Why do some 60s recordings sound so much better than others?
Discussion
An interesting thread. Whilst I've always been blown away by the skill and music of Jimi Hendrix I've also been rather dissapointed at the production of most of his stuff. There's a certain 'woolliness to his studio albums. Maybe in the sixties sound recording was still to a certain extent experimental. Sometimes they got it right, sometimes they didn't. Also, as someone has already suggested, the recording were being played back on pretty ropey equipment: tinny transistor radios and record players.
Some of these will have been recorded in mono, in fact most will have been at the time. Stereo was a bit new for singles and a four track tape machine would have cost far too much. Remember that none of these were made for posterity in any way at all.
Weren't the early Stones singles produced in a way that sounded best on a transistor radio, rather then going hi-fi. A deliberate move to ensure that the most people heard the best sound.
The OP should listen to a 45 of Whiter Shade and discover that it isn't muddy at all. I have one here ....
Flowers in the Rain, and several other Move/Roy Wood numbers were done in a very Wall of Sound way, again deliberately, and these can seem a bit muddy, but you could say that about a whole load of Phil Spectre recordings.
Weren't the early Stones singles produced in a way that sounded best on a transistor radio, rather then going hi-fi. A deliberate move to ensure that the most people heard the best sound.
The OP should listen to a 45 of Whiter Shade and discover that it isn't muddy at all. I have one here ....
Flowers in the Rain, and several other Move/Roy Wood numbers were done in a very Wall of Sound way, again deliberately, and these can seem a bit muddy, but you could say that about a whole load of Phil Spectre recordings.
rlw said:
Some of these will have been recorded in mono, in fact most will have been at the time. Stereo was a bit new for singles and a four track tape machine would have cost far too much. Remember that none of these were made for posterity in any way at all.
Weren't the early Stones singles produced in a way that sounded best on a transistor radio, rather then going hi-fi. A deliberate move to ensure that the most people heard the best sound.
The OP should listen to a 45 of Whiter Shade and discover that it isn't muddy at all. I have one here ....
Flowers in the Rain, and several other Move/Roy Wood numbers were done in a very Wall of Sound way, again deliberately, and these can seem a bit muddy, but you could say that about a whole load of Phil Spectre recordings.
I agree with Spectre's productions. It's certainly a wall of sound but very hard to hear individual instruments. Weren't the early Stones singles produced in a way that sounded best on a transistor radio, rather then going hi-fi. A deliberate move to ensure that the most people heard the best sound.
The OP should listen to a 45 of Whiter Shade and discover that it isn't muddy at all. I have one here ....
Flowers in the Rain, and several other Move/Roy Wood numbers were done in a very Wall of Sound way, again deliberately, and these can seem a bit muddy, but you could say that about a whole load of Phil Spectre recordings.
Chubbyross said:
An interesting thread. Whilst I've always been blown away by the skill and music of Jimi Hendrix I've also been rather dissapointed at the production of most of his stuff. There's a certain 'woolliness to his studio albums. Maybe in the sixties sound recording was still to a certain extent experimental. Sometimes they got it right, sometimes they didn't. Also, as someone has already suggested, the recording were being played back on pretty ropey equipment: tinny transistor radios and record players.
When you get older and buy better equipment, the records don't sound the same as they did and you prefer the way you originally heard it.Possibly just me.
Another factor listening to new digital versions of old recordings is not just the recording, but what happened to it since. Early Pink Floyd is notorious for having later releases done from 2nd or 3rd-generation tapes, and for them being in much worse shape due to less care in the storage. Engineers really do work wonders with some of those old disintegrating tapes, but there's only so much they can do with something that's shedding magnetic particles and trying to stick to itself - it's not uncommon to hear quite pronounced tape hiss on a modern release that was never there on the original LP.
Then there's also the remastering choices. One of my frustrations with Beatles remasters is a tendency for them to be cleaned up way beyond what went on the original LPs; for example A Hard Day's Night will often come out very soft and "poppy" whereas the original mono LPs are a lot rougher and heavier-sounding, much more of a rock'n'roll band. You also get varying degrees of digital noise reduction - some releases in the early days of CEDAR are horrible, with noticeable "watery" sounds in quiet passages and a fair chunk of the original recording gone along with the noise.
Finally, as mentioned most of these were never intended to be high-quality recordings, at best they were going on rumbly, hum-ridden cheap idler drive turntables in hollow, booming plinths through muffled, resonant speakers, but more likely to sit in a stack of 45s on a mono suitcase-type player with an autochanger mechanism. Hi-fi stuff existed but was expensive and outside of the classical market didn't really receive attention until about 1967 (it's how Days Of Future Passed came about), so even if you find a mint condition original pressing and a beautifully restored Garrard 401 to play it on there's still a good chance it won't sound great, especially Philips/Fontana who seemed to take a particular delight in not caring about the quality of their vinyl.
(There's also the joy of Decca's FFRR range of singles, which seemed to operate on a philosophy of "slam everything into the red and pretend you've never heard the word 'distortion' before" - bet they sounded great on a Dansette being 20% louder than everything else though)
Move and Procol Harum stuff was indeed pretty ropey even on the original records; as others have said, they were not huge bands at the time most of this was recorded so it was a case more of minimising the amount of time spent to get a record in the shops than trying to capture the finest possible recording.
Then there's also the remastering choices. One of my frustrations with Beatles remasters is a tendency for them to be cleaned up way beyond what went on the original LPs; for example A Hard Day's Night will often come out very soft and "poppy" whereas the original mono LPs are a lot rougher and heavier-sounding, much more of a rock'n'roll band. You also get varying degrees of digital noise reduction - some releases in the early days of CEDAR are horrible, with noticeable "watery" sounds in quiet passages and a fair chunk of the original recording gone along with the noise.
Finally, as mentioned most of these were never intended to be high-quality recordings, at best they were going on rumbly, hum-ridden cheap idler drive turntables in hollow, booming plinths through muffled, resonant speakers, but more likely to sit in a stack of 45s on a mono suitcase-type player with an autochanger mechanism. Hi-fi stuff existed but was expensive and outside of the classical market didn't really receive attention until about 1967 (it's how Days Of Future Passed came about), so even if you find a mint condition original pressing and a beautifully restored Garrard 401 to play it on there's still a good chance it won't sound great, especially Philips/Fontana who seemed to take a particular delight in not caring about the quality of their vinyl.
(There's also the joy of Decca's FFRR range of singles, which seemed to operate on a philosophy of "slam everything into the red and pretend you've never heard the word 'distortion' before" - bet they sounded great on a Dansette being 20% louder than everything else though)
Move and Procol Harum stuff was indeed pretty ropey even on the original records; as others have said, they were not huge bands at the time most of this was recorded so it was a case more of minimising the amount of time spent to get a record in the shops than trying to capture the finest possible recording.
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