Pleasantly Surprised By A Kids CD?

Soundman

Soundman

Audioholic Field Marshall
Ok, so the other day my wife comes home with a kids CD she purchased at church for my 2 year old son. It's basically a collection of kid singalong Sunday school songs. Anyway, me being the enthusiast that I am, put the CD on just for kicks. I was immediately blown away by the fidelity of this CD. The vocals were crystal clear. Even the ambient sounds came through very clean. It appeared that this "kid" CD had been engineered with very good recording techniques. I know this sounds hilarious, doesn't it?! Well, I picked up the CD case to see if I could get any more information on this recording. I discovered that this CD was mastered at a 24-bit resolution. "WOW!", I thought. "This CD probably rivals many of the best recordings I own." I had to start laughing at this point. Whether you are a religious person or not, you have to respect the fact that someone is getting good quality music into the hands of our kids, a much better alternative to the compressed crap they are downloading onto their iPods these days. I though to myself, "What a sad world we live in where a kid CD (never really intended to be played on a high fidelity system) is recorded extremely well, while much of the popular music of today is recorded so poorly. Just another example of the sad state of the music industry. Anway, I just thought I would post this story.
 
agarwalro

agarwalro

Audioholic Ninja
That is a funny anecdote indeed. Also, too true regarding the state of affair in the music industry regarding quality, not only of the music but also of the recordings.
 
djreef

djreef

Audioholic Chief
Ok, so the other day my wife comes home with a kids CD she purchased at church for my 2 year old son. It's basically a collection of kid singalong Sunday school songs. Anyway, me being the enthusiast that I am, put the CD on just for kicks. I was immediately blown away by the fidelity of this CD. The vocals were crystal clear. Even the ambient sounds came through very clean. It appeared that this "kid" CD had been engineered with very good recording techniques. I know this sounds hilarious, doesn't it?! Well, I picked up the CD case to see if I could get any more information on this recording. I discovered that this CD was mastered at a 24-bit resolution. "WOW!", I thought. "This CD probably rivals many of the best recordings I own." I had to start laughing at this point. Whether you are a religious person or not, you have to respect the fact that someone is getting good quality music into the hands of our kids, a much better alternative to the compressed crap they are downloading onto their iPods these days. I though to myself, "What a sad world we live in where a kid CD (never really intended to be played on a high fidelity system) is recorded extremely well, while much of the popular music of today is recorded so poorly. Just another example of the sad state of the music industry. Anway, I just thought I would post this story.

They prob figured that mom and dad were going to have to drive around with this disc in the car stereo, so it'd better at the very least b listenable in that environment.

DJ
 
T

TriMe

Enthusiast
Hear..Hear..

I was one of those parents who drove around for years with nothing but my daughters CDs loaded in my exchanger. Kids Bop was not allowed in my car!! :eek:
 
GlocksRock

GlocksRock

Audioholic Spartan
The obviously weren't worried about trying to make the disc go platinum, so no need to make it loud, compressed, and crappy sounding like what the masses are used to.
 
Soundman

Soundman

Audioholic Field Marshall
The obviously weren't worried about trying to make the disc go platinum, so no need to make it loud, compressed, and crappy sounding like what the masses are used to.
Ha! That is soo true, Man. :D
 
Vintage_Hi-Fi

Vintage_Hi-Fi

Audioholic Intern
The obviously weren't worried about trying to make the disc go platinum, so no need to make it loud, compressed, and crappy sounding like what the masses are used to.
It's pretty sad when the overwhelming majority of people would rather listen to poorly mixed (as well as sung and written) song. It's a sad state of affairs when a kids CD use the same mixing standers as a Pink Floyd, or Rush digital remaster.
 
pzaur

pzaur

Audioholic Samurai
It's a sad state of affairs when a kids CD use the same mixing standers as a Pink Floyd, or Rush digital remaster.
I dunno. I think that's a pretty exciting state there. It should be the standard no matter what the music is.

-pat
 
lsiberian

lsiberian

Audioholic Overlord
I've found many Church recordings to be among the best actually. It seems some people still have standards. I know one of the best cd's I own was from a youth band many years ago. They guys wrote songs with depth and the record company knew what they were doing.

Today most CDs are indistinguishable form high bit rate mp3s. I've determined this through extensive abx testing. This is why most of my music has been ripped to mp3. That being said their are some great bands out there and plenty of amazing musicians. You just gotta know where to look. Shinedown is one of my favorite bands I've heard a lot of their stuff and just love it, but I love hard rock.
 
djreef

djreef

Audioholic Chief
I've found many Church recordings to be among the best actually. It seems some people still have standards. I know one of the best cd's I own was from a youth band many years ago. They guys wrote songs with depth and the record company knew what they were doing.

Today most CDs are indistinguishable form high bit rate mp3s. I've determined this through extensive abx testing. This is why most of my music has been ripped to mp3. That being said their are some great bands out there and plenty of amazing musicians. You just gotta know where to look. Shinedown is one of my favorite bands I've heard a lot of their stuff and just love it, but I love hard rock.
They probably believe that they need to uphold a higher standard.

DJ
 
Soundman

Soundman

Audioholic Field Marshall
I've found many Church recordings to be among the best actually. It seems some people still have standards. I know one of the best cd's I own was from a youth band many years ago. They guys wrote songs with depth and the record company knew what they were doing.
I think you are are right. One of the reasons I think some of this music is recorded so well is because they have no motivation not to do it right. They aren't trying to get their music heard on the radio. They have nothing at steak if it doesn't. In fact, most of the general population couldn’t care less about their music. They've probably never even heard of them. Small companies like that aren't in it to make as much money as possible. They believe in making good music. This particular CD, I seriously doubt many people on this forum would ever really want to listen to. The kids on the CD are all probably under the age of 8. But they all have pure voices (if that makes sense), and it really comes through nicely because of the great recording. The interesting thing is that there are vocal tracks as well as instrumental tracks. It's something called "split tracks" In all, there are probably well over 100 tracks, but many of them are very short. Even so, it is a lot for just 1 CD. Not sure how they engineered this, but I'm interested in how they did this with no loss of quality. Again, the quality is among the best.
 
S

sparky77

Full Audioholic
It was probably recorded on a multitrack computer based system using a minimal amount of processing other than level matching, and only light compression when needed. The way it should be, and the way I record our little garage band every now and then.
 
B

bombarde32

Audioholic
I've found many Church recordings to be among the best actually. It seems some people still have standards. I know one of the best cd's I own was from a youth band many years ago. They guys wrote songs with depth and the record company knew what they were doing.

Today most CDs are indistinguishable form high bit rate mp3s. I've determined this through extensive abx testing. This is why most of my music has been ripped to mp3. That being said their are some great bands out there and plenty of amazing musicians. You just gotta know where to look. Shinedown is one of my favorite bands I've heard a lot of their stuff and just love it, but I love hard rock.
Glad to see the church is keeping up it's reputation for being a bastion of fine arts (albeit it the ones that go along with their way of thinking).
 
Soundman

Soundman

Audioholic Field Marshall
It was probably recorded on a multitrack computer based system using a minimal amount of processing other than level matching, and only light compression when needed. The way it should be, and the way I record our little garage band every now and then.
Thanks. That makes sense. Interesting. I could always contact the company I suppose.
 
lsiberian

lsiberian

Audioholic Overlord
Glad to see the church is keeping up it's reputation for being a bastion of fine arts (albeit it the ones that go along with their way of thinking).
I happen to belong to the bastion.;)

It's crazy to study church history and see similarities with our current system of government.

But we need to fight hard for the Arts or we'll lose them.
 
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