# How Recording Quality Effects Our Perception of Music



## Triplets

I bought a CD recently that led me to reflect on how the quality of the recording changes my perception of the quality of the music.
The recording is on the Channel Classics Label, an SACD pairing the Britten and Weinberg Violin
Concertos. The soloist is named Linus Roth. Both works were (I thought) new to me. I bought the CD for the Weinberg, which received a rave reivew in Fanfare Magazine. Weinberg is aComposer that I have been exploring for the past few years. Britten is a Composer whose work I tend to respect rather than have any real affection for.
I am still abosrbing the Weinberg, but the Britten knocked my socks off. It starts off with some great low chords in the bass and timpani and grabs the attention immediately. It It impresses me as great work that ought to be heard right along with the other Standard Violin Concertos.
To my chagrin, I discovered on my shelves that I already owned a recording of the Britten, that I must have purchased 15 years or so ago and haven't played since. It is on the naxos label and is paired with a Cello work.
I listened to the Naxos recording and as a performance it probably doesn't differ much from the Roth recording. The sound however is a major difference, very typical of Naxos recordings of the 90s, somewhat recessed and thin in the bass and midrange. The SACD is so much more imediate and involving that it leads me to wonder to what extent my perfceptions of the work are altered by the recording quality.
I became familiar with most of the standard Violin Concertos via recordings made in the 50s and 60s by the likes of Issac Stern, Heifetz, Milstein, Oistrakh, Francescatti, etc. I heard most of the VC warhorses dozens of times on recordings before I started attending concerts. On the recordings of those eras the Soloist was always miked so loud that they sound as loud or louder as the rest of the Orchestra. This is very unnatural but unfortunately for me I always tend to leave a concert, no matter how well done, with a sense that the Violinist somehow didn't compare favorably with favorite recording


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## Couac Addict

Don't most people fail the blind test with SACD's? I'm no authority on the matter but I can't help assume that owners of SACD players would be plugging it into some very decent equipment. Consequently, the music sounds better and possibly perceived to be better.


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## Triplets

Couac Addict said:


> Don't most people fail the blind test with SACD's? I'm no authority on the matter but I can't help assume that owners of SACD players would be plugging it into some very decent equipment. Consequently, the music sounds better and possibly perceived to be better.


Beats me. I have a lot of SACDs. When I play the CD layer on the player there is a clear drop in quality.
I am listening to the CD layer of the Britten now. It is still pretty darn good.
It is true that a good system will let one appreciate the virtues of a good source.
At any rate, with respect to the Britten, my appreciation for the work is greatly enhanced by a really first rate recording.


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## Polyphemus

Triplets is of course right. But in defence of the practise I want to hear the soloist. Largely speaking most people buy a concerto recording based on the soloists reputation. In my own case Heifetz recordings are absolute necessities if Violin Concerti are your forte, despite the age of the recordings and the availability of technically superior offerings from other superb violinists. The chamber recordings with Rubinstein and Piatigorsky are masterclasses and more evenly balanced.


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## PetrB

As much as I love good full spectrum sound, I am rather the opposite of an audiophile, and I think audiophilia, if in place enough, can sway that kind of listener into being, at least, 'less seduced' by a piece than a recording involving better audio.

It is really the performance which can make a world of difference, and it is also more than possible that some fifteen years of listening experience and an acquired further understanding of music can (and should) have seen a major increase in development of what you do, and do not, like.

For me, I want to hear _what is on the record,_ including any engineering warts, and I don't worry about a repro system where I can alter the playback much at all. Most any recording from the 60's on is 'o.k.' and about the lesser quality audio, of course better is desirable. The least of the lessor aren't so grim though, that I feel I am missing much 'information' when listening to a new piece.

If you are an audiophile, the sensual deprivation of hearing xx.xxx% less of what you think should be there I think is more distracting, but I really cannot imagine it being that diverting that you can not hear 'what is on the record, the performance, and the piece.'


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## Triplets

PetrB said:


> As much as I love good full spectrum sound, I am rather the opposite of an audiophile, and I think audiophilia, if in place enough, can sway that kind of listener into being, at least, 'less seduced' by a piece than a recording involving better audio.
> 
> It is really the performance which can make a world of difference, and it is also possible, some fifteen years can (and should) have seen a major increase in development of what you do, and do not, like.
> 
> For me, I want to hear _what is on the record,_ including any engineering warts, and I don't worry about a repro system where I can alter the playback much at all. Most any recording from the 60's on is 'o.k.' and about the lesser quality audio, of course better is desirable. The least of the lessor aren't so grim though, that I feel I am missing much 'information' when listening to a new piece.
> 
> If you are an audiophile, the sensual deprivation of hearing xx.xxx% less of what you think should be there I think is more distracting, but I really cannot imagine it being that diverting that you can not hear 'what is on the record, the performance, and the piece.'


I agree with all of that, but in practice I find that excellent sound draws me in. Another example is the set of Brahms Symphonies conducted by Marek Janowski with Pittsburgh on Pentatone. There must be 100 different Brahms cycles available. I find this one to be very satisfying but I also find myself wondering if the excellent recording, which really clones close to a Concert Hall experience, elevates this cycle from also ran to all star status.


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## PetrB

Triplets said:


> I agree with all of that, but in practice I find that excellent sound draws me in. Another example is the set of Brahms Symphonies conducted by Marek Janowski with Pittsburgh on Pentatone. There must be 100 different Brahms cycles available. I find this one to be very satisfying but I also find myself wondering if the excellent recording, which really clones close to a Concert Hall experience, elevates this cycle from also ran to all star status.


I will _always_ go for the quality of a performance, overall, vs. sound quality or those less fortunate recordings where several contractual agreements set soloist X with orchestra and conductor Y. Always. But, that is more, I'm sure, the musician's wont vs. that of the general listener, and I know it is perhaps a more 'clinical' a approach as well, carrying less 'glamor' of certain principal performers being a draw.

Best overall performance had me buying (years back) many an Angel-Seraphim LP over other good recordings, one reason being they had a policy of doing several through performances and making no more than three, maybe four, splices of those for the final product... giving a truer import of a through performance, and often enough those might have in them minor player mistakes.

I do think active musicians are the most ready to completely concede that no recording will ever be anywhere near to the real thing, so directly in the experience they are, sitting right in the center of the sound, knowing what it sounds like in halls. To me, the best of the best recordings still sound somehow flat or lifeless by comparison. The mind and memory take care of what the recording and reproducing equipment do not.

Most concerto recordings close mic the solo instrument to the point where no one would ever hear it like that in the hall; ditto for opera recordings


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## Guest

Above a certain threshold, the quality of the recording really doesn't concern me much. I listen to most of my music in mp3 form, or the iTunes format. My ears can't detect the difference between that and CD quality - thank goodness. I don't know that I'd be able to detect, then, and appreciable difference between a good quality CD and an SACD.

With early, pre-stereo recordings, the more fuzz and other noises there are, and the more distorted the sound, the less easy it is for me to appreciate the work. So usually, when first exploring a piece, I go for a modern recording with great sound. Once I am familiar with the work, if I like it enough, I will explore other recordings and interpretations. I didn't appreciate, for example, the Furtwangler Bayreuth Beethoven 9th on EMI until I had appreciated the 60's Karajan 9th, the recent Vanska 9th, and a few others. Now that I know the work, the quality of the recording plays less of a role in my appreciation.

Like someone else said, I think a lot of it has to do with the elapsed time - 15 years - between your purchases. I haven't been exploring classical music for 15 years, but still, I find new things that as recently, even, as 6 months ago, I would have had no interest in hearing.


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## Guest

Oh, and for musicians like Heifetz (my personal favorite violinist), even though most of his recordings are fairly old, some of those are still excellent sounding. Heifetz' Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Glazunov on the RCA Living Stereo series are incredible.


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## Rangstrom

Interesting question (although the other possibility is that you were now ready to "hear" the Britten piece). I listen to many historic recordings (Milstein is still the first choice on many works) so I can tolerate a wide range of sound quality, but a well mastered, well recorded cd/sacd is always welcome.

I think going to concerts (especially non-amplified) in decent venues would help more listeners appreciate the differences in sound quality between mp3, cd and sacd formats. I found, for example, that I tend to listen to string quartets at too high a volume, that often cellos have a buzz and brass a burr, that mid-range orchestral sound is often muddy and that nothing really captures the glory of a pipe organ at full bore. The over-spotlighting a soloist (as noted by Triplets) is another example.


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## brotagonist

My experience parallels that of others:

PeterB: Most any recording from the 60's on is 'o.k.'... I want to hear _what is on the record_... ...quality audio... better is desirable

DrMike: Above a certain threshold, the quality of the recording really doesn't concern me much.... With early, pre-stereo recordings, the more fuzz and other noises there are, and the more distorted the sound, the less easy it is for me to appreciate the work.

To sum up, I insist on good sound that doesn't exhibit any significant flaws, but it doesn't have to be audiophile quality. I listen straight, so I don't make use of any of the dials and settings and signal processors of my amplifier. I trust the recording engineers and the performers and this is what I want to hear. In my experience, recordings from the 1950s and earlier, while they certainly have musicological and archival value, tend to lack the sound quality I expect and am accustomed to. Remastering (and judicious use of the digital signal processor of my amplifier) can make some of these recordings usable, but there are more recent recordings: I have not had to resort to sacrificing that much audio quality. While I recognize the greatness of performers from eras gone by, for the most part, their legends must live on in the history books: the recording industry was just not sufficiently advanced in their day.

So, getting back to the OP's (implied) question: Does audio quality affect one's perception of music?

For me, a poorly recorded performance will affect my overall enjoyment and can adversely affect my impression of the music. I always try to locate a recording that provides at least my minimum standard or preferably better.


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## abraham

When I recording the music which kind of things we can mostly focus.?


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## Lord Lance

Recording quality used to bug me until a few months ago. Now I can listen to this and be happy:






Its all about acclimatizing yourself. After all, we all know that older is _always _better.


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## Albert7

Lord Lance said:


> Recording quality used to bug me until a few months ago. Now I can listen to this and be happy:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Its all about acclimatizing yourself. After all, we all know that older is _always _better.


Facepalm... let's hope that you don't subscribe to the last sentence...


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## Saintbert

SACD, CD, or DVD matters little if the recording, mixing or mastering is off.

When listening to an old recording, I become more aware of its age (in a bad way) when it's orchestral music. I find a solo piano performance more easily entrancing, more immediate. I'm not a brain scientist, but I'll put this idea out there: It's the listening mind translating a cue into the present. The listener knows the sound of a fine piano in his mind, and he's hearing that fine piano through the crackling old record. (Like those 'Zenph Studios re-performance' releases from a few years back, which I find a horrendous idea, where historic performances are re-created, every note processed by a machine, in perfect conditions. That's what I mean... but with heart.) It's harder to 'translate' an orchestra or even a more random sound like the one a solo violin makes. You can still enjoy it though. You could even find the nostalgia endearing.

There's very little to do about an old recording, and the less done the better. A bad remastering or mixing job is more likely to ruin my enjoyment. When I hear an old recording I want to hear the hiss, because if it's not there, likely there's something else missing too in the soundscape.


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## hapiper

Triplets said:


> I agree with all of that, but in practice I find that excellent sound draws me in. Another example is the set of Brahms Symphonies conducted by Marek Janowski with Pittsburgh on Pentatone. There must be 100 different Brahms cycles available. I find this one to be very satisfying but I also find myself wondering if the excellent recording, which really clones close to a Concert Hall experience, elevates this cycle from also ran to all star status.


One of the things I think a recording should do and the point of it all is to reproduce the experience of a live concert as much as possible, which includes the 'sound' of the location where the recording took place. In my experience it takes a high quality recording played back on a high quality playback system to do that. Now I am not saying you have to have an SACD to do that, but it helps <g> Obviously you can have a poorly engineered, mastered recording of any kind, but the more tools the engineer has the easier it is going to be to achieve that high level of playback realism.


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## hpowders

I have a very nice compilation of great American symphonies with Ormandy/Philadelphia. The one fly in the ointment is it's in mono and for me this is a negative.

I don't need superlative sound, but some of those mono recordings are unlistenable.

I have quote a few Toscanini/NBC Beethoven cycle recordings from the late 1930's and I rarely play any of them because of the horrible sound.


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## Albert7

I agree, if the original masters are terrible then it doesn't matter whether or not 24 bit pressings have a good sound. Honestly, I like how iTunes labels their recordings with "Mastered with iTunes" so then I know that they are using the original masters to create the AAC files rather than just ripping a CD for the album.


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## hpowders

I have several re-masterings of Toscanini's NBC Beethoven cycle from the late 1930's and they are all practically unlistenable.
I can hear that the performances are excellent, but can't listen because it pains me to do so.
Very frustrating! Sure. Sound quality is hugely important!


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## Bulldog

brotagonist said:


> To sum up, I insist on good sound that doesn't exhibit any significant flaws, but it doesn't have to be audiophile quality. I listen straight, so I don't make use of any of the dials and settings and signal processors of my amplifier. I trust the recording engineers and the performers and this is what I want to hear.


Well, I can't say I have your trust in the recording engineers/performers. Actually, I have very little faith in them. I like recordings on the "dry" side, and "dry" is a dirty word to most sound engineers. Anyways, I use every one of the dials and buttons available to me to arrive at a sound I find most appealing.


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## Triplets

hpowders said:


> I have several re-masterings of Toscanini's NBC Beethoven cycle from the late 1930's and they are all practically unlistenable.
> I can hear that the performances are excellent, but can't listen because it pains me to do so.
> Very frustrating! Sure. Sound quality is hugely important!


 I have the latest issued remastering, I forgot on what label (I am at work right now, goofing off). I don't agree that they are unlistenable, but they do challange the listener. I find myself so fascinated by the differences between the 1930s cycle and the later Studio 8-H set that I have listened to it a couple of times. The later recordings show AT as a martinet, and the earlier performances have a wonderful suppleness and elasticity that he lost later.


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## ginsan

If I have 2 versions of the same violinists' recording I always pick the one with the most background noise, because then I know that that one is closer to the original. I really appreciate it when I hear remasters where there is a lot of background noise, it shows me that the person doing the job had authenticity as his first priority. I am used to bad recordings because all the violinists I listen to were at their best before the fifties. But I HATE IT more than anything else when modern players use synthetic strings. It's NOTHING LIKE gut strings and it just kills everything, the music, the freedom, the soaring, the nuances. It's extremely rare for me to like even a single performance of a modern player, all the elegance and character of the old era dead. And it's more pure tone than phrasing or things like that. The monotone sound of a modern player kills it immediately for me.

But with orchestra's I am less picky, there it is much more about timing, nuance, phrasing, etc.


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## Triplets

ginsan said:


> If I have 2 versions of the same violinists' recording I always pick the one with the most background noise, because then I know that that one is closer to the original. I really appreciate it when I hear remasters where there is a lot of background noise, it shows me that the person doing the job had authenticity as his first priority. I am used to bad recordings because all the violinists I listen to were at their best before the fifties. But I HATE IT more than anything else when modern players use synthetic strings. It's NOTHING LIKE gut strings and it just kills everything, the music, the freedom, the soaring, the nuances. It's extremely rare for me to like even a single performance of a modern player, all the elegance and character of the old era dead. And it's more pure tone than phrasing or things like that. The monotone sound of a modern player kills it immediately for me.
> 
> But with orchestra's I am less picky, there it is much more about timing, nuance, phrasing, etc.


Can you explain about the "background noise" ? I am not sure what you mean.


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## ginsan

Here is a quick example.

Joseph Joachim - Brahms dance 1
This one has less background noise and seems to be a higher quality recording.

Joseph Joachim - Brahms dance 1
This one might sound uglier to many people, the high notes are shrill and there is so much hiss that you have to turn up the volume to make out the violin, but I think this is closer to the real sound of Joachim and I find it more enjoyable.

I hope you get the point, if not I could elaborate a bit more with more examples if you like. But it probably has to do with the fact that when they remove some of the background noise, the sounds of the violin go along with them.


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## Triplets

Ok, I didn't get that you were referring to historical recordings. A different description of what you are saying is that with historical recordings, when they are digitally remastered, sometimes the attempts to eliminate the pops, clicks and hiss from the original 78s winds up eliminating to many frequencies from the instruments--usually the higher frequencies.
I distrust digital remasterings that contain no hiss or clicks for that reason.


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## ginsan

Perhaps because I almost always listen to historical recordings, I didn't think about pointing that out.


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## ColColt

Mahler's No. 2 Symphony stands among my top favorites but, I've found I like the recording from EMI, with Klemperer as conductor of the Bavarian Symphony Orchestra is the better of the two, the other being Klemperer and the Concertgebouw Orchestra on Guild label. Same conductor just different orchestras and labels. Bernstein with the LSO is also very good. In these cases I think it's the orchestra and recording company.


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## Corvus

After listening to Ginsan's links( thank you) I very much appreciate that we live in an era where we can produce excellent sounding recordings. Perhaps this is also a function of the age of the listener. The only classical music recordings I am familiar with or purchase is stuff that has been recorded within the past 20 years or so. Not that recording quality supersedes the performance quality, but with so many recordings to choose from I feel that it is always possible to have the best of both worlds in one recording. Case in point: after much searching and listening to samples of Brahm's violin sonatas, I finally purchased Znaider and Bronfman's version. I feel I have one of the best performances and great recording quality to go along with it!


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