Why New Music Doesn't Sound As Good As It Did

[tcguy85 10+ year member]

Go buy Alice in Chains Unplugged //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

hell yes! this CD is recorded extremely well. the drums and everything sounds perfect. i even keep this cd in my car to show off my system for people who actually care about SQ not just being loud.

 

[tcguy85 10+ year member]

i was on the whole ipod, itunes, mp3 kick untill a couple months ago. i stopped worrying about getting my system crazy loud and started tuning it to sound good and have good SQ(with the inexpensive setup i currently have). i found out about a program that you can use to make all your mp3's have roughly the same "volume". it also tells you if the recording is clipped or not. almost all my mp3's, even ones i took from cd's i had were sometimes severely clipped. they were all lowered to the same volume now after running that program but still didn't sound right to me. now i only buy cd's and barely use the ipod anymore. i might use it for longer trips on shuffle or when i feel like playing rapp which sucks in the SQ category anyway. most cd's i find sound pretty good but some do sound a little muddy and distorted in the upper end.

 

[Motley 10+ year member]

ya I just been buying a bunch of cd's now too. Now that it's way too difficult to download any quality mp3's off the net.

 

[Immacomputer 10+ year member]

All live show recordings i've ever heard sound like sh*t to me. They are all terrible.
but Rush is a great band!

That's going to really depend who is doing the recording at the show. There have been some very well recorded live albums.

This Rush album sounds very nice:

http://media.putfile.com/Rush---Different-Stages---Live-Disc-1---1998---15---2112---VI-Soliloquy

In fact, most Rush albums sound better to me than their studio counterpart.

This loudness war may be a really thing that the recording industry is struggling with but that doesn't mean there are still not well recorded albums out there. And comparing Band X recorded by Studio X to Band Y recorded by Studio Y is no where near fair. Comparing Band X recorded by Studio X and Band X recorded by Studio Y is also not a fair comparison as every studio engineer has a different way of recording and leveling.

I have heard some very well recorded material from the 70s and then I have heard some very poorly recorded tracks from the 70s. I'm a huge fan of Jethro Tull and I have albums from the 70s to the present. There are some terrible sounding albums as well as some very nicely recorded albums. Take a listen to Benefit, recorded in 1970; Thick as a Brick, recorded in 1972; A Passion Play, recorded in 1973; and War Child, recorded in 1974, and then note the differences. Benefit has a terrible recording and that was while they were on the same label. Thick as a Brickand A Passion Play were both recorded when they were with Island records. There could have been a different studio or even a different engineer but the recordings are very different.

It's a huge over generalization to say that all music recordings have gone down the drain since the 80s... that's just bullshit and nobody can try to prove an over generalization like that.

 

[ledzeppac 10+ year member]

What about the fact that most people are using digital recording and pro tools over the old analog recording techniques? I think anything recorded in the old equipement sounds much cleaner and distinct.

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