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Did Cocaine really make records sound over bright with Treble?

iMickey503

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Is this an Old Wives Tale?

She said at 6:22 that Cocaine is the reason why Records sound Bright in the 80's. Its claimed this was due to the Record Engineers being high on coke being the reason for treble being emphasized with the recordings on vinyl during that time.

This seems hard to swallow. I thought that people on Stimulants would be more sensitive to high pitch sounds. Not the other way around.





I only found a Few articles on the effects of Cocaine on hearing.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8783385/


Is there any real merritt to this? Or was it just the "Sound of the Age" kind of thing?
Really curious about this.
 

JSmith

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She said at 6:22 that Cocaine is the reason why Records sound Bright in the 80's. Its claimed this was due to the Record Engineers being high on coke being the reason for treble being emphasized with the recordings on vinyl during that time.
I think this is a load of crap to be honest... if people on stimulants were sensitive to HF sounds, there wouldn't be many nightclubs, dance parties or raves. :p

It's an old 'wives tale'... the truth is;
One of the main signifiers of the age in which music is made are the drums. Drum machines were pretty new in the 80s, and very much å la mode. To capture that 80s magic, get yourself some quality samples of classic machines such as the LinnDrum, DMX, CR-78, TR-707, TR-808 and Simmons SDSV.

Processing these machines with FX was crucial and they would often be compressed aggressively. Drums were typically treated heavily with reverb, which itself was brighter than most reverbs used today. Feel free to boost the high-mid and high frequencies of your reverb for typical brashness. Gated reverb on the snare is such a classic technique it could be argued that it made the 80s the 80s.
When you put a noise gate on a reverb return, the gate’s settings can be adjusted to cut the decay short.

The sound is bright, crisp, punchy, and wet—the antithesis to the very dry drum sounds of the 1970s. As the noise gate closes and “sucks” the reverb’s decay away, you’re left with sharp, reverberated attacks that sit really well in the mix.


JSmith
 

RandomEar

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She said at 6:22 that Cocaine is the reason why Records sound Bright in the 80's.
Ehhh, okaaay :D

I've heard that the advent of synthesizers - invented in the late 60's, commercialized in the mid 70's - is what defined the sound of the 80's. They were new, they sounded different from anything that people knew before and that's why they gained so much popularity. And I would certainly describe most synthesizer sounds in 80's music as "bright", although you can of course also create bass sounds with synthies. My conclusion would certainly be that it wasn't the coke ;)
 

Digby

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Could it be that with the advent of digital technology used for the master instead of analogue tape (even when pressing to vinyl), greater detail was apparent in the recordings. Maybe this created some imbalance in recorded frequencies that needed to be accounted for? (perhaps they were boosting the highs when recording to tape, this would be unnecessary with digital)

I have DGG vinyl from the 80s that proudly states 'digitally recorded' on the cover, perhaps MoFi should have taken a leaf out of their book.
 

fpitas

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"She's too bright, too bright too bright. Cocaine"
 

Daverz

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In the same spirit, of course new records sound like shit, you aren't supposed to play them!
 

egellings

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I did have a buddy who did toot, and what I noticed is that no matter what topic I brought up, he always brought up the topic of cocaine sooner or later. He had a little cylinder of the stuff in a chain around his neck, and he frequently brought it up to his nose and sniffed it. His life revolved around toot.
 

egellings

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The individual I mentioned above seems to be hyped up and fidgety when on the stuff. Talk was constant and mostly stream of consciousness sort of blather.
 

Digby

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I did have a buddy who did toot, and what I noticed is that no matter what topic I brought up, he always brought up the topic of cocaine sooner or later. He had a little cylinder of the stuff in a chain around his neck, and he frequently brought it up to his nose and sniffed it. His life revolved around toot.
When was this, what of him now?
 
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