Another reason that no one has really mentioned here is that mastering tracks for vinyl is different from mastering for digital/CD/streaming in such a way that the tracks basically have to have some amount of dynamic range due to the physical limitations of a needle riding in a groove. Since the late 2000s, the major labels have been stuck in sort of a "loudness war" where they brickwall the shit out of every mix and/or master so that it is as loud as possible for the duration of the song, thus forcing anyone within earshot of a radio or muzak system to listen to whatever is playing. With vinyl, mastering engineers tend to be a little more careful, since brickwalled tracks can cause the needle to skip/bounce.
Unfortunately, sometimes it's still not enough to fix a final mix engineers' fuckups, e.g., with Metallica's Death Magnetic. The original mix/master of that thing is a brickwalled clusterfuck -- you can hear the mix pumping, clipping, and farting out on snare hits, and the vinyl sounds just as bad, because mastering engineers can only polish a turd so much.
I like old music. Particularly rock from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s. Jazz from the 1950s, 1960s. A lot of music over the last 30 years or so drive me crazy and I hate it. I use an equalizer when I watch movies because the TOO LOUD / TOO QUIET problem is even more annoying. Usually equalizing does the trick. But some damn tv series figured out an extra-annoying way of making songs TOO LOUD so I either turn down the volume or skip the scene.
The loudness war (or loudness race) is a trend of increasing audio levels in recorded music, which reduces audio fidelity and—according to many critics—listener enjoyment. Increasing loudness was first reported as early as the 1940s, with respect to mastering practices for 7-inch singles. The maximum peak level of analog recordings such as these is limited by varying specifications of electronic equipment along the chain from source to listener, including vinyl and Compact Cassette players. The issue garnered renewed attention starting in the 1990s with the introduction of digital signal processing capable of producing further loudness increases.
Yeah; I've noticed over the years that a lot of those mid-80s CD reissues of albums released in the 70s and early 80s just sound like sterile ass because they more or less printed the studio's archival masters to CD format. The assumption was that if you had a CD player, you must be some kind of mega-rich audiophile, and therefore you also must have an outboard equalizer, and it would be untoward for the mastering engineer to make assumptions about how much bass you want coming out of your bespoke quadrophonic setup. The mentality shifted drastically by around 1991-92 which, incidentally, was around the same time everyone realized that they could cram a pair of boxed subwoofers and a Rockford Fosgate amp into their rusted out Pontiac Grand Ams.
But yeah, growing up listening to the first two Dio albums on cassette (so many times that I had to transplant the tape at least twice) and then hearing the same albums on CD for the first time was pretty underwhelming because of the aforementioned "just print the DAT masters to CD" approach. I guess my shitty Emerson shelf system wasn't bespoke enough.
Edit: It's also really difficult for those earlier masters because if the studio doesn't have the original tracks from prior to the mastering stage, their options are really limited as far as what they can do on a remaster, and even then, a lot of drum recordings tended to be just two room mics aimed down at the kit, so you can't really go back and isolate kick/snare/cymbals/toms and apply different volume, panning, EQ, and compression to each track to give the other instruments more "space." Track extraction tooling has gotten pretty damned fancy in the past 3-5 years, though, so it might be possible now, if the digital artifacting isn't too obvious.
Best sounding CDs I have are easily the 80s ""sterile ass"" issues, stuff like the Killing Joke selftitled, 1986 release. 1987 press of Little Queen. 1991 press of Big Generator, 1984 press of Who's Next. "Sterile ass" thought is what brought us to the loudness wars and compression death, because people's systems and gear weren't good enough and they whined that the CDs sounded bad. Funny enough, the 91-92 shift you describe is right before albums started being ruined comprehensively, examples like the George Marino masters of Yes and Led Zeppelin albums spring to mind, and then Oasis' second album and the reissues of Abba Gold were crushed within an inch of their lives. The Dreamboat Annie CD I refer to is from 2007, a US Capitol issue.
The relative neutral response and high dynamic range of 1980s CDs is the benchmark. You don't need an EQ or expensive gear to make these sound good, my setup involves a JVC R-X81 and a pair of Sound Dynamics R-515 speakers. The R-X81 was TOTL but the more modest Akai AA-1150D or Kenwood KR-3600 I have sound great too, and to be real a SMSL SU-1 combined with a Douk U3 and say, some Sennheiser HD650 or even Sony MDR-7506 will sound great too. This meme is atrocious, your Emerson system (literal Kmart junk) was in fact not good enough. also the first two Dio albums would have likely been recorded to 1/2" PCM tape or analog soz
It is true that lots of studios lose the multitrack recordings that make up their albums, look at The Who or Yes' back catalog lol. But also those sort of remixes don't get done often anyway, and when they do it's usually for an album that didn't need it--see Close to the Edge. Only time I can think when it was done to an album that needed it was In The Court of the Crimson King, where the 40th and 50th anniv. Steve Wilson remixes use successively better-quality multitracks for the drums, which sounded awful in the original mix.
(Sorry I know it must be super thrilling to get lectured about Steve-Hoffman-Forum-tier loser shit by some fucking bazingabrained critter on the bear website yw & apologies) (getting banned from the bearzone for posting cringe)
Another reason that no one has really mentioned here is that mastering tracks for vinyl is different from mastering for digital/CD/streaming in such a way that the tracks basically have to have some amount of dynamic range due to the physical limitations of a needle riding in a groove. Since the late 2000s, the major labels have been stuck in sort of a "loudness war" where they brickwall the shit out of every mix and/or master so that it is as loud as possible for the duration of the song, thus forcing anyone within earshot of a radio or muzak system to listen to whatever is playing. With vinyl, mastering engineers tend to be a little more careful, since brickwalled tracks can cause the needle to skip/bounce.
Unfortunately, sometimes it's still not enough to fix a final mix engineers' fuckups, e.g., with Metallica's Death Magnetic. The original mix/master of that thing is a brickwalled clusterfuck -- you can hear the mix pumping, clipping, and farting out on snare hits, and the vinyl sounds just as bad, because mastering engineers can only polish a turd so much.
I like old music. Particularly rock from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s. Jazz from the 1950s, 1960s. A lot of music over the last 30 years or so drive me crazy and I hate it. I use an equalizer when I watch movies because the TOO LOUD / TOO QUIET problem is even more annoying. Usually equalizing does the trick. But some damn tv series figured out an extra-annoying way of making songs TOO LOUD so I either turn down the volume or skip the scene.
I'll leave this here.
I have not located a CD that sounds exactly as good as a canadian issue Dreamboat Annie LP.
Yeah; I've noticed over the years that a lot of those mid-80s CD reissues of albums released in the 70s and early 80s just sound like sterile ass because they more or less printed the studio's archival masters to CD format. The assumption was that if you had a CD player, you must be some kind of mega-rich audiophile, and therefore you also must have an outboard equalizer, and it would be untoward for the mastering engineer to make assumptions about how much bass you want coming out of your bespoke quadrophonic setup. The mentality shifted drastically by around 1991-92 which, incidentally, was around the same time everyone realized that they could cram a pair of boxed subwoofers and a Rockford Fosgate amp into their rusted out Pontiac Grand Ams.
But yeah, growing up listening to the first two Dio albums on cassette (so many times that I had to transplant the tape at least twice) and then hearing the same albums on CD for the first time was pretty underwhelming because of the aforementioned "just print the DAT masters to CD" approach. I guess my shitty Emerson shelf system wasn't bespoke enough.
Edit: It's also really difficult for those earlier masters because if the studio doesn't have the original tracks from prior to the mastering stage, their options are really limited as far as what they can do on a remaster, and even then, a lot of drum recordings tended to be just two room mics aimed down at the kit, so you can't really go back and isolate kick/snare/cymbals/toms and apply different volume, panning, EQ, and compression to each track to give the other instruments more "space." Track extraction tooling has gotten pretty damned fancy in the past 3-5 years, though, so it might be possible now, if the digital artifacting isn't too obvious.
cw cringe
Best sounding CDs I have are easily the 80s ""sterile ass"" issues, stuff like the Killing Joke selftitled, 1986 release. 1987 press of Little Queen. 1991 press of Big Generator, 1984 press of Who's Next. "Sterile ass" thought is what brought us to the loudness wars and compression death, because people's systems and gear weren't good enough and they whined that the CDs sounded bad. Funny enough, the 91-92 shift you describe is right before albums started being ruined comprehensively, examples like the George Marino masters of Yes and Led Zeppelin albums spring to mind, and then Oasis' second album and the reissues of Abba Gold were crushed within an inch of their lives. The Dreamboat Annie CD I refer to is from 2007, a US Capitol issue.
The relative neutral response and high dynamic range of 1980s CDs is the benchmark. You don't need an EQ or expensive gear to make these sound good, my setup involves a JVC R-X81 and a pair of Sound Dynamics R-515 speakers. The R-X81 was TOTL but the more modest Akai AA-1150D or Kenwood KR-3600 I have sound great too, and to be real a SMSL SU-1 combined with a Douk U3 and say, some Sennheiser HD650 or even Sony MDR-7506 will sound great too. This meme is atrocious, your Emerson system (literal Kmart junk) was in fact not good enough.
also the first two Dio albums would have likely been recorded to 1/2" PCM tape or analog sozIt is true that lots of studios lose the multitrack recordings that make up their albums, look at The Who or Yes' back catalog lol. But also those sort of remixes don't get done often anyway, and when they do it's usually for an album that didn't need it--see Close to the Edge. Only time I can think when it was done to an album that needed it was In The Court of the Crimson King, where the 40th and 50th anniv. Steve Wilson remixes use successively better-quality multitracks for the drums, which sounded awful in the original mix.
(Sorry I know it must be super thrilling to get lectured about Steve-Hoffman-Forum-tier loser shit by some fucking bazingabrained critter on the bear website
yw & apologies) (getting banned from the bearzone for posting cringe)