The Reason Why Older Records Sound Better

[digitalfrost]

AI summary: "Older music often sounds better not mainly because of analog tape, but because the whole process forced better performances. Studio time was expensive, musicians had to play together in real time, and engineers had far less ability to “fix it later.” That meant stronger singers, tighter ensemble interaction, and more natural variation in pitch, timing, and dynamics, which made records feel richer and more alive. The core argument is that modern production often gains technical perfection but loses some human depth."


I have to say, I agree with this. Older records that were tracked live with everybody playing at the same time just have more feel to it than everybody recording independent from each other and throwing it together in a computer. While a certain quality has to be expected, what music is, or should be, is people relating to each other. Yes you can do it alone nowadays and yes you can achieve "perfection". But it will be nicer if it has feel. And that doesn't need to perfect.

To give an example, just see how these bands figure out the cover and how each person compliments the other.

I'm linking the final song start but you can go to the beginning to see how they arrived there.

 

[HalSF]

For me a real triple ixnay.

1) “AI summary,” 2) thread (and thread title) aping a clickbait YouTube video complete with hideous moronic thumbnail, and 3) ridiculous overgeneralizing sound-quality trolling.

 

[Nathan Raymond]

The AI summary completely missed the part of the video that spent time on the audio engineers who build the studios in the post-war environment with a lot of military grade components and built to a very high standard and how that also contributed to the sound (and the cost of the studios which also encouraged everyone to maximize their time and concentrated talent).

 

[MCH]

I don't know exactly when the transition took place, I read that pet sounds might have been a pioneer in this regard also, but I have the impression most classic rock from late sixties onwards was either not recorded live in the studio or heavily overdubbed. There are plenty of exceptions of course.

 

[digitalfrost]

For me a real triple ixnay.

1) “AI summary,” 2) thread (and thread title) aping a clickbait YouTube video complete with hideous moronic thumbnail, and 3) ridiculous overgeneralizing sound-quality trolling.

Well, you can use your own AI to make a summary if you don't like it. If I hadn't made it explicit would you have noticed? 2) It's the title of the video, I did not choose it.

I feel I added enough of my own even including examples to make it worth your while, despite it's a good video and I liked it which why I chose to post it in the first place.

 

[Nathan Raymond]

I don't know exactly when the transition took place, I read that pet sounds might have been a pioneer in this regard also, but I have the impression most classic rock from late sixties onwards was either not recorded live in the studio or heavily overdubbed. There are plenty of exceptions of course.

Maybe you are thinking of the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio and it's use by many classic rock artists:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/rolling-stones-rsm-studio-truck-classic-albums/

That allowed albums to be recorded in very unique spaces which gave a lot of albums their own sound.

 

[audio_tony]

musicians had to play together in real time, and engineers had far less ability to “fix it later.”

I'm not sure about this. With multitrack tape decks, multi channel mixing desks etc. a lot of remixing went on - even back in the 60's.

Certainly, modern digital mixing desks etc. have sped up the process (no waiting for tapes to rewind, cueing up of tapes etc.) but the basic process is unchanged since the early days.

Isn't this why "direct to disc" became so popular in the late 70's / early 80's? To eliminate the multitrack recorders etc? All in the pursuit of quality and aiming to provide that feeling of being there.

Also: "Older music often sounds better not mainly because of analog tape" - define "older music" (I haven't watched the videos).

 

[Nathan Raymond]

I'm not sure about this. With multitrack tape decks, multi channel mixing desks etc. a lot of remixing went on - even back in the 60's.

Certainly, modern digital mixing desks etc. have sped up the process (no waiting for tapes to rewind, cueing up of tapes etc.) but the basic process is unchanged since the early days.

Isn't this why "direct to disc" became so popular in the late 70's / early 80's? To eliminate the multitrack recorders etc? All in the pursuit of quality and aiming to provide that feeling of being there.

Also: "Older music often sounds better not mainly because of analog tape" - define "older music" (I haven't watched the videos).

I would guess that costs played a big role even in the time of multitrack, putting economic pressure to get as much done as possible. Studio time was limited (unless you were the Stones with your own mobile studio), there was only so much tape and it cost money, so there was a strong incentive to get as much done as you could in the time you had in a way that just doesn't happen today. I doubt there was anything like the "we'll fix it in post" attitude there is now, and that impacted every level of production.

 

[Petrushka]

Maybe the title should be, Why live performances are musically better.

I had a choir director who had screaming fits before performances.

He asserted that fear gave our performance an edge. Otherwise we would be lazy.

I think he was not entirely wrong.

 

[BlueTunes]

Begs the question:

What does "sound better" mean?

 

[Nathan Raymond]

Begs the question:

What does "sound better" mean?

In that video his thesis (which he demonstrates with comparative mixes) is a mix which at minimum captures an authentic musical performance with the normal imperfections in timing, pitch, and happenstance. He also argues (but doesn't comprehensively demonstrate) that performances made up of skilled professionals who dynamically adapt their playing to the strengths and weaknesses of each other in realtime with an understanding of the other players skills both historically and in the moment along with the artistic intent of the piece make for the best recording when it is captured as a complete piece rather than something recorded individually with an engineer inferring how the individual players might have reacted to each other after the fact, or worst of all an engineer doing perfect time and pitch modification of all tracks which would produce an overly homogenous sound lacking in character (though he describes character more in a spatial sense). He's not that rigorous in his verbal descriptions, but with his examples I think he makes reasonable points with sufficient evidence.

 

[Soandso]

…. AI summary: "Older music often sounds better not mainly because of analog tape, but because the whole process forced better performances. Studio time was expensive, musicians had to play together in real time, and engineers had far less ability to “fix it later.” That meant stronger singers, tighter ensemble interaction, and more natural variation in pitch, timing, and dynamics, which made records feel richer and more alive. The core argument is that modern production often gains technical perfection but loses some human depth." ….

I regularly listen to "older music" recorded before WorldWar2 (and after that war's end) achieved under theoretically less than ideal session circumstances. Some of those jazz records do "sound" very good and others are only enjoyable due to the musician ensembles' artistry. When a "modern production" jazz song comes around on one of my streaming playlists often I am pleased at how comprehensive it sounds and the "tight" quality of playing by the performing musicians. So my comment here is that the O.P. theme as summarized in AI speak presents an incomplete comparison and AI positing any "core argument" about some ascribed "human depth" correlation with "older music" a shallow analysis.

 

[SHB]

The music producer, the musicians and the engineer can create anything they want with today’s technology and methodologies. The limitations lay only with the people using it.

Glenn Gould was so obsessed with perfecting his recorded performances that he’d edit the studio masters with an Edit-all block with dozens to hundreds of splices.

I can’t waste my time going further in depth for a subject that’s so ignorant and just plain stupid.

 

[Soandso]

… multitrack tape decks ….

A historical anecdote is that Les Paul was living in Hollywood recovering from a (1948) shattering Oklahoma automobile accident when in 1949 his friend the singer Bing Crosby, who'd begun after WorldWar2 recording his own radio broadcasts on the Ampex Model 300 adapting German magnetic tape principles, gave Paul one of these devices. It was the electrically innovative since childhood Les Paul who began using the Ampex Model 300's spooled dual reels of magnetic tape to record in his garage a 2nd bit of music on the same machine thereby inaugurating multi-track recording.

 

[Aperiodic]

I hope this is in the right place. It’s not your typical analog-vs-digital screed, biased towards one side or the other. It’s more to do with how the tech used influences the performances and thus the ‘feel’ of recorded music. It’s a little long but it’s very thought provoking. Interested in what people think about this.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I hope this is in the right place. It’s not your typical analog-vs-digital screed, biased towards one side or the other. It’s more to do with how the tech used influences the performances and thus the ‘feel’ of recorded music. It’s a little long but it’s very thought provoking. Interested in what people think about this.

Can you give a summary of their conclusions? I don't have time to watch long videos.

I worked in high quality recording studios as they moved from analogue to digital. In general, digital was more accurate, able to support bass down to DC without print-across and print-through and suffered no losses when "bouncing" tracks.

What digital didn't support was overload. Many producers would push analogue tape much higher than it was supposed to go, which produces a soft-clipping effect with distortion. Lots of producers liked this effect, but it was unavailable with digital.

 

[Chr1]

Likewise re long videos here: Life is too short to watch every suggestion here unfortunately.

I am an ignoramus, but curious. Am I right in thinking that some early digital recordings sounded thin/harsh, primarily due to the limitations of the early digital recording gear?

Presumably now digital is far and away superior in pretty much every way. (As long as used correctly.)
And if folks want analogue "warmth" there are numerous ways to add it now. Digital and otherwise.

 

[Redacted]

Yawn.
We've mostly all moved on.
I'll get my tin-foil hat with 'nostalgia' written on it out of storage.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

Am I right in thinking that some early digital recordings sounded thin/harsh, primarily due to the limitations of the early digital recording gear?

Early CD releases often sounded thin/harsh because some of them used the same "master tape" that was used to produce vinyl records. The vinyl production process goes through a half-dozen or more analog generations, each of which lose some high frequency; mastering engineers would boost the treble to compensate for this, but when sent straight to CD is was too bright.

The first commercially available digital recordings were released in the early 70s, a decade or so prior to the introduction of the CD in1982. I recall listening to some of them (often pressed onto red vinyl to distinguish them from ordinary records) but don't recall that they sounded any different than conventional records. But I don't know that I would have noticed at the time. Maybe somebody else can shed light on that.

As for the video, there's something to be said for old school recording methods where all the musicians were in the same room at the same time playing together, instead of a bunch of overdubs by people who have never actually met. But it was very expensive compared to what people do today, and orthogonal to whether the recording was done via analog tape, direct to disc, or digital.

 

[DSJR]

Back in the late 70s, long-standing pro studio owner in the 60s and engineer Angus McKenzie (who called a spade a spade with no 'filter' in his reviews), tried some early digital recorders including the famous Sony PCM-F1 Betamax system and absolutely loved them, praising vociferously the lack of mod-noise on orchestral recordings and the ruler flat frequency responses in the audio band. It's in various tape deck issues of early HiFi Choice mags (I'll try to link to the issue concerned).

Page 168 - https://www.worldradiohistory.com/U...oice Iss. 032 Cassette Decks & Tapes 1983.pdf