Why Are The Early Stereo Recordings from the '50s to early '70s So Magical Sounding?

[MylesBAstor]

Or aren't they?

[mep]

Oh, they are. Especially the recordings from the late 1950s. Real talented musicians being recorded with much more purity with much greater simplification of the recording chain. Tube microphones, 2-3 track tube tape decks, all the musicians playing in real time with each other in the same space, and recording engineers who knew what they were doing. Contrast that with 48 track machines, pitch boxes, Pro Tools, parts of songs being recorded months apart, nobody in the studio together, plug-ins for simulations of what used to be real components used in the recording studios and you have the opposite of what we used to expect in sound quality.

[Rob]

+1

[Guest]

An equally interesting question is if those earlier recordings were made with relatively simple/straightforward techniques, why don't we have more modern recordings that sound as transparent and lifelike, or better? In the classical realm there are some worthy recordings of smaller ensembles, eg. in the baroque genre, often by smaller labels, but not so much for large symphonic or orchestral works. I'm thinking specifically of LPs. After all, Cass Technical High School still has an auditorium.

[david k]

Do you really need to ask, it was the Afro !

IMO, aside from all known evil of early solid state and transistors, mass market disposable mindset, etc., etc., etc., I think it started with the engineers, not just the recording engineers but all involved in the industry, they learnt to "fudge it".

[david k]

Somehow this logo was always at forefront of fudged quality of everything including the dreaded THX!



david

[Garth]

Or aren't they?

They sound so good because Elvis was still young and meant it when he said Thankyou very much. Now the people we listen to are 70 and 500 a ticket to go see Last tour before I die. An extra 500 to shake a already shaking hand.

[mep]

They sound so good because Elvis was still young and meant it when he said Thankyou very much. Now the people we listen to are 70 and 500 a ticket to go see Last tour before I die. An extra 500 to shake a already shaking hand.

That's kind of harsh. But hey, maybe there is still hope. We had three Triple Crown winners in the 1970s and none again until last year when American Pharoah pulled it off. Some were beginning to wonder if we would ever see another Triple Crown winner, but now we have.

The world saw an abundance of musical talent in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s. People/groups that could really play instruments, write songs, and sing on key. Now you have a bunch of manufactured 'talent' that can't sing or play instruments worth a damn. Some are forced to lip sync in public because they really can't sing. Maybe just maybe we will see some real musical talent emerge out of the mess. I hope so, but I won't sit on a picket fence waiting for it to happen.

[JDZA]

The magic disappeared the moment the tape hiss disappeared. Ray Dolby was a genius but even if the baby is contained , bathwater sometimes contain pieces of the mothers jewellery -and a lot of her sweetness.

A thousand apologies. As usual david k acted before I even started thinking. That is why he has the 927 and the Bionors and I only have drool.

[david k]

The magic disappeared the moment the tape hiss disappeared. Ray Dolby was a genius but even if the baby is contained , bathwater sometimes contain pieces of the mothers jewellery -and a lot of her sweetness.

A thousand apologies. As usual david k acted before I even started thinking. That is why he has the 927 and the Bionors and I only have drool.

Great minds think alike!

[Rust]

Conglomeration of the music industry, leaving faceless tasteless talentless executives issuing directives for yet another hit bereft of any soul or depth from yet another flavor of the day ignorant talentless manufactured celebrity. The musical equivalent of a Kardashian event.

[Guest]

Conglomeration of the music industry, leaving faceless tasteless talentless executives issuing directives for yet another hit bereft of any soul or depth from yet another flavor of the day ignorant talentless manufactured celebrity. The musical equivalent of a Kardashian event.

You're talking about Adele, right?

[david k]

She's just one of many, all she does is scream and close her eyes on every crappy song. Most are pathetic and seem to be written for awkward teenagers by same group. She ain't no Piaff or Billy!

[Rust]

Adele is OK, but in a desert a half full glass of warm water is pretty attractive.

[MylesBAstor]

I think everyone hit on a lot of major things. The following factors also contributed to the decline in recording quality:

1) In the early days, producers and record engineers were also musicians; that in contrast to the present day knob twiddlers who feel they have to justify their jobs by imparting their touch to every recording. Or to paraphrase RVG, just let the tape roll.

2) The loss of great recording halls and studios. So many great recordings were made in RCA's Studio A in New York as well as Columbia's jazz studios. Or Kingsway or Watford Town Hall. Or Chicago Symphony Hall here. As one engineer once told me, the hall is 80% of the equation. Now I know there are producers and recording engineers fighting the tide, say like Al Schmitt, Michael Bishop, KOJ, Bob Attiyeh or Michael Ross, but it seems to be a losing battle.

3) The cost of recording. I certainly have nothing against musicians unions since musicians were treated horribly and taken advantage of by the record companies for
decades. (just as with MLB.) But the truth is making a recording is so costly, the record labels imperative is just get it down on tape or hard disc and fix it later.Even to the point of now having digital ambience added to recordings.

4) Labels settled on one recording space and knew how to set up the mikes up for the recordings.

5) Everything has to be perfect eg. no mistakes are allowed. So in classical, so many recordings are done bar by bar. No continuousness to the music. Reiner, whose CSO would play a movement through must be turning over in his grave.

[JackD201]

I think the popularity of the prerecorded cassette tape with its severely limited bandwidth was a major cause of the voicing of recordings for release. I also single it out for causing the inclusion of graphic equalizers and the horrid flying Vs one found everywhere from boom boxes, to homes to car stereos.

[MylesBAstor]

The magic disappeared the moment the tape hiss disappeared. Ray Dolby was a genius but even if the baby is contained , bathwater sometimes contain pieces of the mothers jewellery -and a lot of her sweetness.

A thousand apologies. As usual david k acted before I even started thinking. That is why he has the 927 and the Bionors and I only have drool.

OK JDZA and David. So you got me thinking. The only of the big four, Mercury, RCA, EMI and Decca that was an early adopter of Dolby noise reduction appears to the be the latter. So now have to go back and look at the sound of these albums chronologically.

"The first sale of the “Dolby A” equipment was to Decca Records in London. The company released their debut recording which had been mastered on to tape using the new system, a session of Vladimir Ashkenazy playing Mozart piano concertos, in 1966. Paul Moseley, Managing Director of Decca Classics, told The Independent “Decca is proud to have played a part in helping Ray Dolby develop his pioneering noise-reduction systems. Decca engineers helped test and refine the prototype of the now-legendary ‘Dolby A’ professional noise reduction in the mid-1960s. This can truly be said to have revolutionised the recording industry across all types of music and film and transform perceptions of high fidelity throughout the world.”