But then we are all at the mercy of the engineers and the labels to hopefully put out quality sounding releases.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Case in point:
I recently ( a month or two ago) heard a few tunes from Amy Whitehouse's new album on XM radio, and on my step-daughter's laptop, and thought the tunes sounded very interesting. Interesting enough to buy the CD. (Luckily, when I bought it last weekend, I got it for $9.99 at Target, or else I'd be REALLY ****ed, instead of just moderately miffed...)
So I get it home, load it into iTunes (Apple Lossless) and start streaming it through the Benchmark. I'm waiting for her quirky voice to come through clear and sweet, like I imagined it would sound on my system, after hearing it on my stepdaughter's PC in an admittedly crappy highly compressed MP3.
Well, the sound of this CD can be summed up in one word:
SH!+
It sounded so bad, in fact, that I went back to my iTunes prefs panel to double check that the sampling rate was indeed set to Apple Losselss. It was.
I put the CD into the Oppo, and tried playing it, direct from disc, through the Benchmark. Still sounded like a third-rate garageband recorded on a walkman. Headphones came out (AKG K-701) and it sounded like--you guessed it--absolute crap.
The postproduction team on this album should have their union cards revoked, and then have their stack of effects boxes unceremoniously inserted into every available orifice. Overzealous, self-important, gadget-drunk producers have simply RUINED this woman's wonderful music.
Amy Whitehouse is witty, sarcastic, sexy, and talented as hell. Her music is atchy (though admittedly not terrible innovative) but her lyrics and vocal talents are like drops of curare' on the end of a mass-produced arrow--sure it might not LOOK like it has much style at first, but it gets in your blood and makes your head spin.
I understand the idea that an artist or engineer might want to do ONE or TWO tracks on a disk that have that grainy, "old-school" tube-mike sound, and maybe over-modulate the drums and piano a little to make a song sound like it has that "60's sound", but I just don't understand why ANYONE would want to make that overly-processed, grundged-up, grainy, hollow sound a "trademark". One song, and it's quaint. Two tracks, and OK, it's a sort of "signature sound" and a witty nod to the sound of early 60's Jazz and Motown. But the whole freakin' album? No, after two or three tracks, it is just simply tedious, trite, and irritating.
I bet it sounds really cool on an iPod, Rio, or Zune, through some $20 earbuds, and it even sounds kinda cool on my car stereo (which although factory, IS Chevy's top-of-the-line for my model, and sounds pretty decent for car audio) but on a system like I have, which is pretty revealing and sweet-sounding, this sort of post-production techno-masturbation is akin to 1st-degree aural assault, and should be punishable with Biblical Retribution.
I like Ms. Whitehouse's voice, and she's a VERY clever lyricist. But if she thinks her newest CD is somehow "cutting edge creativity" because every single track has been molested in postproduction to the point of sounding like it was recorded on a 1980's era Radio Shack boombox and THEN sonically raped by a team of psychotic ex-Lexicon and Moog employees, then perhaps she's what we call in the South, "too clever by half", and needs to take her royalties and buy a decent stereo so she can hear how appalling her latest record sounds on good gear...
So what I'm trying to say is that my system, which is by NO means a ultra-high-end rig, but is probably more musical than 75% of the rigs in the general population, this CD actually sounds WORSE than it did in my car, and there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with that.
It should be a legal requirement that recording studios spend at least 10% as much on their "reference listening system" as they do on advertising for their most popular artist. I think if that were the case, a LOT of records would end up sounding a LOT different (and a LOT better!).
--Richard