HiFi (OT)

[RJH]

Yes, good point. I've bought a bunch of CDs to replace/supplement vinyl, and been very disappointed. The worst a set of Hendrix re-releases on CD.

[Chris Bartram]

I've never noticed that, but I have noticed just how bad Metallica's "Death Magnetic" sounds because of it: I only listened to it once, it's that bad.

[therustyone]

low bit rate (128kb/s) is the default setting for Microsoft but it can soun d like a kicking a dustbin on some music. 192 or 256 sounds a lot better i f you have the memory space.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Right. You'd not want to see what I ended up with, then. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes. It's something many choose to ignore. You almost never hear the master tape as it left the studio. That goes through a different mastering process for vinyl and CD and maybe even for downloads. And most you hear via a broadcast has been processed too.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

When you get to love an LP - including all its quirks - a far better quality transcription of the source heard much later can often disappoint.

[pamela]

Not forgetting radio edits and DJ mixes.

I guess these versions are mostly out of the control of the artist.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes - the mastering process usually is. Hence the rather frequent common from some artists that 'it didn't sound like that in the studio'.

[pamela]

You sound as if you speak from hearing that at first hand. Did you work in music recording at some time?

[Bob Eager]

LOL. See Dave's sig, as well. But you weren't to know, to be fair.

[pamela]

I recall Dave was an audio engineer for the BBC or something like that which involves a lot of voice work rather than recording music albums in a studio.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I worked in TV production sound all my life. So only had limited direct experience of the commercial recording industry. But did have plenty of experience in our very nice 24 track studio recording music for TV use.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I latterly spent most of my time doing location drama. Sadly, as a freelance, you tend to have to take the work you can get. And tend to be pigeonholed as being good (or otherwise ;-)) at that. But in staff days at both the BBC and ITV I was fortunate to work on just about every type of programme.

[Adrian Caspersz]

Thanks. Just subbed back in there and very quickly remembered why I unsubbed those years back.

However, I happily note in thunderbird it's possible to set up a references filter to ignore the subthread from someones direct responses to another poster whom which they don't get on with, but leave their other posts unaffected.

It works :)

[RJH]

Yes, agreed. But these did sound especially terrible - ISTR the release was slated in the press too.

[harry]

I bet he never does it. It takes forever.