K
KC2LDY
Guest
Re: I will take the product over the presentation
> > You just do not get that separation with
> > CD's, I think Diamond Jim pulled the music from the old
> LP's
> > at the time in the early 70's.
>
> Many CD re-releases of '60s Oldies do not sound as good as
> the original 45s and LPs, because of deterioration of the
> master tapes by the time the CDs were made. And in an
> attempt to cover up the flaws of a master tape that has
> become dull and hissy, they often "remaster" the audio with
> lots of high-end EQ and compression, to try to recreate the
> lost clarity of the original recording, but it just ends up
> sounding over-processed and dynamically lifeless.
>
> That's why it's difficult to assemble a high-quality library
> of '50s/'60s Oldies these days -- you have to sample many
> different sources just to find the best version of each
> particular song, since the quality varies so much. And some
> songs were pretty lousy-sounding to begin with, such as
> Doris Troy's "Just One Look" (very dull and muffled) or
> "Deep Purple" by Nino Tempo & April Stevens (lots of IM
> distortion on the vocals).<<
All of this is very true. But the music industry (up until perhaps the early 1970's) also understood that their product would be heard - and sold - through the narrow bandwidth of AM radio, often made worse by small speakers on hand-held transistor receivers of the time. So the recordings were engineered to sound as full and as punchy as possible in that technical environment.
Steve
KC2LDY
> > You just do not get that separation with
> > CD's, I think Diamond Jim pulled the music from the old
> LP's
> > at the time in the early 70's.
>
> Many CD re-releases of '60s Oldies do not sound as good as
> the original 45s and LPs, because of deterioration of the
> master tapes by the time the CDs were made. And in an
> attempt to cover up the flaws of a master tape that has
> become dull and hissy, they often "remaster" the audio with
> lots of high-end EQ and compression, to try to recreate the
> lost clarity of the original recording, but it just ends up
> sounding over-processed and dynamically lifeless.
>
> That's why it's difficult to assemble a high-quality library
> of '50s/'60s Oldies these days -- you have to sample many
> different sources just to find the best version of each
> particular song, since the quality varies so much. And some
> songs were pretty lousy-sounding to begin with, such as
> Doris Troy's "Just One Look" (very dull and muffled) or
> "Deep Purple" by Nino Tempo & April Stevens (lots of IM
> distortion on the vocals).<<
All of this is very true. But the music industry (up until perhaps the early 1970's) also understood that their product would be heard - and sold - through the narrow bandwidth of AM radio, often made worse by small speakers on hand-held transistor receivers of the time. So the recordings were engineered to sound as full and as punchy as possible in that technical environment.
Steve
KC2LDY