I knew a lot of modern Pop owes more to these tricks, compared to artistic talent. But I am appalled to learn that old recordings are being remastered in this way.
I was once involved with Ballet photography, and the imperfections in my old film shots, gave life to the pictures. Now this genre has evolved and shot are mostly posed. Much of this "perfect2 photography is lifeless. The same applies to a musical performance.
I still have my teenage/young adult vinyl, for similar reasons. An LP with a dedication written by an ex, when we mutually parted, or Tales of Topographic Oceans, brings back memories of afternoons with my mates. Flicking through them takes me back to my younger days.
Like you, I bought from Bandcamp and ripped all my existing CDs, which are now all in the garage and it is a very easy way to listen to music. Though I do still listen to LPs so I get some exercise.
When I started my Qobuz subscription I wondered if it would be worth it because I wouldn’t use it enough. I have found that I use it to listen to new albums by artists I like or occasionally some back catalogue music. Unlike you, I still buy and listen to vinyl and Qobuz helps here, as I can listen to an album before buying it. I like having Qobuz now, it took a few months before I worked out how best to use it for my needs. The only downside, if it can be considered a downside is that if I hear a song on Radio 6 for example, I can check out other songs from the album and if I like it enough I buy it, this has meant I have bought more albums. On the plus side, I don’t buy an album where I only like the single being played on R6 so tend to find I get better value from the albums I buy.
Because some of his vocals required pitch correction?
A couple of months ago I gave a friends teenage daughter an original pressing of Queens first album. I cleaned and listened to it before handing it over, the production and sound quality was awful.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of remixing has been carried out.
Have you heard what it sounds like after pitch correction has been applied? It’s awful….he sounds like a computer. Don’t confuse remixing with pitch correction. That’s a different issue entirely. You can remix an album to make it ‘sound’ better without pitch correcting the vocals. I’m talking about how pitch correcting a voice takes all the expression out of a singer. All singers sing slightly flat or slightly sharp a lot of the time. To make all singers sound perfect sounds soulless to me anyway.
How do you use Roon that way, to embed new music into your music collection?
I find that one of the benefits of physical media is that the records and CDs provide me with a physical mnemonic of my collection …
It’s like sitting in the stacks vs using the online catalogue. I just see more when I can see the books. And it makes me “see” connections. And creates serendipity.
I’m desperate to get this from software, but haven’t yet found a way that works for me.
It can do, but if so that is a deliberate synthetic effect called the ‘Auto-Tune effect’ as used and made famous by producers like Travis Scott… but most pitch correction used is subtle and very natural sounding…and is in a mix with regular vocal compression and reverb is hard to distinguish. Contrary to some views modern use of Autotune doesn’t usually make the vocal sound “perfect” because a sing vocal isn’t perfect in pitch, it varies slightly… and an Autotune processor will typically manage that… and ‘align’ the singers pitch rather brick wall tune it… unless you want the synthetic effect… which of course they can do as well.
Pitch correction for vocals has been around for half a century … in the 70s it became popular with Eventide’s Harmonizers… again you would likely be hard pushed to identify it being used in a mix…
As far as remixing any previous material to Autotune or similar… almost certainly one would need the dry mix stems… and I suspect for many if not most recordings that is simply not available… instead you have the stereo mix master… and I doubt you can do much with that from an Autotune perspective… perhaps the original multitrack of Queen’s albums does exist? Yes on some of their earlier tracks you can notice it does sound slightly out of tune in places… I was never sure whether that was intentional or not… I suspect more a production error.
It encourages browsing and discovery in other ways though.
I posted one of Chantal’s albums on the What are you listening to thread, due to the impressive sound quality. This also launched another thread (where I’ve bookmarked several albums).
I discovered Chantal via “related artists” on a Tidal album I was listening to.
Our Tidal “Daily Discovery” playlist also throws up interesting albums nearly every day.
I discovered I could use an App on my iPhone to listen to BBC6 here in Italy. Listening to Gilles Peterson on a Saturday afternoon has resulted in too many Bandcamp purchases. For all its faults, the music you can listen too on the BBC, is infinitely more varied than the mainstream sludge that is available here.
I agree about the varied music on R6, I don’t often listen to Giles Peterson as he doesn’t play much music I like. I do though think that one of the best bits about R6 is that there are shows that focus on different genres of music, especially at weekends. Marc Riley and Steve Lamaq amongst others have over the years pointed me towards lots of great music and a purchase from Bandcamp. Now Emily Pilbeam and Deb Grant are joining in with this draining of my bank account.
No software is going to give you the ‘physicality’ of an LP or CD - but Roon doesn’t differentiate between locally stored ripped CDs, downloads, or albums selected from streaming sites, and can present your ‘library’ in many different ways to suit your needs. No, it doesn’t do everything; nor is it perfect at what it does do - but to my mind it’s a pretty unique blend of what I seem to want from library software.
It is, however, one of those things that you need to try out, preferably with an open mind. If you get one of those ‘ah - I see!’ moments, great; if not, nothing lost - but you will have learned something about what’s important to you.
Interesting. It’s the problems I had with physical media, CDs in my case, that led me into streaming. Rather than being a mnemonic aid they often added to my confusion. My CD collection at the time was almost entirely classical and filed by composer. But many discs contained music by several composers, so where should they go? My solution was to choose the name that was first alphabetically, but then one day I was looking for Vaughan Williams’ London Symphony and couldn’t find it anywhere. A week or two later I came across it filed under the Bs, because the album contained a short extra piece by Butterworth. Related problems arise with song recitals containing music by several composers.
Those issues were a factor in the decision to get a 272 along with a NAS running MinimServer. It did take a fair while to rip all those CDs and sort the metadata but I had just retired so fortunately had the free time available. Since then I’ve never failed to find the London Symphony!
Roger
About two or three weeks ago I pulled the eleven LP box “The heavyweight champion” containing John Coltranes recordings for Atlantic from the shelves. While listening to “Ole” I realized, that I have probably ever listened to only the of the records. This made me wonder how many more records haven’t been played for ten or more years. Now that things have calmed down after Christmas I’ve begun listening to these. Most won’t be played again for the next years and will be moved.
As I still buy a limited number of records, Miles Davis “Birth of the Blue” should arrive shortly, there will be enough space for the newcomers. I might even be able to move more books into the listening room. Ripping my CD’s a few years ago has already helped in this regard.
@JonathanG: the Sumiko Pearwood is a great cartridge for this and behaves like a chameleon by allowing every style of music to keep its own character.
Ha! I can absolutely see that being true for someone else. Minds work so differently! In my case, I would periodically try to bring order to the chaos of my physical media via some organizational method (usually alphabetical by xxx, or yyy, or whatever), but then within a few weeks it would be helter-skelter again … which was when it was perfect, for me. Just enough chaos to ensure serendipitous re-discovery within my collection, and enough order to mine the vein that the serendipity exposed.
Much of the stuff I wish to listen to (l.e. “The Golden Age of Prog Rock”) is not available on streaming services coz it ain’t “popular” (i.e. doesn’t make enough profit for streaming ). And there is very little “modern” stuff that would justify the hundred quid a year. (Edit: Controversial statement: most modern stuff is sh1te anyway)
So I buy CDs. Rhino Records is especially good for the stuff I like (for example, the 4CD/2DVD set from Welsh rockers Man which is currently inbound)
On a related note, my DB will not embrace streaming for her music** (except for her iPod for use in her TT), and despite my offers to set up her systems to stream from the NAS, insists on having the CDs!
** although she is quite happy to stream “hobby/knitting/crafting” videos from yootoob.
I only use streaming now to check out an ‘unknown’ song, etc. I’ve switched back to CDs to actually listen - lessens the liklihood of ‘doom scrolling’ through streaming playlists.
I’m searching for that special cd player - I like the look of the Fiio cm13. And whatever happened to cd text?
I have taken a slightly different approach.
I rip my CD’s to a streamer, and I buy Wav downloads. I listen to an album in its entirety, but them go back and play some of the tracks I like most, or those I want to explore again.
Streaming is a bridge too far for me at the moment. I worry that the all you can eat buffet for €10 a month will lead me to listen to lots of stuff superficially.
Been through this a while ago.
2012 - ripped all my CDs (400 or so) and put them in the attic. Don’t buy any more except at gigs. No vinyl.
2013 - added streaming with Qobuz
2015 - added a TT and started buying mostly original 60s-80s LPs
2020- started listening to a lot more new stuff on Qobuz as service coverage improved, particularly jazz.
2023 - New TT and a lot more vinyl LPs (about 300 now)
2024 - slowly improved system and finally in Dec got my streaming properly sorted.
So whilst I will continue to buy decent copies of classic vinyl LPs I won’t be buying any new at £30-40 a go. Most new jazz isn’t on vinyl anyway. I should logically sell my TT and all my LPs (some are now quite collectable), but I like having them, and the original mastering of say Led Zeppelin I hasn’t been bettered…
Yes! That’s some maths I can get behind. I may need to refer back to your work for internal PR purposes……
I don’t wrestle. I like record shopping. Enjoy a record fair. One of the real benefits of vinyl (especially but CD works) is to be had at Christmas & Birthday’s. What do you want dad/spouse? Answer xyz vinyl. Makes it easy for the buyer and imo there’s nothing nicer than receiving a record as a gift. Brings both music and yet another lovely memory, something I cherish more and more as the years pass by.