[LAU] 1980's cds: analog to digital conversion

[Aaron L.]

>
> 'Piece of Mind' on CD still sounds good to me -- sweet guitars, crisp
> drums, very simple and uncluttered mix.  It's not like the over-distorted,
> over-processed, and over-compressed crap that too often makes it to CD these
> days.  (n.b. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war)
>
> I want my dynamic range back!
>
> -Sean
>

I half-way agree.  The instruments sound "nice".

The overall mix seems flat and extremely cold, to me.

I'm sure some of this is just my 'grown up ears'  though.


On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Monty Montgomery <xiphmont at gmail.com>wrote:

> > I wonder why no one would've seen something like this coming though?
> >
> > Was it just a bunch of suits saying, "Yeah, let's sell some cds!" while
> the
> > original mastering guy prepared to cringe come "Digital Release Date"? (1
> > day later?)
>
> Oversimplifying it... yeah that's sort of what happened.
>
> The industry wasn't technologically prepared to rerelease all those
> albums.  They didn't have enough equipment, much of the equipment
> wasn't yet very good, they didn't have enough qualified people who
> knew how to use the equipment they had.  The 80s/early 90s simply did
> not have the cheap ubiquitous digital power that exists today.  The
> inexpensive machine on my desk beats a Cray2 on every metric. It
> wasn't too long ago that good custom 12 bit (12 bit!) sampling
> consoles cost hundreds of kilobucks.  And good mastering engineers
> were (and are) high priced talent.  Last but not least, not everyone
> took good notes. "Did this cutting master have preemphasis?" "How does
> it sound?" "Meh, it sounds OK." "Then go with it."
>
> It took a long time to sort out the mess that the rush caused, and the
> reputation of the CD suffered for a really long time.  But they made a
> *ton* of money.  The late 80s and early 90s were the music industry's
> version of the housing bubble.  oh boo hoo sales are down recently--
> sales had never been so incredibly inflated as during the great
> vinyl->CD switchover when just about everyone replaced their
> collections at $16 a pop.  Some had to do it twice after things were
> finally properly remastered.
>
> Monty
>
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