oneslowxa

I feel most pop, European Dj's and country music is recorded well... But most Dance and hip hop are on the poorer end of the recording scale...

If you ever listen to a "newer" CD produced by Micheal Jackson on a Hi fi system, you can learn to appreciate the time and effort put into his recordings... They are definetly superior to almost anything on the shelves today...

the likes of Louie Devito are found in many cars, when I crank it up at times I do often find myself turning it down because the distortion heard during the recording when playing it loud. Robbins is a group that still takes pride in producing there music I rarely turn it down and often can't turn it up anymore...

I can't remember which hip hop Cd's where recorded badly, I am not saying they all are recorded inferior, So so def, is a fine example of hip hop, if some of you guys consider it that, that still has a very good recording process, sq is up there...

Granted not everyone's ears will pick up everything... and not everyone's budget is the same (up and coming artists trying to buy recording equipment, or studio time, everyone starts somewhere).

This is just my opinion, I have been into higher end car audio systems for awhile... and this is just what i found out by looking for music for my own personal self...

Please feel free to add comments on other groups that you feel are recorded poorly, or good. I will definetly take the chance to listen to these artists

LauderDog

Michael Jackson is probably the BEST example to use for great production and recording quality....then again, he paid more than one MILLION dollars just to record his last album. That doesn't count the hush-money, either!

As far as hip-hop goes. there are plenty of great records being made. Just about anything Dre puts his hands (and ears) on sounds great. He puts a lot of engineers to shame as far as knowledge of gear and techniques go, and you wont find anything but flawless quality and production on his albums. Rap records can sometimes sound less than pristine, but that is usually a product of a sample from old vinyl or something. That is all by design. These days, just about any major-label release is not going to have any unintentional recording problems. If something sounds degraded, it is purposeful.

As far as sound levels go, the trend in the last 10 years or so has been towards limiting the crap out of the final masters so that they hit the CD as loud as possible. Some new digital tools have made it possible to bleed every last decibel of perceived loudness out of the masters, and in the process the music has practically NO dynamic range. "Older" CD's were not mastered this way, which is why many of them breathe a bit more and allow you to crank up your systems to the max. When heavily processed commercial CD's get played on the radio, they are once again compressed and limited by the station's signal processing which makes them sound even worse.

--Matt