I just happen to dislike that 80s canned, artificial reverberant sound field, especially with drums. Just awful and pompous at the same time. Same thing for so much of the decade's music which was corportate arena anthem crap. You could almost hear the cigar chomping fat guys saying, "Yeah, that's the sound! That'll hook those kids! Hey, you! Bass player! Can't you whip your head back and forth faster?!?" Sorry, but I think MTV had destroyed music by 1985, which is why Nirvana and Pearl Jam sounded so refreshing. (Funny how we would call heroin rock refreshing. But it sure sounded that way and the instruments again sounded human.) The 80s songs came prepackaged with fast edit, brain numbing videos, too! Yay!!!! (Souxie and the Banshees did have a great one about 1980 but soon after videos became pure unadulterated crap.)
However, if you're talking about stuff from very early 80s (new wave, funk, rap, etc.) then, yeah. That's great driving-in-your car music. I do have two full "new wave/funk" collections on CD.
I also disliked what rock/pop production did to band's sounds in the 70s. Just killed the drums and made most of 'em sound like dried marshmallows. For decent drum sound check out 1966's Syndicate of Sound's "Little Girl" on your system in the dark. You'd swear that damn drum set was right in the room with you - you'd swear you could hear the hardwear flexing and the cymbal stand wobbling.
