stu556
stu556 t1_je0gsm5 wrote
Reply to My humble setup by Lamsauce1
nice and clean
It looks like you have an AT LP-60x turntable, so you could upgrade it with a rubber or cork mat (might improve stability while playing, will likely avoid static issues like the original felt mat lifting up when removing a record), and you could upgrade the stylus to an elliptical diamond one.
stu556 t1_jcko5tu wrote
Reply to comment by trunks56 in Replacing my Beats Studio 3 Wireless for AKG K371 Wired. What should I expect? by trunks56
one thing to keep in mind when ripping CDs is the compression levels that the engineers used when mastering the original recordings for CD releases
for the majority of the CDs' popularity (90s - 2010s), CD mixes (and the corresponding digital releases later) tended to be mixed st very high volumes and compression levels leading to what was literally called the "Loudness War"
basically, the songs on many CD releases will peak really easily and sound pretty distorted, especially with even decent audio setups (you may have noticed this already)
a good place to check if a CD release was affected by this madtering methodology is the Loudness War database
interestingly, vinyl releases are often mastered separately, so the vinyl releases and subsequent digital rips will not have this problem, sounding totally different
(this is not true for vinyl releases that are based off of the CD releases, which happens if the vinyl release is made way after the original album release)
A good example is when you compare the vinyl releases of The White Stripes' Icky Thump (2007) with the CD releases, the difference in the peaking and distortion is very clear (and this is considering Jack White's preference for lofi recording methods already)
edit: nowadays this is not much of a problem since streaming services like spotify or apple music use volume normalization to sidestep this problem somewhat
stu556 t1_je5mslo wrote
Reply to What are some of your favorite reference tracks? by Key_Reflection2625
Songs that you know well (specific versions especially), and have listened to with at least one other pair of headphones (so you know what it should sound like).
Any suggested reference track will sound different when listened to for the first time vs after many times and knowing what to expect.
That being said, my typical reference tracks these days are