What's up with lousy bass on classic rock recordings?

Another thing that helps manage expectations in regards to how recordings sound is to study the frequency range of musical instruments. There are charts on the internet that show this and I have one hanging on my wall.

16-60 hz is considered sub bass. You feel this more than hear it. Bass extends to 250 hz.

Other than synthesizers, no instruments including drums commonly used in rock music do anything below 40hz. Even a tympani drum used in orchestras only goes down to 60hz.

So there is a lot of bass happening actually on Baba O Riley but only between 50 and 250 hz. It’s mixed in with all the rest pretty reasonably I would say. It prevents the recording from sounding “thin”. To the contrary, there is a lot going on there in the bass region up to 250 hz. Just enough! So bravo….the engineers did a nice job!  Very interesting!

@mapman Thanks this is really interesting.

You're tagging someone else though I'm macg19 and your tagging dmac67 

@macg19 thanks.

One correction. Piano is commonly used in some rock music. A good quality standard 88 key piano can pretty much do it all. The lowest notes can reach under 20hz and the highest range up to 16khz

On Tidal you might find my playlist

audiophile bass tracks 01

Just a small selection of nice songs with fine recorded bass.

I will build on this. Like up to a thousand songs. A little for everyone I hope.

Not much classical hard rock though of obvious reasons….

@gosta thanks I will check it out

I had the same reaction when I rebuilt my AR-LST speakers (which are pretty neutral)

Remember it was at this time that "hi fi" was at its zenith, cassette decks and eight tracks were how most people listened to music in cars

Most "hi fi" speakers of the day were pretty bass heavy, just about all amps/receivers had a "Loudness" button. and car stereos used those 6x9 speakers that had the Trunk to let the bass boom in the car.

When they did the mastering, they used a speaker that would emulate how their customers would listen to the music.

I am puzzled that with all the music of that era being remastered to take advantage of 30, 40, 50 year anniversaries opportunities to sell you the same music over and over why they don't fix that.   Maybe it's because everybody is listening on boomy Dr. Dre headphones these days?

Mapman

Color me confused - Not sure how I was blessed to be included in this thread not once but twice (I had never opened/read it prior to getting an email notice) but thanks for the info lol

I find the Diamond Stars Halo very well recorded with all the bass you can wish for.

Ditch the vinyl & streaming for cd versions of Van Halen 1 on DCC gold disc remastered by Steve Hoffman and for Who's Next The Mobile Fidelity Gold disc remastered on their 1st generation gain system. If you don't hear clean bass with good tone & definition, then your system needs some attention. From my experience, to properly reproduce those albums, you need a powerful amp with a minimum of 300 watts, large full range floor standing speakers & 2 more subwoofers & a high quality DAC.

@gosta 

I find the Diamond Stars Halo very well recorded with all the bass you can wish for.

Just listened to this all the way through - great album and yes plenty of bass - thanks for the suggestion.