I found late '70's/early '80's recordings to be dreadful..Not all but most,no body to them like a good early recording has...I, as an ElP fan don't think their recordings were as good as they ought to have been,especially 'Brain salad surgery'

As i mentioned in an earlier thread i found early EMI recordingd to be superb ie: late Beatles,early Harvest labeled Floyd..Abbey road of course..I do find good Deram recordings too...But it all depends on what you define as good Quality..Digitally re-mastered analogue recordings which tend on digital thin-ness or the original 1st pressings which have so much analogue body ithem they make me melt..

You can totally forget about a CD mastered version...Total destruction of the original recording..

Got to have a real system to realise this of course...

PINK FLOYD - "DARK SIDE OF THE MOON"

that lack of body you speak of adds to the quality of the music...70's prog rock its not over produced like the music of today..and it really adds to more of a pure listening experience i guess...the way the music actually sounded..rather then how the producer wanted it to sound

bounced?

whoa....sorry i'm to stoned to understand....you sound like you know what your talking about..lol

Genesis - A trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering had brilliant production.

I never really appreciated the production on A farewell to Kings until I got the CD. The vinyl distorted terribly towards the end of the sides, and to be honest I will always prefer Hemispheres both in terms of the music and the production.

I love 70's production generally. It was more 'honest' than 80's and beyond. The instruments were recorded as they should sound, and not processed and messed around with. I love the production on selected Led Zep albums, especially Presence and Houses of the Holy.

Cluster One

Watch the documentary "Classic Albums: The Making of the Dark Side of the Moon" to see what Alan Parsons and the boys did production wise to this seminal prog work. My special favourite is the tape looping around a metal pole, in order to produce the cash register sounds in the wanted 7/8 time.

The great thing about early recording is what the boys used as effects,like what you mentioned Cluster with the cash till effect...All this type of stuff that Floyd were masters at by the way,put no signature on the sound quality at all.Later productions were dosed with effects units & being multi tracked to death,resulting in a very norrow sound stage compared to early recordings..Who gives a stuff about crystal clear CD type sound production...We want natural full width analogue sound as it was intended in those days & sound far superior to me

You listern carefully to say ELP's first album on vinyl..you'll notice more space around instruments,drums are more forward,you can heare every nuance in Gregs voice,it's a big sound...Compare this to 'Brain salad surgery' the recording is no where near as good vastly compressed beyond belief...That advancement in recording & multi tracking for you..

Not!

& that was only '73...after all it was a very advanced album for the time.

Cluster One wrote: Jethro Fish wrote: PINK FLOYD - "DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" Watch the documentary "Classic Albums: The Making of the Dark Side of the Moon" to see what Alan Parsons and the boys did production wise to this seminal prog work. My special favourite is the tape looping around a metal pole, in order to produce the cash register sounds in the wanted 7/8 time.

Yeah, I have it on DVD. It's great!

BEST

Pink Floyd - Animals

WORST

Genesis - Nursery Chryme

Karnevil9 wrote:

The great thing about early recording is what the boys used as effects,like what you mentioned Cluster with the cash till effect...All this type of stuff that Floyd were masters at by the way,put no signature on the sound quality at all.Later productions were dosed with effects units & being multi tracked to death,resulting in a very norrow sound stage compared to early recordings..Who gives a stuff about crystal clear CD type sound production...We want natural full width analogue sound as it was intended in those days & sound far superior to me

You listern carefully to say ELP's first album on vinyl..you'll notice more space around instruments,drums are more forward,you can heare every nuance in Gregs voice,it's a big sound...Compare this to 'Brain salad surgery' the recording is no where near as good vastly compressed beyond belief...That advancement in recording & multi tracking for you..

Not!

& that was only '73...after all it was a very advanced album for the time.

70's Sound wrote:

I hate to start flame wars, so dont take this offensively but I sort of disagree with what you say. You are absolutely correct, the less width per track results in less space per track and more noise floor per track. On the other hand, plus 4db is +4, aint no way around it. Sure brain salad surgery might sound thinner for the individual tracks, but that's the price you pay for having so many overdubs. I'll take the overdubs because, its still +four and each instrument still has its own space compared to what they are doing now. I usually prefer late 70's efforts, because the snare usually sounds a lot weirder, and the bass tones by the late 70's seemed almost "modern" due to natural technical progression, but still very primitive sounding , so that I like.

Relayer is the same exact way.My mother bought me the re-released one, that has an original 1974 studio run through. You will instantly notice that the drums are louder, and the bass is clearer and guitar is easier to hear compared to the actual mastered version. My mom said the same thing, that she preferred the "run through" version because things sound more "full and garage-like" in her own words, and true it does, but there are less instruments in the mix. The stereo buss wouldn't allow Yes to keep that same volume on drums with all those reverb sends and synth overdubs, along with mellotrons/orchestrons and all sorts of other crazy stuff going on. So when you hear the mastered version, the drums are lower and so is the bass, but this is how it has to be. Its absolutely worth it.

these days they are cutting CD's so much louder than vinyl, so much more that the lathe probably wouldnt even cut the record/vinyl and if it did, the record would probably start to catch fire or melt because 0 db fullscale is just absolutely silly. With these new advantages you'd think that things would sound better, but they don't. Its all about the tubes man.

EVERYTHING was build better in the 60s and 70s. They couldnt help it. It doesnt matter how sophisticated your medium is, running your bass directly into a console is going to yield marginal results. These days, for some reason, even if people do use 1176 tube compressors and all those exotic pre- amps, it still comes across as "bland" sounding. Not everything in the signal chain is 70s these days, which is a BIG problem for me. Unfortunately, I never got to see the 70s (and I really do mean that crying face)

If you buy a fener jazz bass from 1975, it will sound better than a fender jazz bass from 2005. There is a very real reason why, and it has to do with the wood being of higher quality, and that was before all the good 1000+ year old trees were taken (ever notice that maple on those 70s basses is much more yellow than now??). Everything was just flat out higher in quality, and people wanted to move on for whatever silly ass reason. Digital is STILL an immature technology in my eyes, and just recently learning about the only Tape manufacturer Quantegy being shut down made me want to kill someone. Im not a violent person, but I will smash a computer loaded with "PRO" tools if I have to. Recordings these days just flat out suck, and its so sad to know that new yes albums sound worse than OLD yes albums. Whats going on here folks? nobody cares anymore.

so that's were my twin ended up in the U.S!

I ain't gonna make no enemy from you...Your so right.

I started building a 70's analogue studio some time back but never got finished,most of my gears boxed up after a recent move...Trying to fully kit out a studio '70's styli did as you point out get a bit complicated buying good outboard analogue outboard gear.

I also have a problem with Japanese products too but that's another story..

I totally detest anything digital.It sucks & always will.It's a medium of convenience both for the user & production team..

Completely destroys old & new music out right.

Great thread 70s!

I'm fascinated by recording techniques etc (the musician in me) but after 20 years of playing (but never enough time in studios) i'm still in the dark about a lot of things.

However, Id nominated a few records

I think Eddie Offord did amazing things with Yes - check out the quality of the 12 string acoustic guitar at the beginning of And You & I - it has a wonderful bright but natural tone and when Wakeman's mini-moog (I think) drops in it has a fantastic 'liquid' bounce as it pans across the soundstage. The care and attention lavished on something like the mid-section of 'Heart of the Sunrise' is also remarkable, the effects are beautifully presented and the pianos have a great ethereal 'other worldlyness' that just gets me every time. In fact, I think the production on the Yes Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge are about as good as prog production gets - natural, fluid, bouncy, lively and involving with great clarity to all the instruments.

Dark Side is an obvious choice - just listen to roto-toms on 'Time' or how controlled the piano is on 'Us and Them'

But I'd also like to put a spoke in for 'Animals' - which has a very definite, very considered overall 'sound ethic' - it's spectacularly brittle, the synths are harsh and unrelenting, Gilmour's tones are tough and mixed very 'front of house' and the vocals are beautifully recorded, doesn't appear to be huge amounts of reverb - everything seems to be eq'd simply to be sharp and full yet the whole thing has a wonderful sparseness, the separations are great.

Also I've been listening to 'Permanent Waves' a lot the last couple of days - stunning production - Alex's guitar tone on 'Different Strings' is amazing and superbly recorded. Likewise the drums throughout the album have a fantastic dry quality to them. I adore this kind of 70s drum sound. Not too much reverb, but incredibly punchy and controlled. Is it down to the compressors?

'Natural Science' too has some amazing moments. Listen to those first electric guitar parts - this sound, compressed, with a little chorus I think, maybe even DI'd sounds amazing and is a key sound for that period (79-81). You hear it on a lot of records - I'm particularly thinking of a rather obscure single 'Echo Beach' by Martha and the Muffins - great tone.

Geddy's vocal is really well recorded here too. I think it's double tracked with a little phase or something similar attached to the second track, sounds great, with a very gentle reverb, beautifully placed in the mix. Top notch.

As for the bad - I have to go with some of Genesis' early stuff - just sounds awful, dead basses, lost in the mix, drums like box-tops, cymbals like hubcaps, the keyboards messy and ill-defined in a lot of places, the vocals dipping in and out of the mix with alarming swoops. Just awful

We've had a thread on their awfulness somewhere else, with a lot of stuff about the mastering etc. interesting.

Keep going....

arcer wrote: I think Eddie Offord did amazing things with Yes - check out the quality of the 12 string acoustic guitar at the beginning of And You & I - it has a wonderful bright but natural tone and when Wakeman's mini-moog (I think) drops in it has a fantastic 'liquid' bounce as it pans across the soundstage. Dark Side is an obvious choice - just listen to roto-toms on 'Time' or how controlled the piano is on 'Us and Them'

I agree with everything stated,

arcer wrote: But I'd also like to put a spoke in for 'Animals' - which has a very definite, very considered overall 'sound ethic' - it's spectacularly brittle, the synths are harsh and unrelenting, Gilmour's tones are tough and mixed very 'front of house' and the vocals are beautifully recorded, doesn't appear to be huge amounts of reverb - everything seems to be eq'd simply to be sharp and full yet the whole thing has a wonderful sparseness, the separations are great.

They can get away with having everything so dry, because everything is initially tracked soooo frickin well! Good old discrete recording consoles........they dont make em liek they used to.

arcer wrote: Also I've been listening to 'Permanent Waves' a lot the last couple of days - stunning production - Alex's guitar tone on 'Different Strings' is amazing and superbly recorded. Likewise the drums throughout the album have a fantastic dry quality to them. I adore this kind of 70s drum sound. Not too much reverb, but incredibly punchy and controlled. Is it down to the compressors?

First, it could be a lot of things, a lot of important desicions made by the engineers, or neil just bitching and moaning till he gets his way! What happened here is a natural phenomena called tape compression, I believe.

I'll take those aweful genesis recordings over a great new one. But thats just preference

As far as Dark Side and BSS I am not positively sure but were they not recorded to mixed down to 4 channel "quad" before they became stereo mixes?  I remember hearing the quad versions of these first and after I had a hard time accepting the stereo mix as two thin and muddy at the same time.

 On some tracks I agree about anti digital but having just heard the first two Kansas album remixes i have to say the digital re mix did a wonderful job on both.  The first Kansas album was produced by Wally Gold a late 60's hit producer. Not the guy I am sure the band would have chosen.  He didn't let them, for instance, use their Marshall heads in the recording and forced them to use small fender studio amps which really put a damper on the guitar sound.  Until the remix the bass and drums just got lost in each other.  Now you can hear Dave Hopes great bass lines clearly for the first time.  You really have to hand it to the producer of the remix, Jeff Glixman, because the original master tape was wiped clean by Kirshner for reuse on another group.  How hea was able to clean it up as well as he did was amazing.  Song For America using the master tapes was even more stunning.  I thinkl a another great exapmple of digital cleanup was some demo tapes Kerry Livgren kept of the second Kansas lineup (There were three).  Mostly live recordings of the band for the most part but when he remastered them for a CD release through Cuniform records (Early Recordings From Kansas) he did an amazing job. No they don't sound studio produced but the clean up for the ones that were orginally posted is stunning.

happy the man - crafty hands and the first one!

camel - i can see your house from here

a special mention to Gentle Giant - Interview!

the all-time best recorded prog album:

Saga - Heads or tales

Honorable mentions:

1 Rush - Power windows

2 Marillion - Fugazi

3 Yes - 90125

My picks are from the Italian prog arena:

Metamorfosi's Inferno is about the most poorly-recorded 70s album I've ever heard. Everything is distorted and compressed to hell, and poorly mixed on top of that. I do love listening to it, though...the rich nasty bassy mess really kicks you nicely in the balls sometimes.

On the other hand, PFM's "Per Un Amico" may be the best-sounding 70s album I've heard. Plenty of warmth, detail, clarity and punch; not as satisfyingly groin-smashing in the saturation department, but that's not what PFM was about, anyway.

Not the only one but the sound of Tales of Mystery and Imagination is absolutely perfect. The mixture of sound effects with Orchestra in The fall of the House of Usher is absolutely beyond their time and the technical advances available in the mid 70's.

I listened a lot of sound effects that interfere with the music creating a chaotic effect, but Parsons graduates the volume so carefully that helps to enhance the atmosphere and blends with the orchestra arrangements by Andrew Powell.

Iván

Pulsar - "Halloween" -- great 3D sound

70sSoundquality wrote: Karnevil9 wrote: The great thing about early recording is what the boys used as effects,like what you mentioned Cluster with the cash till effect...All this type of stuff that Floyd were masters at by the way,put no signature on the sound quality at all.Later productions were dosed with effects units & being multi tracked to death,resulting in a very norrow sound stage compared to early recordings..Who gives a stuff about crystal clear CD type sound production...We want natural full width analogue sound as it was intended in those days & sound far superior to me   You listern carefully to say ELP's first album on vinyl..you'll notice more space around instruments,drums are more forward,you can heare every nuance in Gregs voice,it's a big sound...Compare this to 'Brain salad surgery' the recording is no where near as good vastly compressed beyond belief...That advancement in recording & multi tracking for you.. Not! & that was only '73...after all it was a very advanced album for the time. I hate to start flame wars, so dont take this offensively but I sort of disagree with what you say. You are absolutely correct, the less width per track results in less space per track and more noise floor per track. On the other hand, plus 4db is +4, aint no way around it. Sure brain salad surgery might sound thinner for the individual tracks, but that's the price you pay for having so many overdubs. I'll take the overdubs because, its still +four and each instrument still has its own space compared to what they are doing now. I usually prefer late 70's efforts, because the snare usually sounds a lot weirder, and the bass tones by the late 70's seemed almost "modern" due to natural technical progression, but still very primitive sounding , so that I like. Relayer is the same exact way.My mother bought me the re-released one, that has an original 1974 studio run through. You will instantly notice that the drums are louder, and the bass is clearer and guitar is easier to hear compared to the actual mastered version. My mom said the same thing, that she preferred the "run through" version because things sound more "full and garage-like" in her own words, and true it does, but there are less instruments in the mix. The stereo buss wouldn't allow Yes to keep that same volume on drums with all those reverb sends and synth overdubs, along with mellotrons/orchestrons and all sorts of other crazy stuff going on. So when you hear the mastered version, the drums are lower and so is the bass, but this is how it has to be. Its absolutely worth it. these days they are cutting CD's so much louder than vinyl, so much more that the lathe probably wouldnt even cut the record/vinyl and if it did, the record would probably start to catch fire or melt because 0 db fullscale is just absolutely silly. With these new advantages you'd think that things would sound better, but they don't. Its all about the tubes man. EVERYTHING was build better in the 60s and 70s. They couldnt help it. It doesnt matter how sophisticated your medium is, running your bass directly into a console is going to yield marginal results. These days, for some reason, even if people do use 1176 tube compressors and all those exotic pre- amps, it still comes across as "bland" sounding. Not everything in the signal chain is 70s these days, which is a BIG problem for me. Unfortunately, I never got to see the 70s (and I really do mean that crying face) If you buy a fener jazz bass from 1975, it will sound better than a fender jazz bass from 2005. There is a very real reason why, and it has to do with the wood being of higher quality, and that was before all the good 1000+ year old trees were taken (ever notice that maple on those 70s basses is much more yellow than now??). Everything was just flat out higher in quality, and people wanted to move on for whatever silly ass reason. Digital is STILL an immature technology in my eyes, and just recently learning about the only Tape manufacturer Quantegy being shut down made me want to kill someone. Im not a violent person, but I will smash a computer loaded with "PRO" tools if I have to. Recordings these days just flat out suck, and its so sad to know that new yes albums sound worse than OLD yes albums. Whats going on here folks? nobody cares anymore.

I agree with one thing not. The Fenders and Gibson guitars in 70s were in the worse era and have overall worst reputation. Both brands were owned by big corporations (CBS and Norlin) and the quality went downhill from late 60s. The best Fender and Gibson guitars are from 50s and 60s and now from Custom Shop. I had some 70s Fenders, and overall some were really far worse than nowadays reissues. (they were heavy, dead sounding with thick finishes, bad neck pockets etc.) Their only advantages are the price: for example 1977 Stratocaster is available for 1200$. 1967 Strat in good condition for 5000$, 1957 for 25000$. With Gibsons it is the same.

UK - 1978

Alan Parsons Project - Tales Of Mystery And Imagination - 1976 (these first two sound like they came from the 80's instead of the 70's. Way ahead of their times!)

Rush - A Farewell To Kings - 1977

ELP - Brain Salad Surgery - 1973

King Crimson - Larks' Tongues In Aspic - 1973

Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon - 1973

Pink Floyd - Animals - 1977

All depend what the listerner defines as best sound quality.Everyone has a different hear & a way they judge whats good & bad...Some may think CD with it'd dreadful bright in yer face quality to be the dogs bollox & others may find that Analogue playback (Record/Tape) to be correct.I personally think you can never beat the sound of record,so called crackles & pops are a thing created by poor mis-use & poor playback equipment which just highlights the problem.However whatever medium you choose to listern to it's your choice,but as a vinyl man i will always choose EMI recording as the best to me ie:Early ish Pink floyd,late beatles,most recording on Harvest records etc.

The best production, in my opinion

Beatles - Abbey Road

The production is fantastic. I´ve heard lots of albums from 69, and I´ve never heard any other album that came close to Abbey Road.

Jethro Fish wrote: PINK FLOYD - "DARK SIDE OF THE MOON"

This is a great quality recording.

Just for sheer crisp clarity and good mixing:

Brand X - Moroccan Roll (w/ Dennis McKay at the controls)

Gong - Gazeuse   Again, with good 'ol Dennis McKay!

Yams wrote: 70sSoundquality wrote: Saying it could be the worst "since it was produced at their newly built Britannia Row studios" is like saying Relayer is the worst Yes album, since it was only recorded in Chris Squire's garage. The gear is good, regardless of how immature the studio is. They had money for the best equipment, and the best engineers. Animals is clearly a winner...maybe note as spacey as dark side, but FAR superior in fidelity and noise floor. Maybe so. I'd just like to point out, though, that the studio had inferior recording equipment compared to that of Abbey Road.

Abbey road studio's were the most advanced studio in britain & still is.Yes album's sound quality was sh*t..So was early Genesis