New headphones, and old music

[jahala]

I recently bought the Ultrasone Proline 2500's, and they have totally ruined my love for most albums released after the 1980's or early 90's. Seems the only thing I can tolerate now are the amazing recordings and mixes by true masters - like Bruce Swedien. My ears die from the sound of over compressed songs, terrible loudness-war mastering, lousy mp3-encoding of downloaded tracks and such...

Really got me thinking - What have we done with music? It used to be about "the groove", and making people feel something by using dynamics to move the listener...

Now it's like someone shouting in your ear with a constant volume - even if its a heartbreaking ballad or a soft whisper. And groove? I think Beat Detective has ruined more recordings than it has helped. What ever happened to doing a new take and get things right? "No problem, I'll fix it in the mix - no time for playin' around and wasting time".. Perfection isn't always perfect when it comes to music.

I have been reading this forum for a while now, lurking in the shadows.. And what I enjoy most is to see so many "old" guys sharing so willingly of their experience and wisdom. Gives me hope that all that knowledge won't be lost forever, and that we can some day return to making music that have those "mistakes" and subtleties in sound that we are so eager to squash to death and remove in this era of music-making. I hope every man or woman who has spent more than twenty or thirty years in this business joins an online forum, writes a book about their experiences or makes instructional videos to help us younger musicians, engineers and producers carry on in their footsteps - bringing their spirit and love for music with us.

Guess you could say I've "seen" the light - through new headphones, and old music.

- Jan H.

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Oh, and by the way - Did I mention I love the 2500's??