The quality of music

[Innocent_Bystander]

Thank you for that. I can only begin to imagine the joy of being able to experience as you did: sounds wonderful. It will indeed be interesting in due course to learn of your comparison of the direct cut LP from that session.

[TOBYJUG]

@glos_olly

I often think of painting analogies and I think that holds quite well in this context. I see modern art I would describe as visually discordant for the sake of the artist producing something different from what has gone before. On the other hand, is there only a finite number of paintings of vases of flowers that are worth seeing?

The problem for me with new music is the volume of it and sorting the artists who are motivated by their artistic vision (and worth hearing even if not ultimately to your taste) from those who are not. Streaming services

Originality has many muses but plagiarism is a bitch.

[AlanP]

Excellent article Jonathon, I am lucky to own the Clare Teal album produced by Chasing The Dragon.

[MaxBertola]

@JonathanG

Mike Valentine uses a range of incredibly expensive and rare vintage valve microphones

And he’s called Mike!

[AndyR]

@JonathanG

incredibly expensive and rare vintage valve microphones

So - is it the ‘expensive’, ‘rare’, ‘vintage’ or ‘valve’ that makes them better?

[Bjm]

Regardless of what makes them ‘better’, the user has obviously found great success with using them. There may be ‘better’ alternatives but I suspect that the major part of a recording specialist’s skill is his/her knowledge of the equipment used and how to get predictable results from them.

[AndyR]

@Bjm

the user has obviously found great success with using them

Obviously, yes. But none of those adjectives are very helpful. I could just as easily describes them as overpriced, unpopular, old and outdated. Why not just tell us what the mics were?

[Innocent_Bystander]

@JonathanG

nt. The shock to me is that vinyl seems to trounce 24/192 even replayed by a top flight streamer from a local file.

I wonder if or to what extent the difference might have to do with having been mastered on using different sets of speakers, with different strengths/weaknesses.

[AndyR]

Likely not just the monitoring. The mic preamps are (probably, maybe - but not necessarily) common, but the rest of the signal chain will split at some point to feed the differing requirements of three different recording media.

( … and ‘mains’ are usually only used to impress visitors anyway )

[Alley_Cat]

@MaxBertola

@Ebor

“If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”

And yet, it is not enough anymore. We often pay for something and become the product.

Amazon seem to be a case in point - I’m a Prime subscriber mainly for frequent deliveries but they ruined the Prime Music ‘perk’ a while back, such that you now have to pay extra for the full Amazxon Music service in order to play back a whole album, rather than an occasional track and similar ones they think you’ll like interspersed with adverts. Suffice to say I no longer use Amazon Music at all.

They are bringing advertisements to Prime Video too it seems in a few weeks and there will be a premium to pay to avoid them. Not at all happy with that.

So many of the streaming services now have cheaper ad supported tiers which I suppose gives choice, but I’d really rather not have ads when I’m paying for a subscription, especially as some items aren’t excluded from ads (eg ITV X premium content).

[Alley_Cat]

If you don’t already have it the Qobuz Sublime subscription is well worth considering for the discount on purchases.

However for some odd reason discounts are rarely if ever on CD Quality and it’s often cheaper to buy the hi-res offering (and you could download in CD quality, but would it be the same as the cd quality purchase I wonder?).

If you are concerned about the provenance of hi-res audio Audirvana Studio has an analysis tool which aims to identify genuine hi-res vs upsampled lower quality files (I think), but you’d need to purchase the file to run the tool from memory, and can’t run it on a non-purchased stream you might want to purchase. Audirvana Studio might be worth a look, but it’s subscription based, I used it for a while, cancelled but may give it another shot.

[Bart]

@Christian_Thomas

We’ve already lost the joys of proper sized sleeve artwork and inner sleeve information, plus the physical interaction with the disc and turntable. Now they are taking away the joy of ownership and collecting.

I love my vintage vinyl collection, and sitting and listening to a first UK pressing of a Beatles album (or name the artist) and holding the album cover and reading the notes, etc., and just reading the ads on the paper inner sleeve (which I keep but don’t use as I insist on MFSL sleeves and the like) is very pleasurable. I do believe that it greatly enhances the listening experience. But that pleasure drops off precipitously; I don’t get it from cd booklets and folders . . . so it’s a slippery slope to the totally intangible streamed file.

Aside from ensuring compensation for artists, however, I find no more pleasure in “owning” a digital file I’ve “purchased” and downloaded than from streaming that music.

And when I start to divide up what I listen to . . . I feel less motivated to ensure that say the estate of George Harrison gets compensated “fully” for the 50th Anniversary version of “All Things Must Pass” (which I’ve not yet listened to) by me purchasing physical or digital media vs. me streaming it.

But new artists etc etc who are trying to make a living wage by providing us with music we enjoy – it’s indeed a rough economy for them.

[Bart]

@MaxBertola

Is there anyone else convinced that good music is not an infinite amount and that we simply can’t have music at our disposal 24/7/365? That audiophilia has created a creepy sort of sonic bulimia?

With the proviso that ‘it’s all a matter of personal taste’ . . . I’m quite confident that the percentage of good music within the entire universe of curated online music is pretty small.

[Alley_Cat]

@Bart

And when I start to divide up what I listen to . . . I feel less motivated to ensure that say the estate of George Harrison gets compensated “fully” for the 50th Anniversary version of “All Things Must Pass” (which I’ve not yet listened to) by me purchasing physical or digital media vs. me streaming it.

It was illuminating when Tidal started telling me my top 10 artists played each month as they gave extra payments to those artists (from my higher tier fee).

I rather resented being unable to nominate who I wanted to receive these extra payments as that would have been new artists rather than ones I’ve already purchased plenty of vinyl/CD/downloads over the years - they’ve had enough of my money!

I no longer have Tidal, partly due to this and MQA back then, but largely as I realised I wasn’t using it as much as Qobuz.

[JonathanG]

I will be covering the exact mic’s used in the Soundstage article however one of the chasing the dragon records already has a spoken word comparison between Mike’s selected vintage microphones and a modern microphone - it’s a thing he often plays at hifi shows when he presents and it’s surprising how much nicer the valve mic sounds on that example - much richer, warmer and with a lot more vocal timbre. I know that Mike was telling me that due to their scarcity some of the microphones he used cost him £50 000 to acquire and he has to use a specialist engineer to keep them in top flight condition.

I have already interviewed him at home prior to the session and we went through the details of what he uses but I haven’t combed through my audio recording of that interview for the model numbers yet… I have got around 2 hours of interview material to go through and it’s New Year’s Day and time for a beer!!

Interestingly the Four Seasons record I have on vinyl is quite comparable to the session I attended as it was done at Air with the same ensemble and cutting lathe albeit a different mixing desk.

If any of you are planning on going to the North West Audio show, the Audio Show Deluxe or Ascot this year I strongly recommend attending one of the Chasing the Dragon presentations. He is a fantastically engaging speaker and the recordings will blow your mind!

JonathanG

[glos_olly]

Simon

I agree that internet retailing has been transformative - I’ve just acquired a pair of particular Siemens valves to experiment with in my DAC. It would have been an endeavour of far more than the few minutes it took me to have identified potential suppliers and found the item in stock working offline.

The reputable (although previously unknown to me) UK supplier I’ve bought them from were 5th in the search results behind foreign listings on fleabay and a long dead listing on reverb.com though

My gripe earlier was specifically about Microsoft. I pay them a non-trivial annual licence for Office365 and in return I am treated more as marketing asset than a customer. They are a lot of effort to avoid in the modern world unfortunately.

[Innocent_Bystander]

@AndyR

and ‘mains’ are usually only used to impress visitors anyway

i find that a surprising suggestion, rather I have always assumed that the main monitors are for the serious recordings in the studio, or the audiophile releases more than one, with the nearfield monitors either specifically for the pop stuff and radio/massmarket masterings, or at least to check it still sounds oK for that. @JonathanG, as the visitor on this occasion, did you feel the main monitors were mainly to impress you?

[Neil0001]

I totally agree on both fronts. If I like the music, I buy it. One, if it’s taken down from the streaming service, I still have it. Secondly, the artist gets “properly” recompensed.

[JazzMan]

Sound Liaison’s DXD material will be of no use if you own a Naim Audio DAC. To the best of my knowledge, DACs manufactured in Salisbury will not play 24/352.

[JonathanG]

Hi Innocent - no certainly not, although it must be said that both the main engineer on the desk and also Mike who was monitoring the digital feed to the 24/192 recorders were monitoring on headphones. The main monitors were mainly used on this occasion for discerning when the ensemble were tuning up/rehearsing/ready to start etc. There were a lot of people in the control room that day beyond us and the main monitors were there so the rest of us could hear what was going on. In addition the main monitors were used to replay the recording to the musicians at the end of a ‘take’.

On another studio visit I had to Townhouse in London for the 24/192 remaster of Antonio Forcione and Sabina Sciubba’s “Meet me in London” 24/192 re-master the main monitors were used by Tony Platt who was engineering the session for primary listening. He evidently preferred main monitors to headphones.

I’m certainly only an infrequent visitor to studios but I didn’t get the impression that the main monitors were there just to impress me. They were clearly being used for various purposes on both my visits.

Brg,

JonathanG