Sound quality over the years

[MeanandGreen]

Is it me or is 80's record production much better than subsequent decades?

I've spent the evening spinning a few CD's... Dire Starights, Belinda Carlisle, Kim Wilde, Fleetwood Mac, Madonna to name a few. The quality of these recordings to me sound so much more dynamic and involving than anything in the charts today.

I have 1950's Jazz which sounds better mixed than today's stuff.

We all know about the 90's loudness wars and such, but even so I don't think I own any music post the early 90's which sounds as focused and dynamic as the aforementioned stuff.

Stereo imaging, separation, clarity, bass impact (in terms of realism), all of that joust sounded so good tonight with recordings which are not much different in age to me!

What is your guys take on it?

 

[Vladimir]

Give us actual albums and song names to compare. Topic feels too general to post something constructive.

 

[MeanandGreen]

Give us actual albums and song names to compare. Topic feels too general to post something constructive.

Here are some album titles for you...

Dire Straights: 'Brothers In Arms' and 'Money For Nothing'

Fleetwood Mac: Greatest Hits' (The green sleeve 1988 release).

Madonna: 'The Imaculate Collection'

Kim Wilde: 'Love Is'

Belinda Carlise: 'Belinda', 'Runaway Horses' & 'Live your Life Be Free'.

Annie Lenox: 'Diva'

Ok a couple of those are early 90's and not 80's, but hopefully you get my point. All of those albums sounded fantastic on my system tonight.

 

[Vladimir]

Any examples of albums and songs that sound really bad recently? I'd apreciate some jazz and blues albums mentioned.

Cheers.

 

[MeanandGreen]

Any examples of albums and songs that sound really bad recently? I'd apreciate some jazz and blues albums mentioned.

Cheers.

Bad stuff for me recently...

'Rude' by Magic. It's in the charts now, it's not terrible but it has background hiss added, it suffers the usual full tilt volume level of most stuff now but it has no real dynamics. Bass is dominant in the mix.

Paloma Faith, I love her voice and music. The latest album 'A Perfect Contradiction' to me suffers from a bass oriented presentation, vocals sound a little veiled and all of the instruments in general seem to be recessed and lacking space. Not terrible or unlistenable, but not a patch on what it could be in my opinion. The extra bonus live tracks totally trounce the recorded tacks on the same disc.

Katy Perry 'Prism' it's a bit of a mixed bag to my ears, some of it sounds ok, but overall very compressed and again an overly bass dominant presentation with a few of the tracks such as 'Dark Horse'

Faul and Wadd 'changes' bass, bass and more bass. It's overdone.

All just my subjective opinion on my set up, but in comparison to the sound of the stuff I mentioned before it doesn't come close.

if I play a classic electronic dance tune like the CD single of Black Box 'Ride On Time' it sounds crisp, exciting and full of energy. There is plenty of stereo type stuff going on. Keyboards leap out into the room. The bass is full and extended and also strong enough to be felt without dominating the mix.

Play any Dance stuff from now and it's dominated by bass, really heavily dominated.

Good jazz stuff to my ears, Dave Brubecks 'Time Out' (Take Five sounds awesome)!

The Best Of Dave Brubeck

Miles Davis 'Bithces Brew', there is some hiss on the Jazz stuff, but you've got to appreciate when it was recorded. The space, scale and clarity of the sound is fabulous.

 

[lindsayt]

I have about 100 12" singles from the 1980's. In general they are very well recorded and engineered. A few stand outs being Phil Collins Easy Lover, Talk Talks It's my Life, Dire Straits Private Investigations.

There are some well recorded modern albums, such as Cheryl Cole's 3 Words.

There are also plenty of albums that weren't so well recorded in the 1980's. The Stranglers Feline being one example which is disappointing, especially when their first 4 albums were pretty well recorded.

 

[Overdose]

Most of the recordings mentioned so far are artificial constructs and sound the way they do because that's the way they were made or requested to sound like. It is highly unlikely that the acts recorded, were ever in the same recording room at the same time to make the recordings.

Bass heavy tracks are usually produced that way because that is the style of the music.

 

[abacus]

Each decade has its own way of mixing things concurrent with the available technology, and our teen years is usually where we base most of our musical feelings, therefore we tend to find anything that is different to be not as good, just like the current generation find the previous way of mixing music is not as good as theirs.

There will of course always be overlaps, as with everything else.

Bill

 

[nopiano]

I agree with the underlying idea here, but I suspect a good proportion of contributors here are of a similar age range, and generally we have fond memories of the albums of our youth and less tolerance for those of today.

Good point about Dire Straits being a construct, ear boggling as it was at the time. However, I never buy current 'pop' releases so am not best placed to observe on that. I've heard quite a few mind you...

 

[Jota180]

It's probably the 'loudness wars'. Since the explosion of portable music and music download as the main source of music sales, many albums have been produced with everything turned up to 11.

 

[Thompsonuxb]

I think throughout the years the sound generally is of the same quality with the same degree of difference between the good and the bad.

Difference is our benchmarks change.

Albums which sounded fantastic the first time we heard them may pale when compared to more recent quality recordings , especially if we play a current recording to death and aclamatise to its quality.

I find after prolonged listening the qualitlies of older recordings will come through if it was there to start with.

 

[tonky]

I agree - her voice is great - the album is very poorly recorded. Far too much bass as well.

Raising Sand - an example of an excellent recording and production - fantastic music too!

tonky

 

[steve_1979]

Sweeping generalisation alert!

IMO the 80's had the best sound in terms of recording and mastering quality. 80's music hit the sweet spot for having just the right amount of dynamic range.

 

[Vladimir]

When we compare Madonna CDs in the 80's and early 90's versus late 90's and 00's, we see a clear rise in used loudness. Already in '94 everything begins downhill in the red zone.

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=madonna&album=

 

[Glacialpath]

It's kind of a mixed bag for me.

Some of the stuff I listen to that was recorded in the 80s (and if I have an original pressing CD of) sounds amazing but some of it sounds awfull. Same for the 90s. Some 90s stuff sound way better than the earlier 80s albums of the same band.

Of course in the Rock and Metal world, mostly the metal world. The budgets could be quite small for a first album or two compared to that of the Pop world which is also easier to make a slick recording than the Metal genre IMO.

I also take in to account home systems and studio kit. Let me just delve into movie soundtraks to explain if I my

. I've watched DVDs in the past and thougt they sounded awfull. Example I remember watching Diehard with DTS active on an old JVC all in one system. When it came to the big explosion at the end I was expecting it to be awesome but the volume dipped and I thought it was the mix.

Now I know it was the system unable to properly reproduce the full dynamic range of the soundtrack the way it was mixed. When I have watched the same film on a better set up that explosion doesn't dip but is nice and full and what I was expecting the first time.

My point is with the evolution of studio kit and perameters that they mix to changing, i.e. playback platforms today are not as limited in their abillities as they were back then. Even when CDs came out, most albums would still be mixed with cassett tapes and vinyl in mind and though I guess the mastering was different for the 3 platforms an album would be released on, they may have compremised the whole mix to give it a more balanced feel over the different platforms.

As stereos got better in the home and CD became more of the norm then they started utilising the CDs dyamic range more and found ways to make the mix louder. The way I know they used was to strip most of the low end out.

It seems they have changed this now and as you say modern Pop mixes have more bass in. I suspect on the right system, maybe one with a subwoofer in place the mix would not sound quite as bass heavy as we first think. I'm not knocking your system at all. It is something I am trying to find out for myself. If the audio sounds better than we think if it's played back on the right system.

I'm not suggesting the guys in the studio mix with a subwoofer in mind but maybey their set ups handle it better than our home systems and the fact they are likely using huge studio monitors.

For the music from the 00s and know. They either do sound just awfull or our systems can't cope with what they have done to the mix. I think it's mainly the have messed up the mix for what ever deranged reason.

 

[MeanandGreen]

It seems like a few of you can relate to what I'm thinking. Obviously there are exceptions and I'm certainly not saying that all older recordings are good and anything more recent is guarneteed to be poor.

I do however think the loudness issue regarding recording everything from start to finish with the level meters bouncing of their end stops doesn't help matters. It does seem to me that pretty much everything lately is recorded in this way, which works for portable audio and also for broadcasting reasons. The way most people hear music isn't through hifi anymore so dynamics don't seem to play much of a role, it's all volume and bass.

One of the best sounding albums I've heard in the last decade or so is The White Stripes Elephant. It's a very raw sound bursting with energy, which is very rare in a recording now I think.

Glacialpath with regards to subs etc... Check out my signature at the bottom of my posts. I don't think it's because my system has a deficiency with bass. It's not just bass that I'm referring to with recent material, it just doesn't seem to have the separation and stereo imaging of the older stuff I mentioned earlier.

 

[MeanandGreen]

I have about 100 12" singles from the 1980's. In general they are very well recorded and engineered. A few stand outs being Phil Collins Easy Lover, Talk Talks It's my Life, Dire Straits Private Investigations.

There are some well recorded modern albums, such as Cheryl Cole's 3 Words.

There are also plenty of albums that weren't so well recorded in the 1980's. The Stranglers Feline being one example which is disappointing, especially when their first 4 albums were pretty well recorded.

Yep, I agree all of the stuff you mentioned there sounds very good. Incidentally the No Doubt cover of it's my life is in my opinion superior to the original.

 

[MeanandGreen]

Bass heavy tracks are usually produced that way because that is the style of the music.

I own a lot of music which you could regard as orientated around bass from the 80's, 90's 00's etc... however nothing is as bloated as the stuff in the last 10 years or so.

 

[MeanandGreen]

It's probably the 'loudness wars'. Since the explosion of portable music and music download as the main source of music sales, many albums have been produced with everything turned up to 11.

I think this is very much the case!

 

[MeanandGreen]

Sweeping generalisation alert!

IMO the 80's had the best sound in terms of recording and mastering quality. 80's music hit the sweet spot for having just the right amount of dynamic range.

Definitely agree with you regarding the dynamic range.

 

[Glacialpath]

Hello mate.

Sorry I don't always look at signatures. Do you use the subs for music? could it be they are not set up corretly. I'm sure they are and it is just the music that over bassy. With your subs in place and you main fronts you've got plenty of bandwidth to give you an open stereo image with this dense music.

Have you tried messing around with your speaker positions and sub woofer levels to see if you can coax any more image from them?

 

[MeanandGreen]

No problem bud!

I painstakingly set up the integration of the room/speakers/subs with music, movies and test discs. I do believe they are set as well as could be for both music and movie playback.

Like I said earlier I don't think it's a system issue as so much of my music collection sounds fantastic. Including bass orientated music, it just seems to me lately that bass is increasinngly dominating the mix with today's music releases.

 

[Glacialpath]

No problem bud!

I painstakingly set up the integration of the room/speakers/subs with music, movies and test discs. I do believe they are set as well as could be for both music and movie playback.

Like I said earlier I don't think it's a system issue as so much of my music collection sounds fantastic. Including bass orientated music, it just seems to me lately that bass is increasinngly dominating the mix with today's music releases.

Fair play dude. I guess you're right. It's completely the other way with Metal. The strip most of the bass out lol.

 

[Vladimir]

Anything touched by Rick Rubin sounds rubbish. *boredom*

 

[BigH]

Give us actual albums and song names to compare. Topic feels too general to post something constructive.

Here are some album titles for you...

Dire Straights: 'Brothers In Arms' and 'Money For Nothing'

Fleetwood Mac: Greatest Hits' (The green sleeve 1988 release).

Madonna: 'The Imaculate Collection'

Kim Wilde: 'Love Is'

Belinda Carlise: 'Belinda', 'Runaway Horses' & 'Live your Life Be Free'.

Annie Lenox: 'Diva'

Ok a couple of those are early 90's and not 80's, but hopefully you get my point. All of those albums sounded fantastic on my system tonight.

Some of those are produced in the 70s. Greatest hits or best of albums are pretty mixed bag anyway as from different albums. Even same albums pressed in different countries can sound vastly different. Agree about some 50s jazz are better than much of todays pop music. But some recent jazz albums are excellent just hear some of ECMs catalogue for starters. I would say 70s albums are generally very good and IMHO the music is much better. I think most of the differencce is the compression which started about mid 90s.