The Most Digital Recording You Ever Heard


You can generally tell them by weight. In the early days of the CD when they really had no idea of how to put music on a disk they also used to put a lot of plastic in the jewel cases. Sometimes I pick a CD I haven't listened to for a while, get a feel of it and think, "Oh, one of these." Any initial release year starting with "198" will give you a certain sense of trepidation. The question I put before the house is, what was the digital recording that your view epitomized everything that was wrong with digital. Some that come off the top of my head:

Any Proper box set.
Any Collector's Choice reissue.
The original issue of These Foolish Things by Bryan Ferry.

The Angel Broadway Classics series was particularly frustrating because on the one hand you finally escape from fake stereo but on the other the mastering was pretty sketchy.
 
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Brother's In Arms is the first one that comes to mind as having that distinct digital feel.  Donald Fagen's Nightfly is another.  I think they both came out about the same time.  I would not describe it as bad since it is still better than vinyl but it does have a certain feel.
Yello 'Touch' sounds nauseatingly 'digital' in my gear - the recording is harsh with exaggerated sibilance in female voice...
The first song I heard that was "the most digital recording" was the first song I played on an iPod.  The second most digital was the second song I heard on an iPod.  The 3rd?  You guessed it, the 3rd song I listened to on an iPod.  By the 4th song I was maybe getting used to that weird chopped up packetized sound but the next day there was that glaring obvious digital sound.  Yes, you could but your entire music collection onto an iPod, but the fatiguing harsh sound pushed me back to listening to that outdated technology of scratches on a vinyl disc played by a needle that scrapes more of the glorious peaks off the vinyl with each play.  I thought I would never go back to that self destructive musical medium but digital music played on the height of musical technology, the iPod, drove me back to vinyl.