playing in a real acoustic space.
    I do get some of it via a hi-fi buff buddy of mine that spends fortunes on rare equipment (he even investigated some Chinese hi-fis and did a personal comparative study between different amp lamp from Russia and China and their western counterparts. Weird thing is the duide never actually morphed/soundproofed his room until very brecently (two years ago, though it's peanuts in his three-decades quest).

    Personally, there is a certain level where I refuse to go above.... When upgrading from Kenwood and Sony stuff to Yamaha , Denon, NAD (etc.) was easy and simple enough and financially very interesting for the sonic improvement %age. But come a point, where the increase of sonics become financially very uninteresting (IMHO), especially depending of the type of music you're listening to.

    Quote Originally Posted by JeffCarney View Post
    You can repeat this nonsense as many times as you like, but it won't make it true.

    While singles were sometimes mastered with this mindset, "album" rock really wasn't overall. FM Radio had their own EQ and compression techniques which would be applied no matter how the album was cut. If you think Dark Side Of The Moon, Who's Next, Music From Big Pink, Sabotage, At Fillmore East, Crime Of The Century, A Night At The Opera and thousands upon thousands of other LPs weren't world-class productions with amazing dynamics and sonic depth comparable to just about anything, you're just not going to find a lot of agreement.
    Yup, I really cannot possibly imagine the remotest possibility that these albums were actually thought (engineered) about being mixing for radio airplay rather than hi-fi, especially once/when hi-fi started becoming an affordable craze in the early 70's.
    At worst, I suspect that there was a compromise to make the best of both uses was maybe applied, so maybe some of the "lesser" quality 70's album (namely the AOR of the later decade) can be radio-mixed, but there is no way that Dark Side of Century's Crime was mixed for radio. If it does sound good or excellent over Hertzian waves, it's because the album's general sonics were at the top of the game and it happened to sound great for that use as well

    Quote Originally Posted by StevegSr View Post
    The record industry in the 1960's through to the present (in a much more diminished capacity) sold records to make a lot of money. These records were played, en mass, on the radio and the record companies wanted these albums to sound good on a radio or a low cost music reproduction system to insure big profits. Along with payola, this is how they sold records! Are you still with me, or have I lost you about now?
    Steve, we have no doubt about the music industry's greediness and maximazation of profits, but the hi-fi boom of the early 70's is something that same industry certainly didn't miss.

    First, payolas came out of their pockets to retribute DJs, and diminished (substantially) their airplay royalties, but it was the actual album sales that brought in the dough...
    Second, I styrongly suspect that payolas were dished out for albums that needed the push, not for Zep's 5th, Elton's 10th album or Fleetwood's Rumours. Crime Of The Century might have needed payola to impose itself on the airwaves at first, but by the time of Breakfast in UnitedStatia, it certainly wan'ty necessary anymore.

    And it makes no sense that the actual product would be produced to sound better in a car or a kitchen than in your hi-fi room. You (the industry) could only disappoint and lose enthousiasts with that concept.
    my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.

  8. #83
    Taken from the thread title: ".....Audiofrauds"....sounds like a great name for a band.

  9. #84
    Member StevegSr's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trane View Post
    I do get some of it via a hi-fi buff buddy of mine that spends fortunes on rare equipment...







    ...it makes no sense that the actual product would be produced to sound better in a car or a kitchen than in your hi-fi room. You (the industry) could only disappoint and lose enthousiasts with that concept.
    Did you ever stop to consider why some your buddies equipment is so rare?

    Sean, I'm talking about a compromised form of mastering in order to sound decent to both radio listeners, which is the first time most people will hear a song or entire album and make a decision if they like it or not, and the home, so called "Hi Fi" listener that had gear that consisted of something like Pioneer integrated receiver matched to a pair of JPL speakers.

    The most frustrating thing to any record producer at that time was painstakingly recording, mixing down, and overdubbing songs at specific levels of limiting and compression only to have to hand over the multi track masters to an in house mixer and disc cutter, who unlike the producer, were employees of the record companies. Their edicts came from the top brass, not the record producer or the band.

    We can discuss this ad infinitum, but the simple fact of why most current remasters are sonically improved, aside from fixing faults in the source tape and properly remixing audio levels, is largely due to correcting the poor mastering that was done originally.

    If you think record companies were satisfied with the massive sales of groups like Led Zep, et al, I think that's being a little naïve. Especially if the company was owned and run by someone like the late great Ahmet Ertigun, former president of Atlantic/Atco Records, who shilled out big, big money to make neophyte prog groups like Yes and Geneisis hit makers in the rock realm (God bless him) as well throwing obscene amounts of cash at the Rolling Stones for the mere fact he wanted an artist on his label, that while not as big as the Beatles, were as close as he could get and could sell enough in the long run to recoup his losses.

    We both have conflicting opinions on this subject and that's as it should be, but I've been a bit closer to the fire in regards to how record companies operated in the seventies and I still feel the burn.
    Last edited by StevegSr; 03-05-2016 at 01:10 PM. Reason: Ahmet spelling
    To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.

  10. #85
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Returning to the original subject of this thread, there has always been a dichotomy between "audiophile" recordings and popular recordings. Some of the pop music (such as that mentioned by Carney) has been very well recorded and produced, but it is not in the same realm as "audiophile recordings." Pop music must be engineered to sound good on car radios and tinny boxes, so compromises are made in dynamic range, frequency response and stereo imaging.

    Audiophile recordings OTOH can be made without those compromises, but at the expense of sounding like shit on shit stereos. Because the "installed base" of high end stereos is small, audiophile recordings rarely sell well and remain quite rare and expensive.

  11. #86
    Member StevegSr's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    Returning to the original subject of this thread, there has always been a dichotomy between "audiophile" recordings and popular recordings. Some of the pop music (such as that mentioned by Carney) has been very well recorded and produced, but it is not in the same realm as "audiophile recordings."
    Good point. I definitely differentiate between a "good sounding recording" and one that's considered to be an "audiophile recording" and sometimes forget that most people, but not all, see these terms as interchangeable.
    To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.

  12. #87
    If I had unlimited money to spend and the time to tinker with all of the shiny toys I probably would... At this point in my life my interest in audiophilia is not much of a frontrunner. I can appreciate it though as a worthwhile hobby for those interested.
    Still alive and well...

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