Why do so many hit 80s records sound like crap?

[mbradzick]

70s...great.
90s...great.

In between? So many crap sounding recordings!! Why? They had amazing reverb on Dark Side. Why all of a sudden it's 1981 and bands start to sound like people forgot how to engineer?

[inthere]

Dx7+SSL, so many people used the cheesy DX7 sounds, and that combined with the cold sound of the SSL came to pretty sterile stuff in the end. Some guys got spectacular results on SSL, I would say Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were sensational on it, and Trevor Horn also, but for the most part the majority struggled with it.

[Electronique]

Crap to your ears maybe, but not others...

People were just experimenting in different ways then, as they did in the 60's/70's..
Im gatheringtechnology was growing pretty fast in the 80's too, with newer gear - gear that may have seemed better, because it was different to the 70's sound.

Anyway.. I like the sound of the 80's

[ARIEL]

Depends who produced and recorded it - My thing I hated int he 80's was the over use of big reverb . But if you listen to the Cults dreamtime,Love or electric album - they all sounded amazing and still hold up - didnt overuse the reverb . The Police records sounded great , Dead or alive for the electronica kind of thing was amazing - I still will put it on and think what a great job .Billy Idols rebel yell - very tight . But then there were some horid sounding stuff out there too -

[kats]

The decade of decadence, everything was over the top. You know, "go big or go home", "greed is good" etc.

Not everything was that bad though - just the mainstream reflecting mainstream attitudes.

[ghetto3jon]

rain dogs, remain in light, surfer rosa, thriller, the joshua tree, graceland, lifes rich pageant...i could go on all day. don't agree at all. give me the 80's over the 70's any day.

[dambro2]

Some of Steve Winwood's stuff inspired me to start doing this. I still love it today and think it sounds great.

[bcgood]

This is a joke right? I love the sound of the 80's Unforgetable Fire, Joshua Tree, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Black Celebration, Music for the Masses, Substance 1987 the list goes on and on.

There was a lot of cheese though, that's why I think I was into the alternative scene back when alternative actually meant something.

[mbradzick]

Originally Posted by ghetto3jon

rain dogs, remain in light, surfer rosa, thriller, the joshua tree, graceland, lifes rich pageant...i could go on all day. don't agree at all. give me the 80's over the 70's any day.

Ok, Heart, Bon Jovi, GnR, Bryan Adams...big, stupid productions with stupid hair...Even The Wall sounds thin with its delay that's starting to sound like 80s artificial junk. Don't get me wrong, a lot of 80s records are awesome. I just feel that most of the early stuff sounds thin and much of the later stuff sound big, washy, gratuitous and

IMHO

bad. Just wondering why there was such a big change during that decade.

Yes the Joshua Tree sounds great and not dated at all.

[jdtrbn]

I've thought of the same. My favourite bands from the 70's like Yes, Camel and Mike Oldfield made some awful stuff in the 80's. I wonder if the rise of punk was a cause or an effect.
Camel started to make some good stuff in the 90's and Mike Oldfield made a nice one or two records again.

[andychamp]

I think the growing availability of presets in synths started to make musicians lazy: they were so amazed at what they could use, they stopped thinking if they should.

[mbradzick]

Originally Posted by bcgood

This is a joke right? I love the sound of the 80's Unforgetable Fire, Joshua Tree, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Black Celebration, Music for the Masses, Substance 1987 the list goes on and on.

There was a lot of cheese though, that's why I think I was into the alternative scene back when alternative actually meant something.

Unforgettable Fire is my favorite U2 album. Doesn't mean I don't think it sounds like a garage Punk record next to Joshua Tree. Not like they were that far apart in years. Maybe that's the style Eno/Lanois were going for.

[XJR]

I think every decade has it's sound and the present time won't be any different. In twenties years time people will be wincing about the amount of compression we use now and the overuse of Autotune and other popular plugs. Smashed drums and Autotune will be what 2000 to 2010 is remembered for production wise, liked gated snare and Fairlight is for the eighties.

I like a lot of stuff from the eighties actually. In fact I would say that sonically (with no hot masters to squash the mix and everything tracked to tape) some eighties recordings are as good as anything I've heard.

[bcgood]

Originally Posted by Mitch97

Unforgettable Fire sounds like a garage Punk record

lmfao

[allencollins]

Originally Posted by Mitch97

70s...great.
90s...great.

In between? So many crap sounding recordings!! Why? They had amazing reverb on Dark Side. Why all of a sudden it's 1981 and bands start to sound like people forgot how to engineer?

personally I think most if not 90's records sound like crap but I hear you on 80's records. It has to do with too much reverb and overcompression. But on the other side of the coin there are some amazing records that are flooded in verb. 90125 by yes great cd. Asia's first record. Even the old U2 records as overproduced and whimpy as they are they still hold up. Metallica? Redhots? Some great records there. Back in Black? Slayer? Guns n' R.....? REM? some great records there. Van Halen fairwarning? one of the best .Ozzy Diary and blizzard? holy crap were those good. The cure? The Scorpions? Accept? Good stuff , big big sounding records that still hold up today. Pop on over the mountain by Ozzy and try and think what production in the last 50 years is that huge but that natural? Fast as a shark from restless+wild? Doesn't get much bigger than that. Maybe you don't like the music but as an engineer you can't deny the huge but natural production. Black Sabbath mob rules? One of the hugest drum sounds since a Zep record. Heaven and Hell?HUUUGE! Queen 'The Game'? Nothing in the last 20 years sounds as good as that disk.

Whitesnake 'slide it in' has hands down the best natural drum sound ever in the 80's. Go and and laugh, then go down to your control room and try to get something half as huge. What about Maiden records? Piece of mind or Powerslave? To me Martin Birch could be the best producer for capturing huge, larger than life records but with a totally natural sound. Michael Schenker Assualt Attack? that wil lrip your face off and make you want to quit audio all together it sounds so real. I can't think of anyone on Birch's level in any decade for making huge polished records with little or no digitial verb and subtle use of compression.

Pat travers Crash and Burn? Moving Pictures? aaahhh What from the 90's sounds that good? hmmmm... that's what I thought. Not too many records in any decade are in that league as far as hugeness and natural raw tone.

I think in 5-10 years folks are gonna look back at 90's records in disgust like we look back at the 80's now. I mean lets face it, 90's drums sounds other than a few polished metal bands had pitiful trash can drum sounds. Pearl jam and Nirvana especially. Just gawd awful cardboard thinness. It's embarrassing. Even most of rrubens records suffer from bad drum sounds. 90's was too much rap and too much 'raw' for the sake of raw. Goatees, Tattoos, triple recs, drop d and 'grunge' are about as 'cool' as hairspary, spandex , whammy bars and hall reverb on drums. What about that 90's vocal sound? yea!!! it's as cliche' as the 80's falsetto scream. It's pathetic. And way overdone. Still! I d rather hear Ratt or Winger than Seether or Creed. Now we have Chris Daughtry? what a joke. Id rather hear faster pussy cat or WASP to be honest and they made me sick even in the 80's.

I think the late 70's was the best era for records. Records were polished but natural. they finally figured out how to get good drum/guitar sounds in the late 70's. Sure Zep knew how to do it in the 60's but noone else did.

To me the 90's were just like the 80's in 2 ways. It was too much of something and not enough of something else. In the 80's it was too much compression , reverb and samples and in the 90's it was too much sloppy engineering. poorly tuned drums, bad drum rooms and too many bad honky midrange gtr sounds and too many stupid singers rapping or copying the great Layne Staley or Chris Cornell. And even CC copied David Coverdale to a 't'.

Now in this decade we have Nickelback and the best U2 tribute band ever cold play. We are doomed.

[E.rOk.stA]

70's = LSD
80's = too much cocaine
90's = mixed bag (recoup)
00's+????

I always read about in the 80's how all these producers/engineers would blow lines right on the console then get into a session. From my experience in a past life that doesn't work very well.

I will say the studios probably never were so clean, though.

[theblue1]

Yeah, I was coming out of the first wave punk/no wave thing from the 70s... and I ended up really hating a lot of what other folks loved in the 80s.

I'd been a fan of first wave metal at the beginning of the 70s (but not the bloated shit later) and at first I was excited by what seemed like it might be a reinvention of metal as more street-smart and gritty. Wrong. We just got phonier phonies with bigger hair.


I hated what we came to call "new wave" (though I was a fan of what had once been called new wave, stuff like early Patty Smith, Television, Joy Division, Magazine). I really did not like stuff I considered totally commercial, poseur stuff like Cars, Police, U2. And the cool, alienated outsider synth sounds of the late 70s somehow became stuff like Kagegugu and Human League.

And then there was crap like Duran Duran and Poison and the rest of that overblown, super-packaged pop effluvia...

And I hated what became of mainstream rock when bands like the Rolling Stones or artists like Dylan opted for drum machines... like they it was going to suddenly make them hip again.


Still, there was a lot of great music coming up through the cracks... stuff like Sonic Youth, the Pixies, the early dub/trip hop thing in the late 80s...


Anyhow... it wasn't just the hideous misuse of the digital reverbs that suddenly became affordable or the seemingly de rigeur gated verb on snares and toms (though that really laid an ugly hand on some of my favorite artists who struggled to maintain a mainstream pop stance, guys like Richard Thompson, who I just got done doing a big marathon listen to... I love the guy, his brilliant guitar work, his songs -- but that production... meh! Goopy synthesizer and gated cannon shot verbs... argh.) It was the relentless packaging, the fads, the collective me-tooism that sent bands wobbling from one set of gimmicks to another.

Anyhow... tough decade for music. But then they all are these days...

[skythemusic]

Originally Posted by Mitch97

Ok, Heart, Bon Jovi, GnR, Bryan Adams...big, stupid productions with stupid hair...Even The Wall sounds thin with its delay that's starting to sound like 80s artificial junk. Don't get me wrong, a lot of 80s records are awesome. I just feel that most of the early stuff sounds thin and much of the later stuff sound big, washy, gratuitous and

IMHO

bad. Just wondering why there was such a big change during that decade.

Yes the Joshua Tree sounds great and not dated at all.

The Wall wasn't an 80's record and I think it sounds amazing. Go buy the original Japanese vinyl pressing of it and tell me it sounds thin.

[skythemusic]

Originally Posted by allencollins

personally I think most if not 90's records sound like crap but I hear you on 80's records. It has to do with too much reverb and overcompression. But on the other side of the coin there are some amazing records that are flooded in verb. 90125 by yes great cd. Asia's first record. Even the old U2 records as overproduced and whimpy as they are they still hold up. Metallica? Redhots? Some great records there. Back in Black? Slayer? Guns n' R.....? REM? some great records there. Van Halen fairwarning? one of the best .Ozzy Diary and blizzard? holy crap were those good. The cure? The Scorpions? Accept? Good stuff , big big sounding records that still hold up today. Pop on over the mountain by Ozzy and try and think what production in the last 50 years is that huge but that natural? Fast as a shark from restless+wild? Doesn't get much bigger than that. Maybe you don't like the music but as an engineer you can't deny the huge but natural production. Black Sabbath mob rules? One of the hugest drum sounds since a Zep record. Heaven and Hell?HUUUGE! Queen 'The Game'? Nothing in the last 20 years sounds as good as that disk.

Whitesnake 'slide it in' has hands down the best natural drum sound ever in the 80's. Go and and laugh, then go down to your control room and try to get something half as huge. What about Maiden records? Piece of mind or Powerslave? To me Martin Birch could be the best producer for capturing huge, larger than life records but with a totally natural sound. Michael Schenker Assualt Attack? that wil lrip your face off and make you want to quit audio all together it sounds so real. I can't think of anyone on Birch's level in any decade for making huge polished records with little or no digitial verb and subtle use of compression.

Pat travers Crash and Burn? Moving Pictures? aaahhh What from the 90's sounds that good? hmmmm... that's what I thought. Not too many records in any decade are in that league as far as hugeness and natural raw tone.

I think in 5-10 years folks are gonna look back at 90's records in disgust like we look back at the 80's now. I mean lets face it, 90's drums sounds other than a few polished metal bands had pitiful trash can drum sounds. Pearl jam and Nirvana especially. Just gawd awful cardboard thinness. It's embarrassing. Even most of rrubens records suffer from bad drum sounds. 90's was too much rap and too much 'raw' for the sake of raw. Goatees, Tattoos, triple recs, drop d and 'grunge' are about as 'cool' as hairspary, spandex , whammy bars and hall reverb on drums. What about that 90's vocal sound? yea!!! it's as cliche' as the 80's falsetto scream. It's pathetic. And way overdone. Still! I d rather hear Ratt or Winger than Seether or Creed. Now we have Chris Daughtry? what a joke. Id rather hear faster pussy cat or WASP to be honest and they made me sick even in the 80's.

I think the late 70's was the best era for records. Records were polished but natural. they finally figured out how to get good drum/guitar sounds in the late 70's. Sure Zep knew how to do it in the 60's but noone else did.

To me the 90's were just like the 80's in 2 ways. It was too much of something and not enough of something else. In the 80's it was too much compression , reverb and samples and in the 90's it was too much sloppy engineering. poorly tuned drums, bad drum rooms and too many bad honky midrange gtr sounds and too many stupid singers rapping or copying the great Layne Staley or Chris Cornell. And even CC copied David Coverdale to a 't'.

Now in this decade we have Nickelback and the best U2 tribute band ever cold play. We are doomed.

So you like the sound of Asia records but think Nirvana's drums sound thin? Wow....

[vincentvangogo]

Because that's when digital came in.

[allencollins]

Originally Posted by skythemusic

So you like the sound of Asia records but think Nirvana's drums sound thin? Wow....

no I didn't say that. I said Nirvana drums sound like cardboard and are not tuned properly. I said asia like most
80's bands used too much reverb. no need to make up stuff or put/take comments out of context.


thx

[AudioFocus]

So much great stuff came out of the 80s. Jesus and Mary Chain, Echo and the Bunnymen, Pet Shop Boys, The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, Psychedelic Furs, Peter Gabriel, Michael Jackson, Madonna, and on and on. For every bad record there was there were at least 3 or 4 great ones. The 80's ROCKED!!

[Paul Hammond]

Imagine growing up on The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, original Aerosmith, Rush, Jimi Hendrix, etc. etc. then hearing what was made popular by the "industry" in the eighties, while in your late teens, early twenties. It was as if the whole music industry went south. It was so bad it wasn't even funny. Music no longer had that "cool factor" like James Dean. All it had was "cringe factor", at least to us. Back in Black is one exception and there is obviously more.

All we wanted to do in the eighties was to sound like old Aerosmith and Zeppelin, but no professional engineers in our zone at that time could get us that sound. They actually ridiculed us and said, thats passe man, you need DX7 synths and gated snare drum reverbs and click attack on the bass drum, electronic drums etc. We were actually told, "If you wear spandex, chains, makeup, and hairspray we can get you a deal!". I am a fan of what some artists did during that time, who's music transcended the production values of that time period.

The point being, that we thought as a band, yes, the whole band felt that the sound of the eighties was based on the gear choices at the time, the songwriting, and the production values. We opted for a more late 60's, early to mid 70's approach because that is what we grew up liking. Peace, PH

[Dysanfel]

Mastering for vinyl is not the same as mastering for CD. Recordings from the 1980s that ended up on CD where not mixed or mastered with the digital medium in mind

[sleestack]

There were some great albums in the 80's, most of them were not on the readio or mtv much though. Lots of bon jovi and whitney houston is stuck in my memory banks.

[mbradzick]

Originally Posted by Dysanfel

Mastering for vinyl is not the same as mastering for CD. Recordings from the 1980s that ended up on CD where not mixed or mastered with the digital medium in mind

Ok now we're getting somewhere. To anyone I offended with The Wall sounding thin comment, I apologize. It's just that when I listen to it next to Wish You Were Here there's a big difference for me. I can hear the digital reverb and delays starting to creep in.

I admit there are some KILLER 80s records out there, but there seemed to be this underlying trend that everyone needed this huuuge disgusting reverb...at least for Rock. But it's not like they didn't have good reverbs back then! Too much cocaine in the studio.

[vernier]

80's sounds bad and has no feel because of digital.
90's was dumb too ...not one good band.
New millenium is better ..still has a ways to go.
'

[musical5]

Originally Posted by Dysanfel

Mastering for vinyl is not the same as mastering for CD. Recordings from the 1980s that ended up on CD where not mixed or mastered with the digital medium in mind

Amen! Hell, even the "sound" of Joshua Tree on CD has never seemed right to me. And forget about the Unforgetable Fire on CD.....total Ass! Not saying anything about the production on these, top notch IMO, but the CDs blow. I wont even mention the CD for Gabriel's Security....is there anything worst? Was'nt this, as stated in the liner notes, the 1st album ever made 100% digital?

Im done

[Sid Viscous]

Originally Posted by ARIEL

My thing I hated int he 80's was the over use of big reverb...The Police records sounded great ...

Ghost in the Machine is a giant verb with some vocals in there somewhere.

[Sid Viscous]

Originally Posted by musical5

Amen! Hell, even the "sound" of Joshua Tree on CD has never seemed right to me. And forget about the Unforgetable Fire on CD.....total Ass! Not saying anything about the production on these, top notch IMO, but the CDs blow. I wont even mention the CD for Gabriel's Security....is there anything worst? Was'nt this, as stated in the liner notes, the 1st album ever made 100% digital?

Im done

A lot of Gabriel's CD sound like ass. THe first version of So was shit as was Us.