hi,
I always wondered why some old records from the 50s/60s got this special lofi-sound. Where does all the overdrive and the lack of high frequencies come from? Was it the recording equipment, or is it the age of old tapes? And how did these songs sound originally in the studios?
bye
chris
Why are old records sounding bad?
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 177 posts since 11 Feb, 2005
OOPS! I don't meant records, I meant recordings! 
I mean the original sounds of old 50s/60s recordings. So why do they sound so lofi-ish? Was it the studio equipment of this time?
bye
chris
I mean the original sounds of old 50s/60s recordings. So why do they sound so lofi-ish? Was it the studio equipment of this time?
bye
chris
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- KVRAF
- 7217 posts since 21 Aug, 2004 from Trondheim, Norway
Many of them sounded crappy from the start, but the best quality recordings from the 50s and 60s were very good. LoFi is actually not a correct term, because most of them actually comply with the DIN specifications for HiFi, which weren't that hi...
Many of the recordings you talk about (I'm assuming) were in mono, which accounts for some crappiness, but in many cases it's the technician and producers who just didn't know what they were doing. Listen to the classical music recordings from that era, and you see what I mean. If the actual record isn't worn down, many 60's recordings can easily compete with modern stuff. Try Deutsche Grammophon's 'Originals' series on CD, for instance. To get that kind of clarity from remastering alone simply isn't possible. The original recording has to be good. Also concider high budget stuff like almost everything done by the Beatles, where you get a phenomenal sense of space (Paul over here, George over there, Ringo's floor tom to the left of you, his hihat to the right...). Go back in time, and you'll have mono as your biggest enemy.
Recording sound to tape is a topic for books, but you have loss and distortion caused by at least 15 different factors, many of them opposites (adjust for one problem and you get another for free), and that's if it was cleaned, demagnetized and adjusted for azimuth angle. Tapes. They bleed. When you roll it up, one layer of tape bleeds on to the next. This is masked by rolling the tapes up ass end out for storage, making the copy come after the intentional sound, but it still makes noise, and it's one of a big bunch of problems with tape.
Only the biggest most wealthy studios could afford high quality high speed tape machines, high quality microphones and mixing consoles (hehe - how about four knobs hardwired to four tracks on the tape machine? Not too easy to deal with...). Reverb was major expense, because you would take your recording to for instance RCA, who had a great reverb room, and have it played back in one end of a big room and re-recorded at the other end, complete with room acoustics. The waiting list for the RCA reverb room was long... Things simply weren't as easy back then.
And then, when the master tape was ready, an LP mould had to be made (immediate deterioration of quality), and if you hadn't though about this when recording the tape, you'd screw it up even more. The most dynamic songs would have to go on the outer tracks of the LP. 45rpm singles can't recreate bass, 33rpm LPs have a hi-end roll-off. The RIAA correction circuits had to be identical in the recording end and in your home equipment - more trouble. Pressing LPs from the moulds made them deteriorate, so the best units came first, and you'd have a gradual worsening as they made copies. Then they had to make a new template.
These are some of the million reasons why things sounded bad in the old days. These days you don't have the same excuses, but it's still a game for trained professionals. Free VSTs can only get you so far...
Many of the recordings you talk about (I'm assuming) were in mono, which accounts for some crappiness, but in many cases it's the technician and producers who just didn't know what they were doing. Listen to the classical music recordings from that era, and you see what I mean. If the actual record isn't worn down, many 60's recordings can easily compete with modern stuff. Try Deutsche Grammophon's 'Originals' series on CD, for instance. To get that kind of clarity from remastering alone simply isn't possible. The original recording has to be good. Also concider high budget stuff like almost everything done by the Beatles, where you get a phenomenal sense of space (Paul over here, George over there, Ringo's floor tom to the left of you, his hihat to the right...). Go back in time, and you'll have mono as your biggest enemy.
Recording sound to tape is a topic for books, but you have loss and distortion caused by at least 15 different factors, many of them opposites (adjust for one problem and you get another for free), and that's if it was cleaned, demagnetized and adjusted for azimuth angle. Tapes. They bleed. When you roll it up, one layer of tape bleeds on to the next. This is masked by rolling the tapes up ass end out for storage, making the copy come after the intentional sound, but it still makes noise, and it's one of a big bunch of problems with tape.
Only the biggest most wealthy studios could afford high quality high speed tape machines, high quality microphones and mixing consoles (hehe - how about four knobs hardwired to four tracks on the tape machine? Not too easy to deal with...). Reverb was major expense, because you would take your recording to for instance RCA, who had a great reverb room, and have it played back in one end of a big room and re-recorded at the other end, complete with room acoustics. The waiting list for the RCA reverb room was long... Things simply weren't as easy back then.
And then, when the master tape was ready, an LP mould had to be made (immediate deterioration of quality), and if you hadn't though about this when recording the tape, you'd screw it up even more. The most dynamic songs would have to go on the outer tracks of the LP. 45rpm singles can't recreate bass, 33rpm LPs have a hi-end roll-off. The RIAA correction circuits had to be identical in the recording end and in your home equipment - more trouble. Pressing LPs from the moulds made them deteriorate, so the best units came first, and you'd have a gradual worsening as they made copies. Then they had to make a new template.
These are some of the million reasons why things sounded bad in the old days. These days you don't have the same excuses, but it's still a game for trained professionals. Free VSTs can only get you so far...
Rakkervoksen
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- Banned
- 1842 posts since 4 Aug, 2004 from just right here
Interesting topic, I found an interesting article from the 2002 Elecronic Musician mag, on Joe Meek a recording engineer from the mid 50's to mid 60'z. He used various mono or 2 track real to real machines, such as the EMI TR51, Lyrec TR16, Vortexion WVB, AMPEX PR10 machines,and mixed to mono.The turntables of the time were mono. In the 50's before going on his own,he worked in the london IBC studio as an engineer.Abbey road studio, correct me if Im wrong, has been in operation as far back as the twenties.
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- KVRAF
- 4265 posts since 21 Oct, 2001 from my bolthole in the south pacific
Abbey Road main studio is a huge space. There was a recent documentary on its history which included many historic photographs from sessions there. A lot of orchestral music and big band stuff like Glenn Miller was recorded at Abbey Road.Rangtangtang wrote:Abbey road studio, correct me if Im wrong, has been in operation as far back as the twenties.
The size of that room of course influences the sound on all the great albums recorded there - from Dark Side of the Moon to the Beatles albums.
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- KVRer
- 7 posts since 5 Apr, 2005
Also, rememeber that multitracking was'nt around back then.... normally everyone would play at once and several takes commited and the best one chosen.... no going back and repairing anything.... Imagine having to control that many live mics on a drummer, band, brass section, strings, choir and vocalist... you can often hear some distortion on big hits where someone's got much closer to the mic than they were in the run thoughs...no Auto-tune or vocal editing back then either.. these were the days of 'proper' artists..they had to perform a world class lead vocal in one take back then to survive...Girls aloud? - I think not
If you want to see something amazing, watch 'Standing in the Shadows of Motown' ... its all about the band called "the Funk Brothers' that played on nearly every Detroit Motown hit.. they all worked in a tiny studio known as the snake pit with very basic equipment... even though the recordings are flawed , nothing has ever come close to that sound again... sometimes the mistakes are the soul of a recording
If you want to see something amazing, watch 'Standing in the Shadows of Motown' ... its all about the band called "the Funk Brothers' that played on nearly every Detroit Motown hit.. they all worked in a tiny studio known as the snake pit with very basic equipment... even though the recordings are flawed , nothing has ever come close to that sound again... sometimes the mistakes are the soul of a recording
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- Tunesmith
- 2889 posts since 12 Mar, 2002 from Toronto
oh brighton - i just typed out this post and then i see you beat me to it. but i will leave it be since i took the time to write this.
i like this topic too. i think if i could expand on the mono recording and the beatles "space" breakthrough, i would emphasize that a lot of recordings prior to this time did not frequently use more than one microphone to capture say a large ensemble. and then with the advent of more multitracking hardware you could place more mics on the players. even if the result of that work was bounced to mono for delivery there would still be more clarity in all the different instruments.
i used to play gigs with this blind hippy as the engineer for the venue and he was a big proponent of the one microphone for the whole drum kit technique. and then he had one more mic for the entire band, and the two mics went into his laptop. he swore by it and i never argued but his recordings came out pretty good considering it's not a big headache to control 2 channels
i like this topic too. i think if i could expand on the mono recording and the beatles "space" breakthrough, i would emphasize that a lot of recordings prior to this time did not frequently use more than one microphone to capture say a large ensemble. and then with the advent of more multitracking hardware you could place more mics on the players. even if the result of that work was bounced to mono for delivery there would still be more clarity in all the different instruments.
i used to play gigs with this blind hippy as the engineer for the venue and he was a big proponent of the one microphone for the whole drum kit technique. and then he had one more mic for the entire band, and the two mics went into his laptop. he swore by it and i never argued but his recordings came out pretty good considering it's not a big headache to control 2 channels
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- KVRAF
- 7217 posts since 21 Aug, 2004 from Trondheim, Norway
Don't forget that the skilled recording engineers and "tonmeisters" of classical music STILL swear by a single stereo microphone as the ultimate recording tool, multiple mics, near-mics and eq are seen as chicken-shit cop-outs. Don't tell me that few microphones are a cause of bad recordings... Dumbass use of few microphones, yes.Mr. Tunes wrote:i like this topic too. i think if i could expand on the mono recording and the beatles "space" breakthrough, i would emphasize that a lot of recordings prior to this time did not frequently use more than one microphone to capture say a large ensemble. and then with the advent of more multitracking hardware you could place more mics on the players. even if the result of that work was bounced to mono for delivery there would still be more clarity in all the different instruments.
Rakkervoksen
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- Tunesmith
- 2889 posts since 12 Mar, 2002 from Toronto
ha yeah i think the french radio method is the most popular in classical but for pop music you have to agree that you need a lot of seperation in mics and eq.Hovmod wrote: Don't forget that the skilled recording engineers and "tonmeisters" of classical music STILL swear by a single stereo microphone as the ultimate recording tool, multiple mics, near-mics and eq are seen as chicken-shit cop-outs. Don't tell me that few microphones are a cause of bad recordings... Dumbass use of few microphones, yes.
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- KVRer
- 23 posts since 15 Feb, 2005
while you make some good points i have to say some of the old rca, decca and a lesser extent london classical recordings from the 50's and 60's are some of the best sounding recordings out there.(mic to pre to tape to acetate to pressing using the best of the best equipment that has ever been made and only what is abosolutly needed in the signal path) secondly the panning your talking about on the beatles records was done in mastering, and from what i've read the beatles were rather pissed that they went over their heads with the crazy panning effects in order to sell new fangled hifi stereos to kids. (really those mixes are more akin to the "hey kids look its f**king stereo" test records from the early stereo era) i own alot of mono recordings that kill 90% of the crap you hear these days.(check some of the early "sounds like am radio" rudy van gelder engineered stuff) you can talk about deteroation of the record mould after x pressings and all that but i know my orignal 65' pressing of coltranes a love supreme kills the remastered effort, its sad but vinyl outlives 1/2" or 2" mastertapes, dats and optical media by a long shot. while bitrot will consume 90% of the popular(and 99.9% of the not so popular) music out there in 200 years i'm sure someone will be able to put on a well cared for record from these days and it will still play just fine. i could go on but i'll end things on your last point, there is a million reasons things sound horrible these days but it has absolutly nothing to do with the techniques or equipment from the dark ages of vinyl and tape. of course like you said theres fewer excuses these days.Hovmod wrote:Many of them sounded crappy from the start, but the best quality recordings from the 50s and 60s were very good. LoFi is actually not a correct term, because most of them actually comply with the DIN specifications for HiFi, which weren't that hi...
Many of the recordings you talk about (I'm assuming) were in mono, which accounts for some crappiness, but in many cases it's the technician and producers who just didn't know what they were doing. Listen to the classical music recordings from that era, and you see what I mean. If the actual record isn't worn down, many 60's recordings can easily compete with modern stuff. Try Deutsche Grammophon's 'Originals' series on CD, for instance. To get that kind of clarity from remastering alone simply isn't possible. The original recording has to be good. Also concider high budget stuff like almost everything done by the Beatles, where you get a phenomenal sense of space (Paul over here, George over there, Ringo's floor tom to the left of you, his hihat to the right...). Go back in time, and you'll have mono as your biggest enemy.
Recording sound to tape is a topic for books, but you have loss and distortion caused by at least 15 different factors, many of them opposites (adjust for one problem and you get another for free), and that's if it was cleaned, demagnetized and adjusted for azimuth angle. Tapes. They bleed. When you roll it up, one layer of tape bleeds on to the next. This is masked by rolling the tapes up ass end out for storage, making the copy come after the intentional sound, but it still makes noise, and it's one of a big bunch of problems with tape.
Only the biggest most wealthy studios could afford high quality high speed tape machines, high quality microphones and mixing consoles (hehe - how about four knobs hardwired to four tracks on the tape machine? Not too easy to deal with...). Reverb was major expense, because you would take your recording to for instance RCA, who had a great reverb room, and have it played back in one end of a big room and re-recorded at the other end, complete with room acoustics. The waiting list for the RCA reverb room was long... Things simply weren't as easy back then.
And then, when the master tape was ready, an LP mould had to be made (immediate deterioration of quality), and if you hadn't though about this when recording the tape, you'd screw it up even more. The most dynamic songs would have to go on the outer tracks of the LP. 45rpm singles can't recreate bass, 33rpm LPs have a hi-end roll-off. The RIAA correction circuits had to be identical in the recording end and in your home equipment - more trouble. Pressing LPs from the moulds made them deteriorate, so the best units came first, and you'd have a gradual worsening as they made copies. Then they had to make a new template.
These are some of the million reasons why things sounded bad in the old days. These days you don't have the same excuses, but it's still a game for trained professionals. Free VSTs can only get you so far...
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- Tunesmith
- 2889 posts since 12 Mar, 2002 from Toronto
well that argument goes on and on but i would like to say that me listening to the Chemical Bros. intro track on Dig Your Hole as a teen is kind of like what people went through in the 60s.CypherOne wrote:vinyl does sound better than CD IMHO...
they fully exploited the digital technology and took sound to a new level in my opinion. as a young person i do see some major advantages to CD quality audio but things like classical will always be better on vinyl.