Best Sounding Decade

Howdy all,
A very good friend and I had a fun conversation the other day and I thought I would throw it out here and see what you all think.  The discussion was about which decade produced the best sounding recordings. 

My friend is a really great engineer and producer and we've known each other for years. He’s also older than me.
 
 It started with a talk about equipment, namely large consoles and their influence on the “sound” of certain recordings.  My buddy has a classic Neotek board from the early 80s and is delicious in every way!  His stand was that recordings in the 80s were the best sounding overall based on the emergence of The Digital Age which ushered in a era of new music technologies, some amazing sounding equipment like his board and the construction of some wonderful sounding studios.  Fair play to ye’ says I.
 
I said I thought the 70s was the decade that produced the best sounding records. I think it was the height of the Analog Age.  I’ll always argue analog sounds better than digital because there are real world physical things happening (a record spins, magnetic tape has physical pieces of FeO2 on its mylar, etc).  The best equipment I ever heard were some of the stuff from the 70s.
 
So what do you think?  We limited our conversation to just the 70s and 80s but I guess any decade is open for the discussion.  We’re all engineers and producers to some degree anyway so I thought I’d get your input.  Thanks, I thought it would be a fun topic. ;)
 
All the best
Tommy

Yeah, I think it would be the 70s too.

Scott

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Scott R. Garrigus - Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series. Get Sonar 8 Power - Today! Go to: http://www.garrigus.com/  - http://www.musictechshop.com/ - http://www.cooltechshop.com/

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70's

There was great technology added in the 80's but too many engineers put dumb trendy stuff on too many songs and just killed them.   i.e. short room.

80's

Gated reverb, Yamaha DX7 and total overproduction....loves it =)

I was going to say '70s but "In the Court of the Crimson King" was recorded in 1969, and for me, that's the best ever.

There are a number of factors that have influenced audio quality over the years, factors that you could plot on a graph starting with their crude origins on up to where they stopped getting better. If you overlaid all these factors, you'd see sweet spots where more than one of them meet at their respective zeniths.

The most obvious factor is the use of limiters, initially applied for purely practical reasons and later for aesthetic effect. Pushing up the average RMS improves the overall sound, but only to a point, beyond which the sound quality begins to degrade. Graphs plotting the average RMS of music from each decade have actually been created, so you can see the upward progression over the years. Sometime in the mid-to-late 90's seems to be where it clearly crosses over from helping to hurting. For this particular factor, the 80's seem to be the sweet spot.

Another factor would be the technical quality of recorders, both analog and digital. Analog tape decks hit their zenith in the 70's and haven't progressed much since then. Tape formulations have, but not recently. So in terms of that particular factor's timeline, you have to put the sweet spot sometime at or after the early 70's.

Digital recording went through a similar ramp-up, starting from early implementations that were difficult to make a good recording with. Believe it or not, some excellent digital recordings were made in the 60's, but it wasn't an easy thing to do. Digital recording didn't really come into its own until the 90's, when inexpensive quality became available to everyone. Unfortunately, the loudness wars began at the same time, negating much of the benefit of digital audio. The ease of digital editing brought along the concept of "fixing" everything. At first, that was a good thing. Eventually, it got taken to ridiculous extremes and became a negative factor. For this factor, the 90's were the time when people had learned how to use digital well but hadn't yet started to get crazy with it.

Many other technological timelines factor in: multi-track recording, FET microphones, digital reverbs, tubes and transistors, musical instruments, digital editing, pitch correction, even the ancient science of acoustics.

And let's not ignore the 800-lb gorilla: the influence of marketing by the entertainment industry. That influences what techniques are employed in the studio as much as any technological advantage. And it has a timeline, too. Record companies once allowed more creativity, then enforced tedious homogeneity for awhile, then ultimately began to lose its power. This particular factor's curve reached its zenith in the 60's or 70's, I think.

Put all these factors together and I think the best audio quality comes in the mid-70's to mid-90's. Sadly, it's also a period marked by a lot of really bad and unoriginal music - but that's another conversation entirely.

John
 Blue Note is one that stands out as a great label. They used very simple techniques to record yet their recordings as still some of the very finest around.

My favourite sounding recording of all time is, strangely, Kenny Burrell's Midnight Blue album recorded for Blue Note in 1963!!!
 
I am 45 and started being involved in recording in the 80s. I knew nothing about it back then as a bass player in an indie band and have learned since that our 'producer' didn't really have much clue what he was doing. He refused to use compression on anything, believing it would kill the dynamics when all it actually did was kill the recording and make everything flat and lifeless and above all quiet - similarly he very rarely used eq as had a belief that to truely capture the 'sound' all the harmonics should be present......It very much depends on who is at the controls when it comes to 'quality' of recording.
 
Some of the greatest albums of all time (IMHO) were recorded in the 70s - for various different reasons I'd include Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zep IV, The Clash London Calling, Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks, ELP Brain Salad Surgery, ELO Out of the Blue, Gong Flying Teapot
 
etc etc etc
 
but then they're just favourites of mine but they all sound great and capture the artist's character superbly.

passenger57


Martin Hannett!

Unknown Pleasures and Closer yes.....the work he did with Durutti Column though is shocking.

Seems to me that the 70s were also a heyday for domestic Hi-Fi. I've got some lovely gear, picked up from second hand shops, that sounds awesome (especially on 70's music). I still can't believe that I only paid £30 for my Armstrong speakers, they still sound incredible, I also have a soft spot for old Warfdales and Goodmans boxes too!

I also tend to agree with childanny 88-93 was (from what I remember of it) a very exciting and creative time. Early UK jungle and breakbeat in particular sounded out of this world (although it may have been that I was 'out of this world' at the time!)

Child

What is this 'quality' you all speak of and how can I get some?

OK, seriously. Until recently I thought all recordings in the 60s were crap (even though I came of age with the Beatles).

On my trip to the UK I listened to Sgt. Peppers on the in-flight system. Yeah, they were over the ear noise cancelling headphones (probably about $20) but boy was I surprised at the fidelity of that album.

I check CHB songs and other collabs with headphones all the time but I have not listened to an album that way for YEARS.

I may need to listen to a few more albums like that before I cast my vote.

maybe  Hell - I dunno 

WTH is a dunno?

ST,

At least you did not finish with "I dunno". Bless your heart.

 

Best Sounding Decade

 
 
I think DECAYED sounds better, or maybe even DECK AID at a push...
 
 
 

Late 60s && 70s !!! Viva La 8_Track!!! 

!w00t!

I think the best "recordings" were from the 70's. I like the sound of stuff today though better. Especially if they are using boards from the 70's before going into pro tools.