Sound quality of older CD's? (1 Viewer)

[Allan_Lim]

I recently purchased a minidisc player and I've been recording compilations.

I decided to make an 80's rock disc and it had been quite a while since I listened to some of these old CD's.

Is it just me or has the sound quality of CD's taken a quantum leap since the 80's? Perhaps the few CD's I've used have poor sound quality, but from the few I've listened to today in making my compilation I find the sound to be very poor compared to CD's made within the last few years.

Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[Jagan Seshadri]

Many of the CDs issued in the 80s were hastily produced using 2nd or 3rd generation copies of the master tapes, and this was further compounded by the limited knowledge about digital audio at the time.

Record companies finally took the time in the 90s to find the original master tapes and often use techniques such as dithering to trick our ears into hearing more detail than what the CD format can actually provide (I know this sounds like complete B.S. but dithering it is a true psychoperceptual trick that is used in both audio and video).

It makes sense that as scientific knowledge increases, we can reap the rewards that were unattainable years ago. Still, not all the CDs issued now are good. Many are made to have a louder average sound level (excessive dynamic compression) at the expense of sound quality. This kind of deleterious sound processing was not technically feasible back in the early days of CD. Technology is a double-edged sword.

-JNS

 

[John Watson]

Sure its not just 80's music?
Lot's of 50's hifi sounds way better

 

[Salvador]

most of my old cd's sound like absoluste sh!t (quality wise) when compared to my newer ones. Take for example the Foo Fighters' first album. I like that ablum artistically but boy does that CD recording sound awful.

 

[Ryan Spaight]

There were plenty of duff CDs issued back then, but several gems as well. For example, the *original* issue of Who's Next from 1984 sounds better than any other version since, including the latest remaster and MSFL gold disc.

CDs from that era are much less likely to be processed to death like today's are. Newer reissues are often slathered in No-Noise processing to get rid of tape hiss. Unfortunately, this also gets rid of quite a bit of sound that you want. A good example is Beatles One, which sounds just awful because of all the noise reduction. (The original Beatles CDs certainly have their problems, but this isn't one of them.)

New releases and reissues alike these days are often level-maximized to the point of distortion, which kills the dynamic range (as Jagan mentioned above). It's loud (which many perceive as sounding better), but everything's smooshed into a few dbs, rather then using even a fraction of the 80+db of dynamic range CD is capable of. Very tiring to listen to.

As always, the your best bet is to listen with an open mind, and not assume anything about sound quality based on the date on the box.

Ryan

 

[Colin Jacobson]

most of my old cd's sound like absoluste sh!t (quality wise) when compared to my newer ones. Take for example the Foo Fighters' first album. I like that ablum artistically but boy does that CD recording sound awful.

Something from 1995 qualifies as an "old" CD? Oh, that's the most depressing statement I've read today. When I think of "old" CDs, I think of discs - not music, but actual CDs - that came out in 1982-1986, not something from seven years ago!

 

[MikeH1]

I have to agree. It seems that todays music the recoring is very loud and the detail isn't there. Thats why I like 80s so much - great dynamic range and lots of synth. Africa by Toto is a good example. Not the best recording but colorful (can this word be applied to music)?

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Just be aware that some of the CDs mastered early on are still comparable to the best that's being produced today. Not as simple as: old=crap, new=good.

Case in point, the Stones SACDs. I don't have the link handy, but if you search around and find the FAQ, the dude talks about how the specific early London CDs are still quite comparable in sound quality to the new SACDs...

 

[Joel Fontenot]

I find a lot of mid 80's CD's actually sound quite good. Not all of them, mind you, but many were flat transfers from 1st generation tapes.
I'm finding that a lot of old West German and Japanese made CD's sound better than new re-masters of the same material.
Some old CD's that still hold their own:

• Bryan Ferry's Boys and Girls
• Berlin's Love Life
• Duran Duran's Rio, the W. German EMI disc, not Capitol's
• Fleetwood Mac's Rumours
• Dire Straight's Debut album on the Vertigo label
• Bananarama's Second album

There are others, but all these are very good transfers and all made in W. Germany at the time. Most of these have since been produced in the US once enough CD manufacturing plants finally came on-line.
Joel

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Yuppers- The London records version of Let it Bleed I have was made in W. Germany...

 

[Seth_S]

I mainly listen to classical, but the music industry as a whole probably follows the same philosophies on remastering/recording...

If you're talking about 80s reissues of analog recordings, yes, they were terrible. Remastering back then seemed to have meant heavy amounts of noise reduction which left the music sounding flat.

With very early 80's digital recordings, sound mixers seemed to have forgotten about sound imaging. After that digital recordings tended to be very good, spacious and natural sounding, such as Muti/Philadelphia/Mahler/Sym 1/EMI 1984 and Abbado/Chicago/Mahler/Sym 7/DG 1984.

By the mid to late 80s, labels started to multi-mic orchestras to death, which often created a very forward sound, and tended to give instruments a brittle texture.

Today, remastering of analog recordings is far superior to what was going on in the 80s. The difference is really night and day.

The quality of new digital recordings still remains highly variable. Sometimes you get fantastic recordings like Boulez/Vienna/Bruckner/Sym 8/DG - 1996 and Sawallisch/Philadelphia/Hindemith/EMI - 1995, while at the same time there is still overly closed miked, mixed to death recordings like Abbado/Berlin/Mahler/Sym 7/DG 2001.

 

[Grant B]

The Pretenders and REMs 1st album both came out on cd when most were released on album. I do nt have a problem with their sound
I bought U2's War in 1982(give or take a year) and it still sounds great

 

[KeithH]

Kevin said:

I don't have the link handy, but if you search around and find the FAQ, the dude talks about how the specific early London CDs are still quite comparable in sound quality to the new SACDs...

I might have been that dude, though some other dudes talked about the London Stones Hot Rocks set with me too. Obviously mixing and processing has a lot to do with sound quality, but so does the master used. The London version of Hot Rocks sounds great, in part becaused they used a high-quality master created by MFSL. I don't know what ABCKO used in making the original US version of Hot Rocks on CD, but whatever it was, it should be burned.
By the way, Hot Rocks on SACD sounds better than the London CD version. However, the London CD version has wide stereo versions of a few tracks that are not available on the original US CDs or SACDs.
Allan,
A lot of great points have been made here. There is no rule of thumb. One problem I have experienced with older CDs is that the no-noise processing that Ryan referred to robs the music of any sense of space. Perhaps the mastering engineers felt a need to eliminate hiss on CDs back in the '80s, even though it is inherent to many master tapes, since "digital audio" is supposed to be free of it. However, what is meant by digital audio? A digital recording will have no tape hiss, but if a CD is derived from an analog tape master, the hiss will be there, unless, of course, processing is used to eliminate it.
Some old Columbia jazz CDs have no hiss, but they sound muddy and locked into two dimensions. A good example is the original version of Miles Davis In A Silent Way. There is practically no hiss, but the sound is lifeless. By comparison, the hiss screams on the recently issued remastered CD, but the music is spacious and dynamic. I don't like tape hiss, but I'll take it to get all the music.
I have read that the original version of ABBA's greatest hits on CD (long out-of-print) is much better than the later versions, including the most recent The Definitive Collection. I wish I had the original version for comparison to my copy of ABBA Gold.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Here's that Stones' FAQ:
http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&[email protected]

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

I think there was an all too brief period of time in the late '80s to early '90s when CDs had the best sound quality. Beforehand, they were doing bad remasters and otherwise hadn't quite figured everything out. Afterward, they're compressing the hell out of everything, both new material and remaster reissues. In between, it was sweet. Too bad it didn't last.

 

[KeithH]

Wayne, that's a fair point. I do feel, however, that many remasters coming out from the major record labels are being done very well. For example, I have been very impressed with Sony/Legacy jazz remasters. As another example, I picked up the remastered version of Supertramp Breakfast in America a couple of months ago and found it to be better than the MFSL CD. So, it's not all bad these days!