Deliberate Distortion

Wat I think with Sandy Denny, the distortion was more unintentional, but as I said I love it either way. The live BBC recording of the North Star Grassman (the one where announces her drummer is stuck in Iceland) is one of the best Denny recordings of all time but not from a technical perspective .. It clips and saturates and you can hear the levels going all over the place, but it is beautiful, raw and immediate.

As far as classical works that I totally adore and suck you in, Shostakovich's 2nd Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is pretty much up there for me.. 

Another great introduction to classical piano music styles, that some of my Trip Hop loving friends under the age of 40 also agree with, is Erik Satie's Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes works.

Simon

Ok, George you are on! I have just put in an Amazon order, so it might be a couple of weeks to the next. I think I have some Bach playing as accompaniment on some rather odd Jan Svankmajer animation, as I remember it juxtaposed well.

In my opinion most Shostakovich and Ravel and just about all Satie do not have the immediate lyrical appeal that makes for good 'introductory' music for the classical genres.  Appreciation of these composers more often than not requires significant prior exposure (not to say that this won't come quickly).

For more recent pieces that are still easy to get drawn into without previously having acquired the 'feel' of classical music, I would recommend Grieg's 'Norwegian Dances' and Holst's  suites for Military Band.

In all cases though classical music genres shouldn't be distorted or compressed at the recording or engineering stages and the best recordings do show what can be achieved.  Some are also easy to get to know and enjoy.

Now THAT I would like to hear!

Now that IS crap pop music, and terribly recorded. No-one would attempt to defend modern music on the basis of that awful piece of rubbish, surely.

Because the mp3 player is King. The music industry are not interested in accommodating a handful of audiophiles.

I find that some new music which is clearly optimised for lo-fi replay actually sounds better if it's ripped in 256k - the native format of iTunes.

I have some superb sounding 7" and 12" singles from the 70's and 80's. Popular music was generally much better recorded in the past; radio stations simply applying the necessary compression for broadcast.

Anyone braved Radio One recently? It sounds bloody awful on my car radio, let alone a half decent sound system. We have the madness that a 7" single played on AM radio forty years ago sounded so much better than the compressed garbage currently foisted upon us via the airwaves.

And there is DAB radio which sounds markedly inferior to FM.

It's a great shame that the lunatics appear to have taken over the (popular music) asylum.

John.

I humbly submit "audiophile" records as the exception to prove this rule.

Dear Winki,

What I am saying is that terrible pop music has been with us in terrible recordings for decades. It is not a new phenomenon, which some might have you believe. I don't believe that all that many modern productions are worse than this either as music or as recordings.

But I will not defend modern pop music. It is commercial venture that is primarily designed to turn a pretty penny rather than have any long term musical life. It is ephemeral, and that is the point. It is briefly, much over played and soon forgotten by almost everyone.

ATB from George

So, like Mozart's Divertimenti then.

Mozart wrote a good deal of pop music as did Elgar, Beethoven, and many of the other composers of great music.

Mozart was delighted to find delivery boys whistling his latest operatic arias in the street!

ATB from George

I've heard mainly naim and linn systems in various configurations including 6 packs in both(135's) and (Linn Climax monos) driving Bariks, kelidhs IBLs etc. and  various much simpler simpler systems from  both and Musical fidelity plus the usual array of budget gear. Of all the stuff I've heard Naim is the one I can tolerate the best.

The problem I find is that these systems do expose poor recordings but I'm not interested in finding out that records I've loved since the 60's and 70's are poorly engineered. I want to feel the emotion, the energy etc. I have music that I love that is unlistenable on these systems,some are literally impossible to decipher even though I know them well. Notwithstanding my own current modest tackle I find I'm listening less and less because the music is not replayed as I remember it.

Ultimately though, and I have been down this route trust me, getting rid of all the 'proper' hi fi and going back to basics does n't work either as I found that I miss some of what the 'proper' systems do.

I am obviously not an audiophile but have, in trying over a long period to get more from my music collection, stumbled into the dark mysterious world of Hi Fi and am extremely frustrated by it.

Dear Arthur,

I can see the horns of your dilemma.

I can sympathise, even if I don't have the problem with classical music recordings from between 1926 and the present. My pre-1926 recordings done on the acoustic recording system would be hard work for anyone not interested in what the recordings contain! 

I find my system is completely horrible on pop radio, and the really low grade system at work is far more successful on the quality that pop radio yields. We have an RDS/VHF receiver driving workplace [completly plastic speakers] and it goes quite loud. You could never tell if it was clipping against the freezer compressors!

So I am more acquainted with modern pop music than I would be if I were retired.

ATB from George

Yes, many of the songs and artists are ephemeral, yet as an entity it has been a major cultural influence over many years. Pop music is the soundtrack to growing up, for many. For a lot of us, the very best of pop music stays with us for life. 

One track comes to mind in this discussion-where distortion adds a huge amount to the final sound; Johnny Cash singing 'Hurt' on one of the American Recordings albums.

Cash is old, and dying, he is an ex addict. He is signing a song about addiction. he gets too close to the mic and his voice breaks up a bit .... and it absolutely makes the track. It is a studio album, it could presumably have been re-cut but thank goodness they did not.

This may be an exception but smooth and slick is not always the best solution.

That's not the sort of thing to which the original objection was raised.  In that situation it fulfils an artistic effect (albeit probably unintentionally), the distorted portion being contrasted against the undistorted sections.

The objection was to the situation where either the entire vocal track or the entire thing is recorded (or engineered) at too high level, increasing apparent loudness, but causing excessive compression or distortion artefacts.