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Old hifi systems with great sounding drum kit cymbals

I think it's reasonable to question whether or not Hi-Fi in general has improved over the last few decades. Not only am I not sure it has not but I think that in some ways it's getting worse.

Sure, there have been advances in individual components but in general I don't think the direction is good. We are getting a cleaner, less coloured sound at the expense of life, tonality and realism. I can't remember ever hearing a modern system, at any price, that puts performers in the room like my LP12 and forty year old Briks do.

It's hard to find a system that plays cymbals well because most Hi-Fi is crap.
 
Oooh, a cymbal thread (I have a whole stash of Zildjian Ks up in the attic). The thing about cymbal sounds is that it isn't just the recording of cymbals that has changed, there are now many more different interpretations on the cymbal sound available from the main marques.

In the 70s and before, there was A Zildjian and K Zildjian. Back in the 50s, all the jazz drummers used hand-hammered K Zildjians, which are typically 'trashy, dark and with beautiful tonal colour'. When rock came into its own, the A - a more regular, brighter and mass-produced cymbal - gave a brighter, higher pitched sound. Later came Z Zildjians, for the metal heads, and in recent times we've gone wildly diverse with everything from unlathed to effects-orientated cymbals. (I'm purposefully not including other marques in this, such as Paiste, Sabian, etc., but the story's much the same). In the early 90s, we saw the A Customs, and so on. Plus brilliant, versus standard, finishing - imparts changes to the sound also.

The original Blue Note type cymbal tone comes from hand-hammered K cymbals of typically light construction from Turkey. When production changed to USA, there was greater consistency between samples of the same cymbal but then some of the truly original, now highly desirable sounds were somewhat lost. In recent times, moves to try to get back those earlier tonalities has been the preserve of Zildjian's top lines.

What I intended to say by writing all of this is that the sound you hear on the modern recording is as much a factor in a greater choice in cymbal tonality as it is differences in miking and mixing techniques. Though even with that said, there's a greater emphasis on close miking which brings out more of the stick and, with it, the overall brightness.

I LOVE cymbals. But they hate me. Which is why my ears are mildly ****ed.
 
You are going to laugh at me, but one of the most difficult cymbal sounds to reproduce are Ringo’s.
I could never tell what he was really doing until I saw Get Back.
 
Thanks for all your responses. I am now 62 but my hearing isn't bad at all. Its been ages since I've put a hifi system up and running since I've used my home cinema system for listening to CDs too - its good but I would say 'coloured' sound compared to defined audiophile systems.
I'm feeling somewhat stuck at present whether to continue with older equipment (which to be honest is well constructed and generally uses good components but ageing can be factor) or by a much newer system. I do think that the comments from Mr Pig fit with my thinking which is why I have concern in paying out for equipment that costs a fortune and doesn't last too long. its almost like comparing old guitar amps to modern ones - point to point wiring vs horrendous PC boards.
 
JTC said:
Oooh, a cymbal thread (I have a whole stash of Zildjian Ks up in the attic). The thing about cymbal sounds is that it isn't just the recording of cymbals that has changed, there are now many more different interpretations on the cymbal sound available from the main marques.

In the 70s and before, there was A Zildjian and K Zildjian. Back in the 50s, all the jazz drummers used hand-hammered K Zildjians, which are typically 'trashy, dark and with beautiful tonal colour'. When rock came into its own, the A - a more regular, brighter and mass-produced cymbal - gave a brighter, higher pitched sound. Later came Z Zildjians, for the metal heads, and in recent times we've gone wildly diverse with everything from unlathed to effects-orientated cymbals. (I'm purposefully not including other marques in this, such as Paiste, Sabian, etc., but the story's much the same). In the early 90s, we saw the A Customs, and so on. Plus brilliant, versus standard, finishing - imparts changes to the sound also.

The original Blue Note type cymbal tone comes from hand-hammered K cymbals of typically light construction from Turkey. When production changed to USA, there was greater consistency between samples of the same cymbal but then some of the truly original, now highly desirable sounds were somewhat lost. In recent times, moves to try to get back those earlier tonalities has been the preserve of Zildjian's top lines.

What I intended to say by writing all of this is that the sound you hear on the modern recording is as much a factor in a greater choice in cymbal tonality as it is differences in miking and mixing techniques. Though even with that said, there's a greater emphasis on close miking which brings out more of the stick and, with it, the overall brightness.

I LOVE cymbals. But they hate me. Which is why my ears are mildly ****ed.
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I have a preference for the thinner cymbals as in my opinion they have more "after shimmer" and less initial sound from the stick striking the metal. I also prefer the larger diameter cymbals. I don't play rock music that often but when I have they are the only times I have broken a cymbal and on both occasions it was a zildjian k.
 
mega lord said:
I have a preference for the thinner cymbals as in my opinion they have more "after shimmer" and less initial sound from the stick striking the metal. I also prefer the larger diameter cymbals. I don't play rock music that often but when I have they are the only times I have broken a cymbal and on both occasions it was a zildjian k.
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That's interesting. All of my Ks are now at least 20, some nearly 35 years old, and they're all in as good condition now as when I got them. A couple are s/h, but no problems at all. They're not the more recent K variants, though, maybe standards have slipped? Do you play them close to horizontal, by any chance? Or with the wing nuts tightened down? Or are you just unlucky.

I also have a 19" Armand ride with the rivets. That's a nice cymbal.
 
JTC said:
That's interesting. All of my Ks are now at least 20, some nearly 35 years old, and they're all in as good condition now as when I got them. A couple are s/h, but no problems at all. They're not the more recent K variants, though, maybe standards have slipped? Do you play them close to horizontal, by any chance? Or with the wing nuts tightened down? Or are you just unlucky.

I also have a 19" Armand ride with the rivets. That's a nice cymbal.
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I play them nearly horizontal but mounted really low, as low as I can get them. I don't use wing nuts.

In both cases they developed a small hairline crack one near the bell and the other half way to the edge. Small holes drilled at the ends of the crack stopped them getting worse for a while but they never sounded quite right. I loved those cymbals so I got some more k but don't use them for harder music.

Sorry for the off topic. Standing next to the drummer is a very good way to damage your hearing.
 
Guys with hearing problems, don’t surrender !
Below is a type of cymbals that sounds pretty low so you should hear it pretty well.
This is also one of the most difficult to render through a hi-fi kit so if you can, get in a music store, give it a try and compare the sound to what you hear with your kit, this will tell you if you are on track.

 
The Mission 770 used a Seas tweeter with a polyamide dome. I think those 1970s plastic dome tweeters (including the Kef T27) were usually a bit livelier sounding than the textile domes that are much commoner now - the Seas ones often had a bit of a peak around 10kHz. Maybe that was good for cymbals? (I'm not sure though as it's so long since I owned any speakers with that type of tweeter. Ribbons and electrostatics do cymbals really well, IME.)
 

One of my faves when it comes to cymbals, the 2 shortly following up hits at 1:30 always give me goosebumps.
An aural Rohrschach test when someone mentions cymbals would always result in those two hits in Vitamin C
for me..
No idea what cymbals Jaki played by then...but they where really nice & probably unobtainium now.
 
Well, blow me down, I've reposition the speakers in my new extension slightly inwards from the outer walls, further back to wall and pointing towards the middle of the back wall. What a difference in sound - the speakers are very neutral, bass is good and top end may be down a bit but taking the point that I'm 62 now my treble hearing level may be down. I also took the front grills of the Heybrooks too - wow. I was listening to Bill Cobham - Spectrum. I have this on CD/Vinyl and MP3 so I think I will get my old Thorens TD160 turntable with Audio Technica tone arm (where have I put this though??) and give this try too.

From this point forward I'm just going to listen to music for a long while before I decide to do anything else but I do think I am going to change anything it will be the speakers.

Many thanks again

Rob
 
Tony L said:
If you want great cymbal sound listen to jazz! Rock drum recording is in most cases just terrible, close-mic’d, heavily EQd, compressed to hell, and then panned in the most fake and unbelievable soundstage, often with totally different FX on each mono drum mic. A good vintage jazz recording, e.g. Blue Note, Impulse, Riverside, Columbia etc from the ‘50s and ‘60s treats the kit as an instrument and records it in a realistic and believable place with real dynamic range. A whole different ballpark. I’m frequently astonished just how real a good jazz recording of a drum kit can sound. Modern jazz recordings can be very good too, e.g. ECM almost always have an amazing drum sound and huge dynamic range, though they do often do the rock fake-stereo wide panning thing which triggers the hell out of me. I do not want the sound as heard from the bloody drum stool!
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Yep, I find that drums, and particularly cymbals are largely lost in the recording, any decent system should be capable of reproducing them well if they’re recorded well in the first place. What definitely can smear the natural attack and decay of a drum/cymbal, is the room the system is in, or the positioning of the speakers/listener.
 
Amazing that some of the same people admitting to hearing damage claim to hear non existent "improvements" from foo stuff!! Just saying:D

KInda reminds me of the customer who claimed differences between speaker cables were night and day etc but hadn't noticed the blown tweeter in one of his speakers, which I pointed out after about 20 seconds!
 
I play drums but also record and produce. For pop rock I don’t particularly want my drums to sound like they do in a room. They would never fit in the mix right or give me the effect I want. I do love the sound of a well recorded kit though in jazz music and old recordings where little was done. I don’t stick to one brand. I have a zildian, Paiste and sabian plus a few spare cymbals. A lot of recordings seem to just go for the high pitch sizzle and loose the midi of cymbals. A good old album like rumours or show some emotion had great sounding drums and cymbals.
 
Cymbal sound reproduction on c.d. or record is what I focus on a lot when judging how well (or poorly) a component is working.
My current system is now allowing me to hear various cymbals, hi-hats and brushes on snares far clearer than I have done so before.
seas fabric dome tweeters.

Most pleasing is being able to hear defined cymbal crashes or/and Hi-Hat when the music is very busy.

I think it was Prince I was listening to recently were I was pleased to pick out the cymbals during a particularly instrument laden tune.
Also enjoy a crisp disco drumming, Tom Moulton style. In fact I like any drum/cymbal sounds in whatever style, if it is a good recording.
 
mark.king said:
I play drums but also record and produce. For pop rock I don’t particularly want my drums to sound like they do in a room. They would never fit in the mix right or give me the effect I want. I do love the sound of a well recorded kit though in jazz music and old recordings where little was done. I don’t stick to one brand. I have a zildian, Paiste and sabian plus a few spare cymbals. A lot of recordings seem to just go for the high pitch sizzle and loose the midi of cymbals. A good old album like rumours or show some emotion had great sounding drums and cymbals.
Click to expand...
Are you not a rather proficient bassist too?:D
 
Another drummer here. Never forgot the time I heard the quote, "Cymbals are a drummer's voice."

Cymbals were always one of the hardest parts to get 'right' on a kit - quite often even the same cymbals in a store would sound ever-so-slightly-different to each other. Often not all from the same maker would sound right together and quite a bit of mix-and-match was needed to produce great results. You have to get past feeling like a twat in the shop sat there playing 8 different cymbals and swapping things in and out.

Just dug out my old cymbal case, I evidently settled on the following back in the day:

Zildjian 13" A Custom hi-hats
Sabian 10" Hand Hammered splash
Sabian 16" AAX crash
Sabian 16" Medium Hand Hammered crash
Zildjian 18" Custom Dark K crash
Sabian 20" Classic Hand Hammered ride

I seem to recall that the cymbals cost a good 50% more than the rest of the kit (Yamaha Stage Custom Fusion). Been a good 15 years since I've played; I miss it dearly and when I'm able to move to somewhere bigger I'll have a set of Roland V-Drums.

It's a timely thread, as I've recently swapped to a new DAC and a pair of Kef Ref 3.2s driven by my XTZ Class A100 D3. The Kefs have noticeably better treble and mid-range and listening to Senri Kawaguchi's 'A La Mode' the other night there was astonishing attack and vibrancy in the cymbals particularly:


Emmylou Harris' 'Where Will I Be' has some wonderful drums throughout with a particularly delightfully-crisp crash around the 1:00 mark:


Also have a little riffle through Drumeo's videos on YT; unsurprisingly they tend to be mic'd and EQ'd pretty well, even with YT's audio mangling...

https://www.youtube.com/c/freedrumlessons/videos

As to whether my setup does cymbals justice? It's actually a hard one to say as the reality is that, up close anyway, cymbals aren't actually a very pleasant sound when you're sat a foot away from them - being honest if they were absolutely 'true-to-life' on every recording I think music would soon become fatiguing. Cymbals need to be down in the mix enough to be musical accents. Listening to them through my setup is, though, highly enjoyable.

In fact in that regard cymbals are rather like cocoa powder; great in small quantities and mixed with other stuff, however you wouldn't want to have spoonful after spoonful of it raw.
 
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I was listening to a Billy Cobham album (CD) this afternoon, Spectrum. Not badly recorded but the cymbal sounds still seemed a bit 'light'. A better album (CD) on this score was Jethro Tull "Stand Up" which had been remastered in 2010. I suppose it is down to how the music was originally recorded. I do have to say that some of the Beatles albums are really good with regards to this even though the recording capability was so limited, compared to records produced as electronic technology has improved over time.
I do wonder what the A&R A60 would sound like with original Mission 770's? I do have some 770 Freedoms but the speakers have been changed (good speakers too - I do believe I have posted on this forum about these ages ago) but this may the first opportunity I've had for me to rewire the crossovers and give them a try........
 
I was going to mention Spectrum, also in a negative light. It's a great album but ironically the drums sound hyper-aggressive, almost too much.
 
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