Great music - but recording unfortunately is "meh"...

[hex168]

Genesis Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot are particulary bad, and Selling England by the Pound deserves better.

 

[concorde1]

Too which of the 25 or so releases do you refer?

Both the 1st release Harvest CD, and the latest remaster (on Apple Music)

 

[MRC01]

Ok so I got serious about this question and queried my listening database. Best performances having poor recordings.
The database has about 1,000 recordings.

Part of this hobby for me is taking notes during my listening sessions and storing them in a simple little database & JSP app that I wrote for fun.

Another variation of this query, any recording whose performance rating is at least twice its sound quality rating. This is better than arbitrary values and picks up a few more:

 

[tmtomh]

Skylarking by XTC is a famously crumby-sounding album filled with amazing music. Producer Todd Rundgren and bandleader Andy Partridge did not get along, and clearly neither were paying enough attention to the engineering - apparently it sounds rough because a bunch of stuff is out of phase (really amateur engineering errors). It's a shame because in other respects it's one of the best albums of the 80s.

A polarity-corrected version was realeased around 2010, and there’s an excellent Steven Wilson remix from around 2016-2018.

On an unrelated note, I’ve always thought that pretty much the entire Coldplay and Amy Winehouse catalogues sound like sh**.

 

[GD Fan]

Most Queen albums sound rather disappointing.

And most modern recordings across a wide variety of genres. It's all digital now, there is no excuse for sub-standard production quality. They just do not care.

Well, why care when people seem content to listen from the ******, tinny little speakers on their mobile phones. At least, that is, when they're in public and able to cause maximum irritation.

 

[Joramun]

I reckon Soundgarden's Superunknown album can fall into this category.

 

[SuicideSquid]

A polarity-corrected version was realeased around 2010, and there’s an excellent Steven Wilson remix from around 2016-2018.

On an unrelated note, I’ve always thought that pretty much the entire Coldplay and Amy Winehouse catalogues sound like sh**.

I haven't heard the corrected or remixed versions - good to know.

Some of Coldplay's discography sounds pretty decent, but their third album, X&Y, is one of the most over-compressed albums I've ever heard. It's up there with Californication and Deloused in the Comatorium for being almost unlistenable thanks to shit mastering.

 

[TheLastGerman]

MGMT - Oracular Spectacluar

Not exactly one of my favorite albums, but a splendid example for mutilation by dynamic range compression and digital clipping.

(Picture taken from https://www.reddit.com/r/mgmt/comments/p7ioou )

 

[dasdoing]

I will actually restart from scratch this weekend cause I feel I learned so much that I can make better doing it again.

check it out @kemmler3D
kind of broke it, but at least the bass is there lol

 

[kemmler3D]

check it out @kemmler3D
kind of broke it, but at least the bass is there lol

Yeah the horns sound weird as hell here, but the bass sounds great! Maybe if you just lowpass it and mix it in with the original it will ... just work?

 

[dasdoing]

Yeah the horns sound weird as hell here, but the bass sounds great! Maybe if you just lowpass it and mix it in with the original it will ... just work?

well, the horns are broken in the original (totally anti-phase) lol
tried to fix it.

anyways, I can easily bypass all stuff that I did besides the bass. I will give you that, but let me create some other versions, too...with more and more stuff bypassed so you can give some feedback. probably tomorrow.

 

[Martin]

Journey:

What a great album.
What a horrible recording.

Interesting that they were told to get better lead singer. I always thought it was the sound of the recording that was the biggest problem.

Better singer, great album, and another horrible recording:

 

[dasdoing]

well, the horns are broken in the original (totally anti-phase) lol
tried to fix it.

anyways, I can easily bypass all stuff that I did besides the bass. I will give you that, but let me create some other versions, too...with more and more stuff bypassed so you can give some feedback. probably tomorrow.

before I do that, please give this version a try @kemmler3D https://drive.google.com/file/d/15mjO_0zn7bIFDocRPp0fMB_d7P3OkGar/view?usp=sharing

 

[kemmler3D]

before I do that, please give this version a try @kemmler3D https://drive.google.com/file/d/15mjO_0zn7bIFDocRPp0fMB_d7P3OkGar/view?usp=sharing

Definitely an improvement with no obvious steps backward from the original... nice!

 

[Focus SE]

Better singer, great album, and another horrible recording:View attachment 312072

The “Arrival” album is a step in the right direction recording but backwards in terms of singer

 

[dasdoing]

no obvious steps backward from the original

oooh there are severe drawbacks. me pushing the midrange to create more presence lifted up a lot of noise and distortion, the later is pretty obvious in the vocal.

however, here is the version you wanted. everything is bypassed but the low-end processing (literally everything): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yX7rxnozpcCTuKMinAC7elvbgANQ6Y_0/view?usp=sharing

hard for me to judge which is better, both have strong deficiencies lol....and I have no fresh ears

 

[dasdoing]

oooh there are severe drawbacks. me pushing the midrange to create more presence lifted up a lot of noise and distortion, the later is pretty obvious in the vocal.

however, here is the version you wanted. everything is bypassed but the low-end processing (literally everything): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yX7rxnozpcCTuKMinAC7elvbgANQ6Y_0/view?usp=sharing

hard for me to judge which is better, both have strong deficiencies lol....and I have no fresh ears

bass only version obviously better for me now....I feel like I need to create something in between lol

EDIT: damn...bass only processed version is 10x times better

 

[kemmler3D]

bass only version obviously better for me now....I feel like I need to create something in between lol

EDIT: damn...bass only processed version is 10x times better

I like it! It's pretty hard to improve a full mix without access to stems... the original was already pretty processed with the tools of the day. Filling in the bass is a huge improvement though, that was always the tragedy of this track... now fixed! Very cool work sir.

 

[Chrispy]

Their first album isn't the worst sounding. It's bad, but in an unusual way - dull/dark rather than skull-shattering bright like so many others. I was just listening through my Journey albums and realized that 2 of them sound much worse than the others. Departure and Frontiers. Reading through the liner notes, these two were remastered by Dave Donnelly. They're squashed to death and so tinny & bright as to be virtually unlistenable, a big loud wall of crispy distortion. They probably sound OK played on cheap earbuds while riding the subway. The other albums are also squashed and bright, but not nearly as bad. They sound decent for pop music (a low bar), liner notes say they were remastered by Bob Ludwig.


Indeed. Infinity, the first album they did with Steve Perry, was one of the best albums Journey ever made.

Only if you like Steve Perry....yuk.

 

[MRC01]

Only if you like Steve Perry....yuk.

Sure, but if you don't then you're listening to the wrong band