Nick, do you think in general that the recording quality is equal or better than yesteryear?
cheers
steve
Steve are you talking about the quality of records of yesteryear vs today, as in, for example, a six eye Columbia Kind of Blue vs as 2022 pressed copy of the same recording or are you talking about the recording of Kind of Blue vs a new studio recording done today?
If you are talking about the discs themselves I would say that given the new vinyl formulations and the pressing procedures and profiles used in premium pressing plants like QRP and Pallas, the physical LPs produced today can sound better and definitely quieter than those of yesteryear. . However if you are looking at a remastered release in total there are several variables that affect the quality of the final product and we earlier this week had a discussion about them in the Listening thread so I will not repeat them here.
If you are talking about the recordings themselves I have some idea on that front that I would love to get some feedback on. The late 50s/earliy 60s is often called the golden age of classical and jazz recording and it did indeed provide us with many excellent recordings, but is also put out a lot of mediocre and downright poor sounding albums. However when I look at the albums from that era that are often held out as sonic gems they for the most part seem to come from a small group of production teams.And IMO the talent of those people was a larger driver of those album's SQ and any other factor.
Fast forward to more modern times and one only needs to listen to some of the recordings David Wilson did for his label or the work that Keith Johnson has done for Reference Recordings and again., IMO, you will find that they both did recording with SQ that I believe rivals, if not surpasses, anything from the "golden age. Unfortunately most record companies today do not value SQ in and of itself. A large percentage of today's music consumers do most of their listening through earbuds and portable devices which A0 are not high fidelity devices to begin with and b0 because of the way they are used and the environments they are generally used in, actually benefit from the high levels of compression that we are now seeing in so many modern release. And while this compression makes the iPod sound better, it makes music played on a high quality system sound worse. But since there are way many iPod users than audiophiles, the record companies do what any rational business would do and cater to the market segment that generates the most money for them.
So while IMO they quality of recordings in general has gone down, the work done by a small group of folks who are still dedicated to providing the highest possible SQ proves that while it is done all that often, making good recordings can be done in modern times if somebody wants to put in the time and effort.
I hope this helps, and please chime in, I am very interested to hear what others think of these ideas. (I have thick skin and will not be insulted if anyone disagrees with me, this is not you know where.)
Tom