Why are music and audio systems with competent bass only recently a thing?

[A Surfer]

Well, I'm 56 so I'm pretty familiar with almost all, if not everyone of those tracks. Came of age musically in the late 70s early 80s and began playing the drums around 1982. I would still say the bass would be on the lean side in those tracks. Not non-existent, but certainly not full at all. Now there would be sections in Dark Side of The Moon, during Time and Money where the bass became more apparent, but I have to say that, for my tastes, lean would still describe it. Generally.

 

[A Surfer]

My first rock concert was Judas Priest for I think the Point of Entry tour and I saw Ozzy live for Blizzard of Ozz and Bark at the Moon. I also caught Defenders of The Faith live as well so certainly my cup of Joe. Also Deep Purple for Perfect Strangers.

What a fun coincidence. Channel surfing and found a channel playing Ratt Round and Round. Pretty sure they were the opening act for the Bark at The Moon show.

 

[dualazmak]

I know one pipe organ album digitally recorded in 1982 but first released in LP vinyl format. Long long after the LP release, finally the remastered CD album was released.
If you have excellent LP TT+cartridge system, the original LP release sounds amazingly nice including the very low pipe organ tones.
Of course, the CD re-release sounds also wonderfully.

If you would be interested, please refer to ending portion of my post here.

 

[A Surfer]

@dualazmak I enjoyed reading about your vinyl experience. Those look like Pioneer speakers of an 80s vintage. Up until about 6 months ago my brother still had our HPM 100s going in his drum room. We've been jamming to those speakers since 1983. They were my father's and when my brother and I moved out together he let us have them.

 

[InfiniteJester]

Here's a measurement of a pair of NS10s in-room / at the listening position. Not too heavy on the bass.

View attachment 374917

It is me or this looks absolutely awful? And to think that some people treat them as a standard even today...

 

[digitalfrost]

I want to point out that the Thiele/Small parameters, wich define a drivers behaviour around his resonance frequency (i.e. bass for woofers) were only "invented" in 1972 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiele/Small_parameters

Given the slow distribution of knowledge back in those days and given that personal computers only became a thing in the 80s, I think it is safe to say that most people - manufacturers included - had no idea what they were doing. A lot of reference designs that were praised in the past never were that good. Look at the measurements of the Quadral Titan that came out in the early 80s: https://hifi-selbstbau.de/index.php/verschiedenes/fertiglautsprecher/quadral-titan-die-legende

 

[Richx200]

My first rock concert was Judas Priest for I think the Point of Entry tour and I saw Ozzy live for Blizzard of Ozz and Bark at the Moon. I also caught Defenders of The Faith live as well so certainly my cup of Joe. Also Deep Purple for Perfect Strangers.

What a fun coincidence. Channel surfing and found a channel playing Ratt Round and Round. Pretty sure they were the opening act for the Bark at The Moon show.

Looks like Rob Zombie - Feel so numb?

 

[MaxwellsEq]

There are good 1960s to 2000s recordings of orchestral organ music with excellent low bass.

 

[bachatero]

How old are we ? Is the 1990’s recent

I forgot to address this earlier, but my music background is with "classical" violin/strings where everybody's still playing music from the 1600s, so anything within the last few decades might as well be yesterday.