| As you probably know, when cutting records the Bass is greatly reduced (RIAA curve) because loud bass would cause the cutting needle to swing into the adjacent tracks, which is why "Phono" inputs have huge Bass boosts to restore the missing Bass. I am just guessing but, since the old timers were not part of the loudness wars maybe they didn't have problems with the highs due to the normal headroom (14db-22db) allowed.
Going way out on a limb here, since we are talking about a needle with mass and acceleration/momentum, could the old tube and tape systems have given gentler compression such that the needle was not trying to stop and reverse direction as abruptly as modern brickwall limited audio might? |