I'm not sure why everyone seems to overlook the obvious when they
wonder about why musical recordings on the market sound bad
production-wise (or even performance-wise for that matter). Maybe the
combination of many factors contributes to how bad recordings get out
into the marketplace. First of all, people buy these recordings
anyway and they keep them instead of returning them to the store with
the rejection explanation, "Sounds trashy". The second crass
consideration is that if we assume that every major record label
wants at least one version of every one of the top 200 classical
piece from the normal "repertoire", the label may prefer to have a
lousy recording or even performance of a work than no recording at
all. There are other contributing factors as well.

If a recording is determined to be poorly done for any number of
reasons and issuing it may produce (for example purposes) 5,000
sales, but redoing the recording well will produce 8,000 sales while
costing twice as much (assuming it is possible to reassemble the
"team" again), it may be economically prohibitive to issue a better
recording (and let the golden earred amongst us be damned). In the
70s a really bad recording might really hurt a record label, but
today one lousy recording doesn't seem to tarnish a label very much.

There are myriad other reasons why bad recordings get issued. Some
recording artists who are granted some amount of "artistic
production" input on their own recordings are very lousy recording
engineers or "tin ears" in studios. If they get any input in the
production process they can help ruin a recording. More likely is the
fact that soloists want to sound great even if the overall recording
is poor. Using the Go/NoGo rule a top-flight soloist can sometimes
nix a recording because they think that how THEY sound will hurt
their image and career (let the golden earred be damned). So often
the path of least resistance is for the recording label to issue a
recording of average or poorer quality that a prima donna won't
reject, rather than a grand and intensely recorded version of the
piece that the soloist doesn't like. Sometimes it is even worse
because the musicians are temperamental and once the budget for the
recording is used up the engineer and producer are left with t he
task of making the best of "what's in the can".

A more disturbing trend is that many orchestras have lost the rights
to their recordings and they receive no royalties on recordings that
are sold of their works. The quality of these recordings may be poor
but the cost of issuing a CD using this orchestra's work is
incredibly low. On a more upbeat note, some recordings of very poor
quality are issued for historical purposes. I have recording of Villa
Lobos works conducted by the composer himself and Wagner works also
conducted by the composer. The recording quality is never great but
the insights into the work provided by the composers makes these
recordings worth listening to anyway.

In pop music the audience listens prmarily in the car or on boom
boxes (especially in the third world). An effort is usually made to
use some form of "gain riding" so there are constant program levels
throughout most of the recording. This makes it easier for the music
to be louder than the noise floor in the car all the time (or within
the "less distorted" range of loudness in the boom box). It also
makes the radio station's job easier. It is probably easier to make a
decent recording of a female voice than anything else because our
vocal accuity is greater in the range of the female voice than any
other spectra, but this doesn't guarantee that the record company
will bother to do it or has the budget to do it or even that properly
trained engineers will get these jobs to do. Recording labels are
factories. Music is a product. There will be McDonalds style music
sold by the billions, and there will be gourmet recordings made for
the discriminating few.

And let us not forget the part the artist plays in this scenario.
Classical, jazz and pop recording artists could all decide to make
recordings only for labels that promise to make only high quality,
clean recordings no matter how many times a certain tune has to be
recorded to get it perfect. The recording label would likely take the
additional costs of doing this out of the recording artist's income.
So if the artist prefers to make the most possible income instead of
the highest quality recordings possible, then the consumer in the
marketplace gets stuck with the "product" of this choice.

Finally I used to review the "European versions" of some classical
and jazz recordings made by DG, VOX and some other labels. The
frequency balance on these rcordings was often bizarre (and that's
being diplomatic) when played back on any of the top 20 selling
loudsepakers sold in the USA and Canada (which is why I got all those
recordings to review). The record company's North American division
would often "rebalance" the recording no matter what other kinds of
distortions it introduced just so that the records would "stay sold"
in the USA or Canada. Played on a console stereo or a compact
victrola it didn't matter if one more layer of processing mucked up a
recording. There are other reasons why there are so many bad
recordings in the marketplace but I hadn't read about these typical
production decision factors so I thought I'd throw in some economic
realities instead of making it seem like it isn't possible to make
great recordings technically. The technicalities are we ll known, the
desire to make good recordings is often what is lacking. Watchking

Listening to music isn't a competative sport, buying equipment is.

We don't get enough sand in our glass.

On 22 Jan 2004 16:45:10 GMT, "watch king"
wrote:

................................................. .................................. I have recording of Villa
Lobos works conducted by the composer himself and Wagner works also
conducted by the composer. The recording quality is never great but
the insights into the work provided by the composers makes these
recordings worth listening to anyway.

Recording quality, hell: Where can we find that Wagner recording?

Kal

Nobody wrote:

Hey there have always been bad recordings on the market. In the 60s my playback
equipment was probably not worthy of great recordings but in retrospect the
records I owned back then just weren't all that great-sounding performance
not-with-standing.

Today playback equipment more readily exposes recordings for what they are. But
we've gotten used to the new playback equipment and we demand that all new
recordings measure up.

As enthusiasts we think that every record we buy ought to be great. But that
never happens in any other line of endeavor. You don't always get great
hamburgers, wonderful steaks, perfect pasta, 40 mpg, 0-60 in 3 seconds, etc.

IMO there are MORE great recordings available than ever before in MORE formats.
But, as enthusiasts we seldom applaud the great ones as often as we decry the
bad ones.

So let me appluad a good one. A texas blues/R&B/Gospel artist Ruther Foster
"Runaway Soul" on BlueCorn Music. Foster has a stupendous voice, plays pretty
good hollow body guitar and just sounds/plays/writes great music. I've seen her
live and on Austin City Limits and cannot recommend her and this recording
highly enough.

Live, she sounds almost exactly like the record. I can't wait to see her again.
Writes a good deal of her own material. Excellent stage presence and audience
patter. Small time but exquisitely professional.

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 04:42:09 GMT, (Nousaine) wrote:

Nobody wrote:

Hey there have always been bad recordings on the market. In the 60s my playback
equipment was probably not worthy of great recordings but in retrospect the
records I owned back then just weren't all that great-sounding performance
not-with-standing.

Today playback equipment more readily exposes recordings for what they are. But
we've gotten used to the new playback equipment and we demand that all new
recordings measure up.

As enthusiasts we think that every record we buy ought to be great. But that
never happens in any other line of endeavor. You don't always get great
hamburgers, wonderful steaks, perfect pasta, 40 mpg, 0-60 in 3 seconds, etc.

IMO there are MORE great recordings available than ever before in MORE formats.
But, as enthusiasts we seldom applaud the great ones as often as we decry the
bad ones.

So let me appluad a good one. A texas blues/R&B/Gospel artist Ruther Foster
"Runaway Soul" on BlueCorn Music. Foster has a stupendous voice, plays pretty
good hollow body guitar and just sounds/plays/writes great music. I've seen her
live and on Austin City Limits and cannot recommend her and this recording
highly enough.

Live, she sounds almost exactly like the record. I can't wait to see her again.
Writes a good deal of her own material. Excellent stage presence and audience
patter. Small time but exquisitely professional.

There were great recordings way back when. Like most you probably were
stuck buying store vinyl.
Much depends on the quality of your equipment and the setup/tweek of
it as well.