The Better Your System, the worse a pre 1980 CD will sound?

[BC Dave]

Adcom GFA-535 II amp, with Adcom matching tuner/preamp (can't remember model number), Mission M73 towers, Mirage BPS-150 powered sub and an early 1990s Rotel CD player. If you and I are hearing the same lack of vocals on the left channel on two different systems, I'll bet the same thing would occur on a $100,000 system. With a well-recorded CD like Molly Johnson or some of the newer XTC stuff, voices float in the middle of the room and it sounds like the singer is live, standing in front of the band. The 14 foot vaulted cedar ceiling lin my living room ikely contributes to this sense of spaciousness.
Cheers.
Dave

[Woochifer]

If you EVER speak that way about Rush again, I will drag you to the Rave Rec's forum where you will undoubtedly receiver a good ol' fashioned e-gang-stompin'...

Hmmm, I think you've been spending too much time north of the border, takin' things a bit seriously here!

I was strictly referring to the recording quality of that particular album. It was the only time that Rush worked with Peter Henderson, who at that time was better known for his work with Supertramp. The recording for "Grace Under Pressure" had a similar production touch as the productions that Henderson supervised with Supertramp, which generally translated better onto LP than CD, and seemed in line with the more glossy treble-happy sound that was the prevailing trend at that time.

Truth be told, I'm not sure that the medium or recording is to blame...Grace Under Pressure was the beginning of the "dark times" of Rush, which really lasted until 2002's Vapor Trails...too many damn goofy laser synthesizers and attempts at accessibility in these albums...

Friend of mine who's a big time Rush fanatic (if he and his wife ever have a boy, he's been threatening to name the kid Geddy) has always wanted something done with "Grace Under Pressure" in particular. He's done some amateur recording projects and is dying to get his hands on a copy of the master tapes for that album. He feels that that the album would be much better with some remixing that gets rid of the overprocessing, beefs up the bass guitar, and gives better punch and definition to the drums.

I last saw Rush during the "Presto" tour, and my music listening took a detour after that and I haven't followed the band much since "Roll The Bones." The Live in Rio DVD does sound interesting and I have heard good things about the music on Vapor Trails.

[kexodusc]

Hmmm, I think you've been spending too much time north of the border, takin' things a bit seriously here!

Yeah, I get that alot..Funny, you mentioned that, I just got finished explaining to the locals that when I'm here I'm 1/2 American, when I'm in Georgia or Maine I'm 1/2 Canadian...they told me "that's because nobody wants a bahstahd." lol

Mom's from Michigan, Dad's from Newfoundland, Canada (but moved to North Dakota young and later served in the US Air Force! ) so I enjoy dual citizenship, but it's not all peaches and roses...how many of you have to pay taxes to TWO different governments this year?

Sorry...I get carried away with Rush...a perennial fav in the Rave Recs forum...trying to stir up some jive here! Rush in Rio is a fantastic DVD.

[jamison]

as far as the remastered version of sgt pepper poor choice of words on my part it was the limited edition they came out with when it was first released on cd. considering the time it was recorded the sound quality is decent, can you imagine if they had the recording technology of today back then? god id love to hear led zepplin 4 recorded in pure DSD or some of the beatles recordings. Oh well
I too am a Avid rush fan. my take on Live in Rio. the performance is great, although whoever mixed and mastered it should be shot, the sound quality is horrible on most songs.to me it just sounds murky and you cant hear the vocals very well.
a few of them are tolerable, the pass has good sound as well as the acoustic version of Resist. I just wish they would spend more time to make the recordings sound good. grace under pressure is a perfect example. One of my favorite live albums of rush is Exit stage left yet the audio quality is not very detailed and it sounds kind of murky.

I wish they would remaster moving pictures and 2112 for DVDa using the orgional recordings they have a great potential for multichannel.

[Woochifer]

a few of them are tolerable, the pass has good sound as well as the acoustic version of Resist. I just wish they would spend more time to make the recordings sound good. grace under pressure is a perfect example. One of my favorite live albums of rush is Exit stage left yet the audio quality is not very detailed and it sounds kind of murky.

Been a while since I last heard Exit Stage Left. That recording reminded me of the sound from U2's "Under a Blood Red Sky" live album, which I read a long time ago was a remote recording. Doubt that ESL is a remote recording because I picked up on some left-to-right panning with Peart's drum kit, but the murky audio quality sounded like it was recorded remotely.

I wish they would remaster moving pictures and 2112 for DVDa using the orgional recordings they have a great potential for multichannel.

I thought there was a multichannel mix for a Rush album in progress, no idea what the title would have been.

Moving Pictures sounded fantastic on LP, and surprisingly flat on CD. I have not heard any of the remastered CDs. But, if their Greatest Hits CD is any indication (bought it because all my Rush albums are on LP and I needed something to play on my car CD player), it does seem to improve upon the previous CD version, but still fall short of the LP version. (Both the Greatest Hits CD and the LP were mastered by Bob Ludwig, one of the best in the biz) A new DVD-A mix from the original multitrack master could work wonders.

[kexodusc]

I too am a Avid rush fan. my take on Live in Rio. the performance is great, although whoever mixed and mastered it should be shot, the sound quality is horrible on most songs.to me it just sounds murky and you cant hear the vocals very well.
a few of them are tolerable, the pass has good sound as well as the acoustic version of Resist. I just wish they would spend more time to make the recordings sound good. grace under pressure is a perfect example. One of my favorite live albums of rush is Exit stage left yet the audio quality is not very detailed and it sounds kind of murky.

I'm a little surprised to see these comments, Rush in Rio has been highly praised just about everywhere, in fact, it was a solid review and nomination for some reward for sound quality that convinced me to try it out.
I don't hear any murky vocals at all, it does sound, well, like a live concert would I guess...
to each their own.

A 2112 DVD-A or SACD would be wicked...
Or a Dream Theater album/performance in one of those formats.

[RGA]

Interested on your thoughts on this. It reminds me of an episode of "Taxi" where a woman tells Louie "if you really love me, then you'll never see me". Specfically, after I returned my Marantz 5400 CD player today to a high end Stereo place in LA called Shellys one day after I purchased it, telling him my CD's such as the Beatles "Revolver" sounded a lot better played through my JVC DVD receiver than through the Marantz CD player via the JVC receiver, the salesman who was a good guy and didn't give me any grief, thought about it for a minute and said "the better the sound equipment, the worse 1960's and 1970's recorded CDs (including remastered ones) will sound because their recording deficiencies will be even more noticeable then." Conversely the worse your equipment (within limits), the better these CD's will sound. Do you agree with him?
This sounds like a can't win position for me as 85% of my 1000 or so CD's are pre 1980's recordings. Any advice at all other than stop listening to this music?

Let me ask something - you have a receiver that is also a DVD player correct? Then you brougt home a Marantz receiver and connected it to the DVD receiver and got worse sound?

If that's correct it has nothing to do with the recording it could very well be that the DVD receiver has poor rca jacks - as as pointed out to me by Woochifer when I said my Apsire DVD player was lousy for CD - I didn't think that a receiver maker would put disastrous RCA connections on them but they cheap out so it's not surprising.

I would not agree with recording difficiencies of years past either. As I sit here I'm listening to a Deutch Gramophone compilation cd of classical recordings from 1962 through the 1970s and 1980s and all are absolutely spectacularly recorded. No argument that some classic rock sounds bad - but Jackson Browne from the 1970s sounds good.

As for the Beatles I have their RED apple greatest hits early 1960s which sounds poor both on LP and CD - though I confess I have not listened to either on my new system. It's thin sounding but I have since bought new speakers and a new turntable so I should try them sometime.

[hershon]

You're correct that my JV RX-DV31SL 500 watts receiver has a DVD player built in but I connected the Marantz 5400 CD player (and later an Onkyo 390 highly rare CD player) to the receiver first by analogue using the analogue inputs on the back of the receiver & an expensive high end (I forgot the name of the brand which I returned) RCA cable & then digitally using an optic cable and connection under the "auzillary" control. Both players sounded better hearing them digitally through the optical cable than by analogue but my built in DVD player sounded much better than the Marantz which sounded in your face and harsh & (my DVD player sounded) about 15% better than the Onkyo which sounded alot better than the Marantz and the sound was warmer and richer than the Marantz.

As posted on another thread, I admit I'm becoming obsessive about this, I discovered a high end store on the web called Music Direct which sells products that they've stated will improved the sound quality of a CD greatly and offers a 30 day return policy. Their web site is http://www.amusicdirect.com/default.asp & I just purchased the following from them- cost me about $400 total: 1. Bedini Ultra Clarifier Quad Beam, 2. Bright Star Audio ISOROCK 4 PLATFORM, Walker Audio Vivid 3. CD & DVD Enhancer (liquid nonreturnable), 4. Sound Improvement Disc (SID),.
To be honest I'm totally skeptical about this but having talked to these people on the phone- its a very high end store and they absolutely assured me that each of these products would improve my CD sound (they also work on DVD's as well) significantly, seemed to know what they were talking about and the store specializes in very high end audio equipment and they didn't do a hard sell, I figured what the hell, I have 30 days to return. If I notice these things really do work I'll post that on here.