When listening to a track I’d love to see a feature that indicates how good an album is based on sound quality. Roon doesn’t sell albums like Qobuz does so why not? Is that even possible? They could use the same 5 star rating as for their music ratings. Roon people listen to music all day for their playlists I assume? And there are criteria like dynamic range and so on.
It would be a great feature if possible. For buying songs for example: do I always buy the hi-res remastered album? Is it really better than the 16bit 44khz version?
This is subjective. Some consider format more important, some prefer vinyl to digital, and others, dynamic range.
For me, this is all secondary to the creative material. For example, some slated Wild God earlier this year, and wouldn’t listen to it. Yet, I think it is a brilliant album, and one of the best releases in 2024. Go figure?
Moreover, the quality of an apparently identical CD and digital releases can vary considerably. I, and others, often have multiple versions of the same album for this very reason. In Roon, we use the versions tab, and set our preferred (primary) release rather than using a rating.
Also, you may customize the rating system.
If you think such a feature has legs, you can create a request in Feature Suggestions.
Wholeheartedly agrees as is too subjective, I don’t really notice any benefit in DSD but some do, each to their own.
The music itself is more important than anything else. No one cared about it back in the days of transistor radios and they sold way more music back then.
I often go by the recording date. Anything “remastered” after the early 90s probably is a victim of the loudness wars and not as good as the original CD recording. It would be probably be pretty easy to notice a recording that’s been compressed and brick walled as loud as possible. Maybe it sounds better on ear bugs, but it loses a ton on a good system.
Not really some are some are not. To generally label all after a set year is just incorrect assumption. TBH some early masters are as bad as overly compressed ones from more recent times.
Do you mean, “Anything ‘remastered’ during the early 90s probably is a victim of the loudness wars …”?
What’s more, a low dynamic range figure doesn’t necessarily mean an album is compressed, since this is usually derived from the quietest and loudest sound. So for instance, I have a number of beautiful recordings with low dynamic range. Similarly, some recordings, originally intended for marketing to FM radio stations were intended to be that way.
I agree, but it does make me look twice. I’ve always found it more true outside of classical and jazz recordings. It’s crazy when you see some of the graphs showing the original recordings vs the “remastered”.
I mean a lot of recordings mastered after 1990 (remastered or originally recorded) tended to be forced by record companies to compress and push the volume up. I have a few albums I can’t have in playlists because they are so much louder than anything else.
I was wrong to have a blanket statement that “all” recordings after 1990. That said, they didn’t call it the “Loudness Wars” for nothing. See the last two waves. To me, they sound like junk.
Anyone who has bought two or more versions or even anyone who has compared two versions on Roon? I mean what’s the point of having a 16bit 44khz version or a hi-res one if you can’t hear a difference? Shouldn’t anyone be able to do that even if your system is not über high-end?
Shouldn’t anyone be able to hear differences between two versions of the same album? If you rate them accordingly, in the end it woudl be less personal if most people voted on version A instead of B?
What master is used on Qobuz and Tidal? What are we actually buying? Do you mean that I should look for CD’s and then rip them? If so, I’m only considering streams for the moment, I love the convenience.
So then I should consider 16bit 44khz versions on Qobuz download store for example? Usually they are the older original version. Personally I don’t have a big library of physical CD’s and don’t want to start collecting either.
Most people talk about CD’s and vinyl but I mainy consider digital downloads from Qobuz for example. I don’t want to start collecting CD’s because a digital download should deliver equal or better quality?
I can tell you what I prefer but not what you prefer. Your post seemed to ask for a preconfigured rating by someone. I don’t think this is well suited for democratic decisions, less so than the existing ratings in fact.
In many cases the only reason I have more than one version is that I have local files and there’s a Qobuz version as well. In other cases there are content differences like bonus tracks. And of course sometimes I have more than one master because I have an SQ preference.
The whole issue gets very complicated. Mastering makes a large difference, so does remixing. The streaming services only provide (usually) the lastest version as dictated to them via the record company. This means older masters will eventually be removed. The only online store which actually offered a complete history of versions for purchase was Pono (now long gone).
The difference in masterings can be dramatic and you will see that some versions can go for incredible prices. My 2 track Pink Floyd “Wish You Were Here” CD, for example (you will never see this on any streaming service).
Different Formats can have different masterings. The DSD Flat Transfer Series of jazz albums on Blue Note available for purchase on some sites. I just got the Kenny Burrell Midnight Blue and it destroys any of my previous high res versions, again imho.
Mastering Differences.
Loudness. Since the 90s new remasters usually are mastered “hotter” this means they are removing the dynamic differences in the music and squashing it towards a flat line. Personally, removing the dynamics of music takes the life out of it for most genres for me.
You can’t go Back. If you find a master that you like you have to preserve it yourself. Whether it is acquiring the specific CD and ripping, or, buying a good version from a download store. Otherwise, any music you listen to on a streaming service can go down in quality at any time. Or just be plain removed.
Remixing. Mastering is like tweaking treble/bass/loudness changes at a fine tooth level; a remixed album takes the original individual instrument tracks and someone new combines them in a “new” recording. This is okay if the original version, even if butchered by a remaster, is still available along side the “remix”, see Steve Wilson Jethro Tull, Yes, or Tears for Fears remixes. However, some remixes replace the original which means that it is now lost unless you owned it before.
A couple of examples of this would be the Genesis Catalog, in 2007 Tony Banks remixed the catalog and decided to lower or even completely remove some guitar work of Steve Hackett and boosted/added some of his own keyboards. This means that since 2007 the only version of the Genesis catalog you can buy or stream has been this remix. So nearly a whole generation of listeners will never know the music as it was originally released.
Another example would be Alan Parson’s Project Tales of Mystery and Imagination. If you are listening to the first track and Orsen Wells is speaking then you are not listening to a version of the album as it was originally released.
I personally don’t think people’s tastes are that different, a bad sounding album, badly recorded, compressed, whatever the reason, should sound bad to anyone. Most people don’t care but this is a Roon forum so in here things may be different.
Not necessarily so. The bit depth and sample rate are pretty meaningless if the mastering or remixing is poor. Arguably, some of the hi-res (> 44.1 kHz) and DSD releases are “better” because the mastering is good. Same applies to some CDs, e.g., Mobile Fidelity.
If you listen to an album and think it’s fine, then it is. If you are disappointed, and the artist has multiple releases of the same album, look for a better version – see @Rugby’s post.
I think there are many other examples when we leave the realm of Pink Floyd and Genesis. In Indie land, when bands often don’t have much money for the original recordings, or if a producer is forced on a band, the recordings are often poor. If bands live on, later remasters often improve on it. Yet, the original is the original, and both choices are entirely legitimate (or preferred at different times, depending on what one is currently interested in).
There’s nothing wrong with adding a separate, editable rating for SQ, so that one can rate content and SQ separately (and I’m pretty sure there are existing threads in Feature Suggestions for this), I just think that any individual will disagree with the default (wherever it comes from) at least as often as they do now with TiVo ratings.
