New Adventures in Hi-Fi

I decided recently to take the plunge and upgrade my stereo system.  Now, this doesn't sound like a big deal at all except that my stereo system is literally 30+ years old and has been with me for most of my life.  I mean, it's become literally "family".  My CD player alone is the oldest piece of actual electronic gear in my home and is literally only the second CD player I've ever purchased.  I got my original JVC CD player for Christmas in 1986, and that one promptly broke within 2-3 years.  I then got a replacement JVC CD player somewhere between 1988 - 1989 and that one, folks, is the one I'm STILL using to this very day.  I mean, the amount of hours on this machine is unfathomable!  They clearly don't make gear like this anymore.

In any event, it's not on my agenda to replace the CD Player since it's still working perfectly.  Instead, I wanted to finally buy some decent speakers and a good quality receiver since mine is from around 1990 - 1994 and does indeed make a bit of noise.  After a bit of research and such, I decided on Polk R500's and a Denon DRA800H.  I was quite excited about this purchase, and I painstakingly removed the old gear last weekend and setup the new stuff.  And, when I plugged it all in for the first time and played a CD, I...well...didn't hear a damn bit of difference.  Hmph.

This brought me to referencing the manuals, playing around with EQ (I have an old school outboard EQ unit that I play through), and trying a few different things.  It improved the sound a bit but then a fairly new CD with some major sub bass frequencies made the tweeter start rattling.  Ugh.  More tweaks, about 10 more random CD's and songs, and I pretty much decided that the new gear really wasn't that different from what I had so I might as well return it.

It was then that something bizarre happened.  First, I listened to the entire "...Miss You Most..." album since I'm finalizing the masters before submitting the CD order.  I'm actually down to the very last bit, where I'm having Track 5 raised in volume just a tad in order to even it out, and after that we should be done (finally).  The "...Miss You Most..." album really didn't sound much different from my old system so again I kind of dismissed the whole thing.  And then, I threw in a "working" or bad mix and oh my goodness...  It was like the stereo system was literally telling me in big bold letters what was wrong the mix!  I'm still not sure what to think of this but it was terribly obvious that the mix was horrid and it even seemed to point to where the issues lie.

I started flipping through all kinds of mixes, most of which I know pretty well which ones are decent and which need serious work.  This new stereo never lied and always showed me very obviously exactly what sounded horrid.  I've never experienced this before.  Could it be that my old system all these years has masked such blatantly obvious issues in my mixes?  I'm now thinking so, and perhaps this has only added to my mixing woes all along.  Hmm.

I need to play around with this system a bit more but I must say, if this really WILL help my mix process, I guess I may not be returning it after all.  Who freakin' knew?