Did Music Sound Better 30 years ago?

PaulBrewer

http://www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk/display.aspx?infid=3534&terid=3655

Here's a documentary on recording quality recorded at the Strongroom in London by B+W.

Many interesting points, many of which we've discussed here.



Listen, Punks!;)

dav nagle

Had a listen, I think they all made good points.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

yes it did , cos I had good hearing then ;-)

af_thefragile

I think back in the days the music was more raw or what we like to call "organic".
Now a lot of the music you listen to sounds overproduced. Like the producers are just trying to show off their skills than just try to make the song sound good and natural.

I was listening to a John Lee Hooker album a while ago. And i loved the simpleness of the production. It was clear, natural and above all had soul. Tons of soul and heart!
Its like you could sense the emotion behind every note he played and every word he sang in that album. There was no technological nonsense in between. Just Mr. Hookers soulful voice coming straight to you.

Now there's usually just too much technological/production clutter junked into the tracks that you don't get that natural feel straight from the artist anymore.
Producers need to really stop overproducing the albums so much. Just keep it raw and natural. Thats the way it'ld sound if the artist was playing the song to you in a room or a hotel lounge and thats how it should be like on the album!!

But then there are some genre's of music or some bands which you'ld like to see just what and how far they can push the bounds of production.
But then again, there's a very fine line between a well produced album and an overproduced album!

cdb

What about vinyl which is making a big comeback lately.
The rich sound you get from an old LP blows most modern stuff out of the water. A decent record deck, amp and speakers will set you back a few hundred euro, the price of a fancy MP3 player.

Neurojazz

I think the soulful thing is purely subjective... - it's almost an insult to someone to say 'your music isn't soulful' - purely based on what your into, all of it comes from the soul, even when a young musician is struggling with their computer or guitar - that voice inside them pushes them just as hard as a pro too connect to themselves...

Maybe i'm being touchy, i can understand the older types of music and their nuances etc... but we are in different times - very different times...

Like Damagedtrax (using him as an example) - i could on for hours about the passion, energy and hard work that's gone into some of his music - too some it would be repetative non-sense, but to others instantly inspiring - jsut like hearing John Fahey through a decent deck setup or Some dark techno through the internet - it all has it's place and person to find soulful....

Also, a bigger picture.... Def Leppard?, over produced rock music, 11 singles was it?, how many millions made? - that money could be put to good use in the right hands.... so my vote for over produced, over loved music any day.

Survivin' Ivan

Very interesting, thanks

Last Angry Man

I think one big difference is that as time has gone on, recorded music has become louder and louder. To achieve this commercial recordings are being compressed to ever higher degrees which has the effect of removing some of the dynamics of the music and in some cases actually effecting the sound quality of the recording itself.

PaulBrewer

Neurojazz wrote: »

I think the soulful thing is purely subjective... - it's almost an insult to someone to say 'your music isn't soulful' -

Very good point ! (unlike your daft conversion one )

I disagree with the idea of worthy music. Some of the most passionate and honest musicians (?) I've ever worked with were sometimes entirely useless - and I know guys who are brilliant in every way who don't give a Phuck.

PaulBrewer

Last Angry Man wrote: »

I think one big difference is that as time has gone on, recorded music has become louder and louder. To achieve this commercial recordings are being compressed to ever higher degrees which has the effect of removing some of the dynamics of the music and in some cases actually effecting the sound quality of the recording itself.

I think another very good point.

PaulBrewer

cdb wrote: »

What about vinyl which is making a big comeback lately.
The rich sound you get from an old LP blows most modern stuff out of the water. A decent record deck, amp and speakers will set you back a few hundred euro, the price of a fancy MP3 player.

It's generally agreed that the quality of vinyl and hence records, is much lower now than it was in it's heyday.

Coincidentally that's the same with Tape.

A quality record deck is a high precision piece of equipment. Similarly quality amps and speakers contain expensive components by definition.

The price of an MP3 player will not buy these.

97i9y3941

i think likes of x factor brought down the quality of it,funny how the old stuff stood the test of time

Last Angry Man

Fred83 wrote: »

i think likes of x factor brought down the quality of it,funny how the old stuff stood the test of time

to be honest I don't think X Factor has a lot to do with it. It;s like saying restaurants are worse now beacause of Mcdonalds. Even if McDonalds see themselves as restaurants, I am sure most restaurants would not class themselves in the same category as McDonalds and thus I think the same is tru of pop and the rest of the music world - it;s just sometimes more difficult to tell the difference!

Neurojazz

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Very good point ! (unlike your daft conversion one )

What's the difference in conversion between UAD & Powercore plugins....

In fact, there are even level issues with the ordering of them...

Bob Katz uses the 6000 series also...

It just seems to be a presumption that the bit rate is constant or that the plugins upsample... Not all of them do in the same way.

It's an issue ITB for a specific reason.

And i'd never upwardly dither, and understand what dithering does....

I know i'm on a different planet, but i'm not daft - just curious ;P

11811

Last Angry Man wrote: »

I think one big difference is that as time has gone on, recorded music has become louder and louder. To achieve this commercial recordings are being compressed to ever higher degrees which has the effect of removing some of the dynamics of the music and in some cases actually effecting the sound quality of the recording itself.

this sums it up really

RealEstateKing

recorded these days, just none of it is in the charts.

Problems are:

(Over Compression) - During tracking, Mixing and Mastering.

EVRY****INGTRACKISJUSTSOUNBELEIVABLYSQASHED
AND100PERCENTLOUDTHATYOUCANNOTTELLTHEGUIET
BITFROMTHELOUDBITORONENOTEFROMTHEOTHERAND
YOUREARSGETFATUIGUEDHALFWAYTHROUGHTHEFIRSTCHORD

Music being made with 128 tracks and more. Most of the best sounding music, was made on 2 and 3 track recorders back in the day, with little more than expertly positioned stereo mics and a few spots. Musicians were placed in the right part of a beautiful sounding soundstage, by simply walking over there.

Now we seem to think there is something normal about creating entire albums out of close miked sources recorded in Mono where the only stereo thing is the drum overheads. Everything is bright as hell cause its been recorded close up, and probably boosted with EQ is well.

But Ill tell ya one thing its not to do with: It aint about digital versus analog: If I hear one more person talk about how great vinyl is- vinyl is, from a sonicl point of view, ****. It's noisy, crackly, rumbly, prone to huge amounts of wow and flutter, and is basically knackered after 3 or 4 plays. And you cant take it anywhere. Its a 19th Century technology, whose only use is to sound crusty and funky on DJ Shadow tracks.

I mean, granted James Brown sounds good on Vinyl, but try listening to Chopin, you wont hear a note above the surface noise.

Gimme any mp3 above 160 Kbps over that any day of the week.

jtsuited

I've spent the whole morning listening to Todd Rundgren's 'Can we still be friends?'

Why oh why oh why can't people make recordings like that nowadays? Ok granted Rundgren played everything, arranged everything, and produced it, and he's a complete and utter genius, but it would be nice to hear people make such nicely detailed and arranged pop music these days.

I implore you listen to that track, listen to the actual arrangement and weep with its brilliance.
Ya see I don't think it's just the recording techniques these days. The musical techniques just aren't there any more. Bands rush, are ****e at their instruments, and haven't got the musical knowledge to arrange parts nicely (thank you very much punk!!).