Another vote for AJA-Steely Dan congested and lacklustre, no better or worse on CD, but diabolical on Spotify.
Some of the most amazing music to listen to.
It can put chills down your spine. Very powerful. The Key changes can be something else.
I cannot recall having any such albums apart from a a live album (CD) by Renaissance (Past Orbit Of Dust). Maybe just bad equipment used while recording. Very much like King Crimson's Eartbound.
But when talking of serious bad I have some albums of Hothouse Flowers that are tiresome to listen to. The music is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC but the stereo image lacks depth and width and height - its just like a grey very flat concrete wall of sounds.
But when talking of serious bad I have some albums of Hothouse Flowers that are tiresome to listen to. The music is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC but the stereo image lacks depth and width and height - its just like a grey very flat concrete wall of sounds.
Recently I acquired the Blind Faith Live at Gothenburg 1969 double album. It's sound quality is just horrific. Dominated by guitar and drums, Steve Winwood's voice and Hammond organ barely to spot. Heavily distorted. Sounds like the recording was done using a cheap cassette recorder and a poor microphone in front of a radio. Awful! The music on it would have deserved a way more better recording.
Best regards!
Best regards!
Bootlegs can be dreadful but sometimes OK. Apart from the sound quality, my problem with them is that they deprive the artists of income.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience 1969 Albert Hall gigs resulted in two albums, one of which - luckily for us, the second show - sounded very good. The other recording, from the reportedly poor first show, sounds like it was recorded in the toilets on a cassette: you can hardly hear anything.
Some bootlegs are unintentionally funny, either in title or content, such as Led Zeppelin's 'My Brain Hurts' or the Stones' 'Rock Out, C-ck Out'. The Beatles "Indian Rope Trick" LP includes 'Cheese and Onions' as a "Beatles out-take"; however, it's actually the Rutles, Neil Innes and Eric Idle's spoof band. Or Hendrix Live at the LA Forum 1970, when the bootleggers say to each other, 'oh, he looks so cute'!
Geoff
The Jimi Hendrix Experience 1969 Albert Hall gigs resulted in two albums, one of which - luckily for us, the second show - sounded very good. The other recording, from the reportedly poor first show, sounds like it was recorded in the toilets on a cassette: you can hardly hear anything.
Some bootlegs are unintentionally funny, either in title or content, such as Led Zeppelin's 'My Brain Hurts' or the Stones' 'Rock Out, C-ck Out'. The Beatles "Indian Rope Trick" LP includes 'Cheese and Onions' as a "Beatles out-take"; however, it's actually the Rutles, Neil Innes and Eric Idle's spoof band. Or Hendrix Live at the LA Forum 1970, when the bootleggers say to each other, 'oh, he looks so cute'!
Geoff
A lot of these are from the same era as some of the worst Dolby noise reduction I can recall. As previously mentioned, I can’t help but wonder if that was a part of the bad sound for many of these albums.
I had a tuner for a brief period that had a similar Dolby feature, although nothing like what a recording studio would have, it was awful.
I had a tuner for a brief period that had a similar Dolby feature, although nothing like what a recording studio would have, it was awful.
My late wife was a major Supremes fan. The recordings though sounded to me like they were recorded through a telephone from a phone booth on a noisy street.
Not only that...when you look at the cumulative spectral curve (like Audacity provides on the command, "plot spectrum"), you'll also see a pretty distorted curve that should look like 1/f with -15 to -17 dB/decade straight line sloping downward and to the right. Instead, you see something that looks like almost a straight and level line above 150 Hz up to ~5-10 kHz that's been EQed aggressively during mastering. My guess is that they were trying to make the sound more "unique" on the old 6x9 auto speakers of that era (1960s).
Once you find the inverse EQ curve (using Audacity) to bring it back closer to a slightly upward bowed 1/f curve, I think you'll find that the tracks sound a lot more reasonable. But the tracks obviously have a great deal of modulation distortion (i.e., it sounds very opaque) that was put there during recording. I suspect that part of Phil Spector's "wall of sound" was actually lots of modulation distortion. The source of that distortion was probably in the entire recording and mixing chain.
JMTC...
Chris
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In our high school we had a 1940's console radio in the Booster Club. Supremes were all the rage as Cleveland and Detroit were big hubs.
The music of the 1960's was mixed for AM radio in cars, probably to get over road noise....memorable nonetheless.
My worst recording is Dvorak "Slovanic Dances" -- the Sony re-issue is dreadful but the LP's magnificent.
At the time I thought the whole LP was crap so never bought it. It's hard to believe that Cant Buy a Thrill was made by the same people.