Not sure if I'll get a response but all I can do is ask. It has been my understanding for many years now, that as the Recording Industry moved from tube equipment to solid state ... say from late 60's to late 70's, it took almost a decade for sound engineers to get "the bugs" out of the ss equipment which is why recordings from the 80's generally sound better than those from the 70's (let's put the common practice of over-modulation and the compression of dynamic range aside and I'm using rock as a reference). There were some exceptions however in the 70's, SuperTramp LP's for one (somehow wonderful recordings) and you will know others ... but there are many LPs from that decade that were just horrible ... love Jethro Tull's Agualung, but that album along with say, what Boston (another great group) put out .... terrible .... seem to be representative generally .... so much mush. Thanks for reading and replying.
I think it's the other way around-the 80 gave us MORE less than great pressings. Not that there weren't cringe worthy recordings in the 70's. Ultimately, it may be like the rest of audiophoolery-subjective. I know there are listeners who swear by those 200 gram, pricey reissues.
My floppy 70's RCA Dynaflex Bowie albums sound great.
... as the Recording Industry moved from tube equipment to solid state ... say from late 60’s to late 70’s, it took almost a decade for sound engineers to get "the bugs" out of the ss equipment which is why recordings from the 80’s generally sound better than those from the 70’s ... There were some exceptions however in the 70’ ... but there are many LPs from that decade that were just horrible ... love Jethro Tull’s Agualung, but that album along with say, what Boston (another great group) put out .... terrible .... seem to be representative generally .... so much mush.
I think you’re mistaken. There have always been badly made records. After all, it’s much easier to get it wrong than it is to get it right. In general, I think what you may be noticing is record pressing quality, which in the ’70s was affected by oil embargoes. There was a lot of bad vinyl at that time - some of it recycled, and sometimes with flecks of record labels in the mix - and I still have some examples of it.
In particular, your mention of the Boston album rather proves my point. That is an extraordinarily well recorded and produced LP, but most pressings don’t really reveal it. CBS Mastersound released a half-speed pressing of that LP that is a sonic masterpiece.
I listened to vinyl for about three hours last night. With the exception of one stereo record, all of the rest were recorded in mono. They were all original pressings.
Brubeck’s "Jazz Impressions of The USA," Miles Davis’ "Round Midnight," and Chet Baker’s "Pretty Groovey" were "in the room" amazing. Who needs stereo when there are mono records like these to listen to?
You've inadvertantly muddled several different things together and drawn bad conclusions as a result.
The number one factor in sound quality is the talent of the recording engineer. Going from tube to solid state never was a factor because the best recording engineers always used the best as selected by ear. But then the next number one factor is the mastering. Then with records you get the real number one problem: the pressing!
Which is why I am with tablejockey, the pressing is the problem. Tom Port deserves major credit for recognizing just how much variability there is between seemingly identical pressings of the same record.
Also besides finding absolutely stunning sound quality records you will find an impressive amount of information at better-records.com it is unfortunately scattered around the site and hard to find, but its as accurate as it is hard to believe. Honestly until you hear a White Hot Stamper you have no idea what the recording quality was. You only know what the pressing quality is of the particular copy random chance put in your hand.
That is not to say all White Hot Stampers are created equal. Peter Gabriel So, Fleetwood Mac Rumours, Tom Petty Southern Accents, and the Beatles Help! (to name a few of mine) are all completely different recordings, White Hot or otherwise. It is not like The Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen are going to magically sound all audiophile perfect just because Tom Port found a good pressing. They simply did not put a lot of effort into recording quality, and it shows. Although even here there are exceptions, as Darkness on the Edge of Town, maybe because of The Mastering Lab? https://www.better-records.com/product.aspx?pf_id=sprindarkn_1910_4 I don't know. Mention it only to make the point vinyl is so individualized you have to be careful making generalizations about it.
I find that people like the OP who seemingly have an axe to grind over one or two experiences, use highly inflammitory words like "terrible or horrible" in order to make their point but in reality, it doesn't rise to that point by most thoughtful people.
The technology is important, but you forget consumer trends. Recording engineers aren't just artists, they are paid to make successful releases. That means following whatever gear, however people are listening. A recording made for a boom box of the 1970s or 80s won't cut it with the best systems out there.
Hi, generally British and European pressings in the 70's were fine to excellent and on good quality vinyl, especially on pop and classical, German, French on classical. That affects also reissues. On the contrary USA ones were questionable especially on reissues.
This is both
enlightening and interesting and I thank all for your thoughtful contributions.
Clarification: First, my stated “understanding” of the recording industry was
told to me many years ago by someone who was in the business and this was in my
head all that time, never finding anything to contradict that – guess I didn’t
look hard enough. I do have knowledge of the many "parameters" if you
will, audiophiles use to describe what they are hearing in playback, but I
suppose my observations in many of the LP's of the 70's (and the motivation for
my question) center on focus, clarity and noise level .... so pressings would
certainly be an issue I was not aware of .... but ….. I've got a lot of LP's
(and CD's) from the 80's (as well as 70’s) and I'm just not hearing the same
kind of negative elements with recordings, in general, from the subsequent decade.
Anyway, thank you again.
Recording in the '70s became a whole different ballgame with the introduction of multitracking. For rock music this opened up a whole new world, piling track upon track in ever more elaborate productions. This put new demands on engineering and mixing and production skills, which had to be mastered. In many cases this resulted in a muddy, thick sound without any room to breath. Remember that eternal quote: 'we want everything to be louder than everything else'.
The Golden Age of classical music was approximately late 50s to mid 60s. You can rack that up to very skilled engineers, especially DECCA, RCA, EMI, MERCURY, and tube electronics for recording and mastering. Solid state had some theoretical and even some practical advantages. (That’s why FAA went to solid state radios in the late 80s.) Some Beatles and Stones and others continued to use tube electronics into the 70s and 80s, you know, by the sound of it.
Absolutely. The recording of acoustic instruments in a real space - referred to by some as ’The Absolute Sound’ - reached its peak in that era. Not in spite of limited technology, but thanks to it. In the early stereo days engineers only had a few tracks available and used only a few very high quality tube microphones to capture the sound.
Decca’s ’Tree’, Mercury’s Living Presence and RCA’s Living Stereo all used similar set ups, with highly skilled ’balance’ engineers like Kenneth Wilkinson, Robert C. Fine and Lewis Layton at the controls. To this day these recordings are considered the most truthful renderings of classical music. A similar situation existed in the same era for acoustic jazz, with engineers like Rudy van Gelder, Roy duNann and others. For these small ensembles (big) mono sounded even more natural than stereo, which in the early days sometimes suffered from exaggerated left-right panning.
Multitrack recording changed this practice and starting in the late ’60s orchestral recordings became more processed and - dare I say - somewhat artificial. Decca experimented with multimiking in their Phase Four series, some of the worst recordings they ever made. Thankfully for their regular SXL series they used multimiking and -tracking with much more restraint and many of their ’70s recording are still excellent.
In fact early rock recordings - before excessive multitracking took over - tend to sound more real and dynamic as well. For instance, it’s hard to believe that those early Can recordings were made by Holger Czukay with just a two track Revox and very limited mixing. Same with early Mothers of Invention and so many other pioneering bands. Too much technology is not always a good thing....
Recording in the ’70s became a whole different ballgame with the introduction of multitracking ...
You have the wrong decade. Multitracking really got underway with the 8-track Ampex 5258 using 1-inch tape. That was 1955. Multitracking was very common in the ’60s, although much of it was 4-track, such as Sgt. Pepper. That was 1967.
You’re right, I should have been more precise. Recording with 4 or 8 tracks was available in the ’60s, but that was still a long way from the 24 track machines (and more) that became available in the ’70’s. This was the multitracking technology that fundamentally changed production methods, putting every conceivable sound on separate tracks and mixing the whole thing to death.
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