What are some of the most "poorly engineered" albu

Professor T · Post by **Professor T** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 12:19 pm

Collective Soul - Hints, Allegations blah blah. Whenever "Shine" comes on, I am just amazed at how amateur the drums and guitars sound. It gets my vote for worst sounding everything.

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 12:29 pm

Professor T wrote:Collective Soul - Hints, Allegations blah blah. Whenever "Shine" comes on, I am just amazed at how amateur the drums and guitars sound. It gets my vote for worst sounding everything.

Yeah, that one's pretty bad, especially how the drums sound, totally staggery and chopped up. Drives me nuts.

iamthecosmos · Post by **iamthecosmos** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 1:04 pm

centurymantra wrote:
gegonut wrote:I vote for the Sex Pistols' "Never Mind the Bullocks ..." I had that album hyped up to me for years when I was young ... then I couldn't even listen to it.

I was recently watching one those "Classic Albums" making-of documentaries on this record, and they revealed that Sid Vicious really couldn't play the bass guitar at all, so they basically relied on some thick chunky guitar overdubs from Steve Jones to cover the low end on the record. This may have something to do with it.

I think Glen Matlock actually played on the record. Must dig out 'England's Dreaming' and check.

Also, it's 'Never Mind The Bollocks...'. Pedantic maybe, but a fairly significant difference!

dubh dubh dubh · Post by **dubh dubh dubh** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 6:58 am

thunderboy wrote:--Shields up--

I think that the early electric Miles albums (Bitches Brew, et al) sound terrible. Let me qualify that. I think they sound terrible compared to the last Miles acoustic quintet albums (Nefertiti, ESP, etc). Those quintet albums sound like they were recorded yesterday, while the electric albums sound like they were recorded, well, 40 years ago. I suppose it's because the engineers involved had spent the previous decades refining their techniques on acoustic ensembles, when along came Miles and his crazy ideas...

jt

(I'm-a get both OCD and OT here for a sec)

Word. Maybe even more so pre-Bitches Brew, most(?)engineers/producers mostly doing Jazz-- even the most outr? bop heads, like Teo Macero-- couldn't have easily gotten their minds around Pete Cosey-era Miles, even though Teo studied at the groundbreaking columbia univ. computer music center waaaaay back... Far as I know, the 'jazz' world wasn't doing much with close micing/dynamics/non-omni mics/effected, alt-tuned & feedbacking elec. guitar in the era mid-60's-early 70's (please enlighten me if I'm way off). talk about wanting a time machine & keys to the studio(plus flatter mix room and monitors)... Supposedly Miles told Pete his mission was to "move up front of stage and turn your amp UP." Even more O.T. but too bad during the Cosey era that Miles/the producers et al didn't give Pete the tapes to mix...

vaaaaastly underrated & groundbreaking guitarist, engineer and 'sound designer', owned studios at various levels and recorded/mixed tons of stuff that never got widely heard in their day... I think part of the subjectively poor sound quality was due to(rumored & claimed) massive coke/whatev ingestion by some people involved; and probably a lot of it due to instruments & sources producing frequency ranges and amplified tonal clusters that the studios/monitors of the time couldn't accurately translate or engineers/producers could interpret..... EMS Synthi as a source + various instruments run through the filters, effected kalimba, water drums, yeah... anyways... I could well be just foaming out my hole here(back to topic...) Funny how we all hear things differently, I think 'Idioteque' is a real stand-out track on every system I've played it on. It's on the listening ref disc I take to any studio I work at, though not exactly a full-spectrum track as such it's got a unique fq distribution & transient content...
yeah I know that isn't subjectively good or bad

sears · Post by **sears** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 7:48 am

dwlb wrote:
Professor T wrote:Collective Soul - Hints, Allegations blah blah. Whenever "Shine" comes on, I am just amazed at how amateur the drums and guitars sound. It gets my vote for worst sounding everything.
Yeah, that one's pretty bad, especially how the drums sound, totally staggery and chopped up. Drives me nuts.

That's because it's a drum machine, right? Isn't it? I hate that song but hold it up (along with "Roll With It" and the David & David album) as an example of great drum machine programming.

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 9:34 am

sears wrote:
dwlb wrote:
Professor T wrote:Collective Soul - Hints, Allegations blah blah. Whenever "Shine" comes on, I am just amazed at how amateur the drums and guitars sound. It gets my vote for worst sounding everything.
Yeah, that one's pretty bad, especially how the drums sound, totally staggery and chopped up. Drives me nuts.
That's because it's a drum machine, right? Isn't it? I hate that song but hold it up (along with "Roll With It" and the David & David album) as an example of great drum machine programming.

I think it is a drum machine, yeah.

mertmo · Post by **mertmo** » Sat Feb 13, 2010 7:00 pm

The Collective Soul record, from what I've heard, was actually the singer's fancy demo,
not the work of the band. The label wanted to go ahead and put the demo out as
the record and the actual band's work followed.

I was in a band that was signed to a shitty little label in LA that was run by a guy
from Athens. On his roster at the time was Ed Roland, singer for CS.
There were boxes of his debut "solo" CD. This was '92, before CS came out.

It was so bad, it's literally indescribable how truly bad the music was. Far beyond
cringe-worthy. Made Collective Soul seem like the Beatles. I can't even listen to
them, and it has nothing to do with their actual music, I was just forever scarred
by the singer's record.

first line of the first song will never leave my brain unfortunately.

"Here she comes, walkin' down the street. She's a psychedelic princess, moves
to the beat, well alright..."

!!!!!

Devlarz · Post by **Devlarz** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 1:40 pm

Speaking of The Beatles, who was allowed to apply, to varying degrees, a Chorus effect on nearly every song of the DVD release of A Hard Day's Night. I just can't get it past my head that someone or someone's re-mixed those recordings for the DVD release, worked their apprentice level magic and said, "Yeah, sounds good to me. Master it."

I can only imagine that because it was the film soundtrack and not just the music that it flew under the radar so no one noticed until it was too late.

LazarusLong · Post by **LazarusLong** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:08 pm

I just picked up the new Ted Leo and The Pharmacists new album - "The Brutalist Bricks". Not sure if I like the music at all yet, but that is partially because I find this album to be wholly unlistenable. I'm bummed! Mid-rangey, over processed, and HEAVILY compressed mixes. Compressors are audibly pumping basically the entire album. I'm down for some compressor action as, to me, it can be the sound of rock and roll... but this is taken to the extreme. Comparatively, the new Black Rebel Motorcycle Club album was tame and almost quiet.

(If any of the people that worked on the album reads this, please don't take it as a personal affront. I don't question your ability, I think it's more about a matter of taste.)

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 7:24 pm

ted is an awesome guy and a great songwriter/musician, but i haven't been too into the sound of his records since 'tyranny of distance'. that one sounds great though...

fairdrive · Post by **fairdrive** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:20 pm

A while back I listened to The Wombats' newest album on some nice listening station headphones in the record store for a bit and thought it sounded ok so I picked it up. After listening to about 4 or 5 songs in the car I realized there's some serious mid rangey and high end stuff going on. I felt like I was more and more on edge the longer I listened. I took that one back. Some cool-ish songs, but not listenable by me.

A National Acrobat · Post by **A National Acrobat** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 11:12 am

Wow...

Bad Brains ROIR?!

Master of Reality?!

Fresh bass strings on 70's dub?!

You sonsabitches are the kind of people that let ZZ Top 'remix' their back catalog so that every single 70's album sounded like Afterburner.

emrr · Post by **emrr** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 8:00 am

A National Acrobat wrote: Master of Reality?!

The CD issue sounds like a 5th generation tape dub that lived in the back of a pickup over the winter. The LP sounds 100 times better.

Same with Deep Purple - In Rock.

Hope that clears it up for you.

Reading with comprehension; a valuable skill for sonsabitches.

LazarusLong · Post by **LazarusLong** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 10:15 am

emrr wrote:Reading with comprehension; a valuable skill for sonsabitches.

so quotable!

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 12:32 pm

still though, somebody *did* suggest fresh bass strings on 70s dub. which certainly raised an eyebrow.

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What are some of the most "poorly engineered" albu

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