So I don’t have a super high-end system by any means. I have JBL L36 speakers. They sound awesome. There is some music that sounds absolutely incredible on them. The Beatles – Abbey Road. Oscar Peterson - We Get Requests, Robag Wruhme - Thora Vukk, Lorde - The Louvre…
There is some of my favourite music however, that sounds completely non-impactful and wimpy on the speakers as well. Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again, and in fact most of their catalogue. Bowie - Berlin trilogy sounds weak but it slams in my car…
I would really love to know if someone has a great system and Depeche Mode/Bowie sound fantastic on it.
As a metalhead, it’s made me painfully aware that most of my favorite jams are mastered into walls of sound without the dynamic range I was expecting to get out of having a badass stereo to blast them on.
The Loudness Wars can suck it
Same here. So disappointing!
You can try some of those DIY DR-restored and declipped versions that are plentiful out there. Some of them are very good and give justice to our favorite metal albums, making them more pleasant on the ear. There is a great debate about those, and some rips might be underwhelming (mostly because of horrible original mastering), but some of them are really good sounding.
My neighbor was an audio engineer in the 70’s and 80’s and said he stopped working with rock bands because when they heard their mix back they thought he was “sabotaging” them. In reality they didnt sound as good as they do in a crowded bar and 12 speakers blasted to 11.
I used to be an audio engineer and recording rock music is an odd thing. Think about it for a second. A rock guitar rig typically has 2X12" speakers and sometimes four or more. Not only does that amp play really loudly but it also pressurizes a room (more so with bass guitar). Then you have rock drummers which can produce peaks of 130 db. On the recording side you have transducers (microphones) that have, on the large side, 1" diaphragms which are attempting to capture all that sound. Trying to convince a rock guitarist to play on a much smaller amp is not often easy, but usually results in a better recorded sound. To control all of this sound you have to use some dynamic range compression and EQ. Getting all of these elements to balance, have fullness, and dynamics is really difficult, which is why really well recorded rock records always blow my mind.
Can you give some examples of well recorded rock? metal?
One of the best metal recordings I have heard is Archspire - Bleed the Future
While it is a very light rock album, Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden is unbelievable but that is more post-rock than rock.
Dio’s Holy Diver is pretty good but it can still rip your head off if you have bright speakers.
I just tend to reserve heavier rock tracks for my car that scoops out a lot of the offending high-mids.
I haven’t heard of that first one before and I’m loving it! Thanks for the recommendation
They had a bunch of mild hits in the UK. Their biggest song in the US was It’s My Life which was a bigger hit for No Doubt when they covered it. The wild thing is that the album Spirit of Eden made it all the way to #19 on the album charts in the UK.
Tool - Aenima is ridiculously well recorded.
Same here, so annoying.
I love that you say wall of sound. A flat, dimensionless, no image production. I find myself listening to better engineered recordings to hear better soundstage and image. Totally hate the wall of sound recordings.
To further expound, record company execs simply don’t care what we want as long as the product is selling.