What is the GOLDEN AGE of sound recording?

Yikes, you need to listen to some old records.

A time period that includes Irene Cara at one end and Ace of Base at the other might have something to say about ephemerality, but was otherwise pretty much picked out of a hat.

1956-1964 for jazz and early rock/pop/r&b primarily recorded live-to-2 Track
1972-79 for multi-tracking and studio treatments of all (well, MOST, anyway) popular musics played by human beings. A state-of-the-art sound necessitated by technical innovations, the rise of FM radio and the growing popularity/refinement of high-end home (and car!) sound reproduction systems. (IMO, the late '70s were when recorded sound was at its absolute zenith.)
1980-94 for hiphop, techno and other musics that were actually CREATED (as opposed to 'recorded') in the studio, with samplers, computers, etc. often taking the place of "real" instruments.

If you're talking about the 'creation of soundwaves' in a computer or synthesiser as opposed to creating your soundwaves with plucked strings and vibrated pipes, that was actually invented way back in the 60s and reached its Moogtastic zenith around the late 70s - your supposed golden era.

The technology, the quality of recording may have changed, but really. Ever used a sequencer or sampler? It may be *easier* than cutting up bits of 2" tape, but it's not fundamentally any different.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0306809842/103-6133459-9317463?v=glance

There is no GOLDEN AGE. There is no such thing as "warm" (do you engineer using a thermometer? "Warm" is a thing that analog know-it-alls use to baselessly attack digital recording. Grow the fuck up).

So all the advancements by hundreds of audio companies since 1964 have damaged the "quality" of audio recording? For God's sake phone up Quantigy now and tell them their new tape that they've been refining for over 50 years has gone downhill. They must've fucked up every single bit of research they've ever done. And them the world leaders in tape technology! What are the odds?

Before you come on all "rinny-rinny-rinny-rinny" I'll make the point about evil limiting and comp in modern recordings for you. There. I said it. It's true.

Look, things have moved on. Your personal GOLDEN AGE is 50 years old. If you are that certain that that period was the shit, then stop buying all your audio kit right now and invest the money in time machine research.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

Douglas Adams.

Obviously quotes that generalise like that don't apply to everyone.

The interesting bit is the career bit, it seems to me that people who have spent there lives using analog gear in their careers are the people who have decided that digital = bad.

I do think that some point was reached in the late '70s in American studios where there was a great deal of expertise in producing rock/funk/disco so that it had this smooth, fat quality. British recordings tend to sound thin and either flabby or clattery by comparison. Again I understand where Von Bontee is coming from with his remarks about '80s hip hop etc. where everything (apart from the vocals) is coming from a line out etc. I remember thinking around that time that it was kind of levelling the playing field just a little..making it easier to get a decent sound.

Regarding the anti digital. Yes. But a lot of those people are coming round now with the move to 24 bit and 96 or 192 khz. That's where you may have a point actually that I think I do have an affection for the crisp, slightly grainy 16 bit 44.1 khz sound.

Digital is different from vinyl, as vinyl is different from acetate or wax cylinders. The process is different, but that does not make one more "real" than the other. (Ooh, if I had a dime for every time I heard the term 'real instrument". Do you use electricity? that's not a natural or "real" sound, now, is it?)

Welcome to ILM fool

So, the fact that lots of people constantly use that term to refer to the difference between analog and digital is totally irrelevant? The term has no analogical significance?

One thing I really like about recordings from the mid-to-late '60s and early '70s is the sound of the bass guitar. It seems to me that there is a lot of low end reproduced--there's a lot of bottom to the sound--but it's also a very full range of sound and incredibly clear. Even when there's a lot of sound going on, you can actually hear each attack on the instrument. I don't know why it seemed to get worse, but check out the bass sound on Electric Ladyland or the White Album.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

I've always been under the impression that "warm" can be used 2 ways. One way is a quantifiable quality that's the result of subtle amounts of tape compression. Recording to tape and distorting the single a bit naturally affects the sound in a very understandable, scientific manner, in a way that digital does not. Another way is a more nebulous sense, some things just sound "warm" and it can be the result of anything from the recording techniques to the way a guitarist is muting a guitar or whatever.

HOT WAX!

about 1905-1927 = most of the recordings from this era sound pretty crummy, and there is still contention for the dominant recording medium. still, there are tons of great recordings from this era, rembetika and jazz, enrico caruso and bessie smith and oum khaltoum, proto samba and orchestras in africa. this is also the era of piano rolls, which is a different sort of sound recording... there are nice modern cd issues of busoni, gershwin, and jelly roll morton. bigger even than the fidelity issue, however, is the lack of variety and extensiveness compared to what's to come...

the golden age of sound recording is probably going to be recognized to be from 1927, when new tech vastly improved recording quality esp. of the human voice, and about 1940 when the second world war intervened and reduced the musician pool, buying market, and variety [ie tons of patriotic crap]. the staying power of the medium also improved dramatically. music makers began altering their style to suit the recording technology - eg singers became more conversational with the mic. in america, integration tentatively begins in jazz and the depression forces farmers off the land and into cities, where many record their songs. latin crossover appears which greatly expands the rhythmic palate. the 30s is when records become big business, and the record is starting to become more important than the song. sound films created the total experience.

there have been many important advances in technology since then, but the fact is that we could get by without ftp of mp3, without digital entirely, and without stereo, without multitrack studios, without distortion, without long playing records, etc. i guess i would say the silver age of sound recording was about 1960-1970, when experimentation in the studio became an art - or one could say, when the scientist moved from the laboratory into the music room.

the next step after digital will be some sort of fancy new nano-polymer or custom protein based analog, which will be warmer than vinyl, fuzzier actually than real sound [like the difference between the colors of nature and artificial stuff like fluorescent crayons or the rainbow in an oil slick] and as easy to use as silly putty or a polaroid. digital stage 2 will soon follow with direct to neuron streaming. analog stage 3 is music recorded directly in the body [in neural memory] but that won't be for a while.

i once read an old parody article about russian submarines searching for the traces of millenia-old whale song recorded in geologic deposition or anomolies in the structures of coral reefs, and of course there's always the possibility that the aliens who built the pyramids left behind some of their 8-tracks.

what i was referring to in the phrase "in the 30s it became big business" was when the labels [there were just a few] were sold to big corporations [radio broadcasters mainly]. sorry if i was less than clear.

the shortage was a hoax, wasn't it? you're right though i should've mentioned the strike

as far as the horn, i figured bellowing into the horn was pretty similar to bellowing into a crowd without amplification... i meant that the electronic mic style of singing is what we know today, and it appeared in the late 20s.

For what it's worth, musicwise I generally like more stuff from the '64-72 period than the 72-79 period, even though I consider the recording quality itself inferior.

I'm interested too, I just haven't had the time to form a coherent response to the opening post (except to say, obv, sound recording, golden ages or otherwise, != music production which is what seems to be under discussion).

I urge everyone to read (if they haven't already) Evan Eisenberg's The Recording Angel.

I wasn't suggesting anyone was getting off-topic - I don't see how anyone could attempt a critique of sound quality since the advent of full-bandwidth recording without bringing in the prevailing fashions in production; and anything pre-WW2 is interesting for other reasons. I think there's room for both areas of discussion under this thread heading.

I tend to think the love for that late-50s/early-60s jazz/pop period stems from recording expertise reaching some sort of plateau, tape getting 'good enough' and the prevailing musical styles being suited to large live room, straight-to-tape recording.

One thing I often wonder about though is why three-channel stereo was so favoured with small jazz ensembles in the early '60s when some kind of Blumlein mic array would've produced a more natural stereo spatial spread. Was it to ensure some kind of compatibility with mono styli?

and i might unpack that last clause as referring to why recording quality declined: multitrack rock album mixing destroys ambience, and to audiophiles of the previous generation sound chopped up and cobbled together. meanwhile as the bottom drops out of classical and jazz sales, the companies use less expensive recording techniques.

the same thing happened in film of course - evil digital imax still doesn't compare with 6 track cinemascope in a first run theatre which had beautiful tube speakers

http://members.aol.com/searsound/articles2.html

I'm with you here.

i'd say the odds are pretty damn high. see also: all guitar, keyboard, drum, microphone and amplifier manufacturers. musicians across the board -- young, old, rock, electronic, jazz, whatever -- prefer equipment from the '50s, '60s and '70s to equipment from the '80s, '90s and '00s. name any brand that was around 30 years ago and is still around today, and i challenge you to find a single musician who would prefer the current model to the older model.

i don't know why this is. but it is.

if you play the tapes without baking them first they make all kinds of weird squeaking noises as little flecks of music go flying off the tape.

-- Tim Ellison (timejeanne...), June 13th, 2004 12:14 PM. (later)

I've pondered this too. I think it may have to do with using tube amps for bass back then, and maybe less so than the actual recording technology. there's no reason why this COULDNT be done nowadays. Also, the style changes - with technology, yes, but it's kind of a different animal too. i think the bass that a lot of people want to hear now is more of a low end thump than the thump AND high-end attack. Personally, i like the sound of the attack on those old albums.

i think you could do it now if you just EQ'd it right. so that's an issue of style, not technology.

The influence of reggae, no?