Quote:
Originally Posted by gavriloP
Of course modern albums have more idiotic low end and irritating highs but with good hifi those old albums have plenty of highs themselves. Low end might seem essential to dance and metal music but just listen some ole Perez Prado Mambo stuff, it kicks some serious ass!
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I like the sound of old albums, too, but keep in mind that that old sound is due to the limitations of the technology of the day, not because the bands sounded that way live in the room.
For example, every time you pass a piece of magnetic tape over the recorder's heads for playback or an overdub you loose high frequencies. The highs are the weakest part of the signal and just deteriorate over the course of multiple playbacks. And the sub-bass lows were removed not because they weren't there to begin with, but because they could not be reproduced on vinyl.
So those old albums with that characteristic high- and low- pass filtering were not done that way intentionally. In fact, if they were recorded back then, but with today's technology, they would probably sound like a lot of today's music except that:
- They would be recorded more "live in the room", with less overdubbing than today's music, and
- We would hear more distant and room mics and less of the close micing so prevalent today, and
- We would have much better dynamic range because there was no loudness war at the time.