What are some of the most "poorly engineered" albu

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woodhenge
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Post by woodhenge » Thu Dec 17, 2009 11:33 am

This just goes to show how great all that material really was... if it had been the best quality recording but crappy music, none of us would be talking about it today!

Having been the one to take the pot-shot at Zeppelin, I would have to admit that those records influenced me more than anything else in my whole life... excepting maybe The Beatles and Yes. Fortunately, 'great' and 'classic' don't have to be technically perfect. Thank god... I'd honestly never dream of 'correcting' those recordings.
insert witty comment here...

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Post by DanielJSchlett » Mon Dec 21, 2009 12:45 pm

well im a little late... but i think MOST of tusk sounds amazing... the rest sounds like cocaine.. that song "sara" gives me chills every time... its so crisp sounding and those drums are right in your face while nicks floats in a deep space of delay and verb.

on the other hand i think as far as poorly engineered things id say most of animal collective's collection (esp. feels and on) all sounds brittle.. over compressed, and harsh in the upper mids.. also lacking any real low end... i hear obvious pumping on the single "my girls" but like everyone says... the songs are good.. i really dig that band..

anywho. with the idea of the time machine... id love to hear more classic collections re-done ala the beatles love album... i think that record is such an interesting work of sound.. it would be nice to hear some led, floyd, hendrix, anyone all mashed up and re arranged for our listening pleasures

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Post by cooters » Mon Dec 21, 2009 8:41 pm

one of my favourite albums and my favourite dylan album blonde on blonde. The harmonicas and lead guitars tear into you so bad. I love that album to death but I can't listen to it sometimes because it hurts

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Post by fossiltooth » Tue Dec 22, 2009 7:29 am

I have a secret fantasy about remixing all 3 of the first Wipers Records.

All the early Misfits should stay as-is. So should Beck's "One Foot In the Grave".

I'd still like to remaster Aja by taking the original master tapes, putting them on a reel to reel machine with nothing hooked up to the input or output, and hitting "record".

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Post by emrr » Tue Dec 22, 2009 11:47 am

fossiltooth wrote: I'd still like to remaster Aja by taking the original master tapes, putting them on a reel to reel machine with nothing hooked up to the input or output, and hitting "record".
I can feel the sense of joy that would bring you. :D
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Post by Judas Jetski » Wed Dec 23, 2009 1:53 pm

X Ain't Love Grand

OK, maybe that was more of an aesthetic choice. But I'd love to hear a remix of that album, but with the idea being to make it sound like it was, well, X.
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Post by lightandmind » Thu Dec 24, 2009 5:37 pm

The Cocteau Twins' "Milk & Kisses" record. Perhaps the most beautiful music ever created, hidden behind a cheesy production, digital guitar multi-FX ran direct in, and DAT tape. If you can stomach it, then with the help of a little imagination you can hear what music in 2024 will sound like, should we choose to embrace what makes it a truly remarkable & significant form of emotional communication.

http://www.last.fm/music/Cocteau+Twins/_/Eperdu

Absolutely breathtaking.

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Post by norsehorse » Tue Dec 29, 2009 11:48 am

Listening to a recording from a choral convention in 1996 which was released on a label. The ensemble is a very large men's group from a presigious college.

EIGHTY basses in the choir and not a hint of low end in the recording :? ! The engineer's name isn't anywhere on the album. Probably a good thing.

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Post by Bedfordstop » Tue Dec 29, 2009 2:21 pm

whenever i hear "Crazy Train" by Ozzy on the radio, i think it sounds awful. Not sure why, maybe for the vocals. Super harsh. Maybe its the guitar sound, not so much that its bad by itself (though it is a little cheesy) but it so huge and saturated that you have to EQ the hell out of everything else just to make sure people can hear the other instruments.

(BEWARE!! Totally unrelated diatribe below)
On the opposite end, whenever i hear anything by Lynyrd Skynyrd on the radio, i think it sounds amazing. Like the guitar sounds on free bird or sweet home alabama....wow! But then they ask questions like, 'ooh that smell? can you smell that smell?' yeah, sadly, i can and it smells like a dumb lyric thats should never have made it off the napkin.

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Post by cgarges » Tue Dec 29, 2009 7:16 pm

I don't think much of the old Ozzy catalog sounds very good. I'm totally with you on Skynyrd. I think most of their stuff sounds pretty great, even though I can't really stand them as a band. They were totally smart enough to work with really great producers, though, like Al Kooper and Tom Dowd. Gotta give 'em credit for that!

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Post by Nick Sevilla » Tue Dec 29, 2009 9:08 pm

cgarges wrote:I don't think much of the old Ozzy catalog sounds very good. I'm totally with you on Skynyrd. I think most of their stuff sounds pretty great, even though I can't really stand them as a band. They were totally smart enough to work with really great producers, though, like Al Kooper and Tom Dowd. Gotta give 'em credit for that!

Chris Garges
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Actually Lynyrd Skynyrd was discovered by Tommy Dowd while walking by a bar in Florida, close to Criteria recording studios. He signed the after a little while of listening to more of their songs in the studio, and sending a demo to Ahmet Ertegun up in NY. Tommy had to be in Florida because of a rare ailment that made him be close to sea level. I don't remember what it was that he had.

I love all of Tommy's engineering. Genius.

Max Norman did the early Ozzy records, plus the Megadeth ones too. No wonder they sound so alike, I'm talking about the overall sound :

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=am ... dhe~1~T40B

All these records have the same type of sound. I personally did not like them when they came out, even though I was somewhat into the metal scene at the time (now that dates me...)

I do not see any recent work by Max, I hope he's still around, maybe I'll contact him and ask why these all sounded the way they did (not a lot of lows or highs)

From Wikipedia :
Max Norman is a retired record producer and recording engineer in the 1980s and 1990s. He produced many acclaimed heavy metal releases, and was renowned for his top notch production. Max got his "big break" while he was the resident engineer at Ridge Farm Studios in London, England. Ozzy Osbourne was recording his debut solo album Blizzard of Ozz with Producer/engineer Chris Tsangarides, but after a week Ozzy was unhappy with the mix, and hired Max to pick up where Chris left off.

Max appears in the Megadeth home video "Evolver", a documentary about the making of Youthanasia.

According to Dave Mustaine, Max is now retired from the music business.

I met Chris Tsangarides a while back, great guy, maybe he should have done Ozzy's record...

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Post by JGriffin » Tue Dec 29, 2009 10:44 pm

I think the payoff is in the final line, "the smell of death surrounds you." Which is actually pretty powerful. It's like that Eddie Money lyric "I feel a hunger/it's a hunger," and most people stop there and say it's a bad line. But the whole lyric is "I feel a hunger/it's a hunger that tries to keep a man awake at night," which -while it ain't Dylan- at least is a complete thought.

Anyway.

I don't think of Skynrd as lyrical powerhouses by any stretch, but they were/are a pretty solid rock and roll band.i pretty much always enjoy hearing their records when they come on.
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Post by cgarges » Thu Dec 31, 2009 8:53 am

Maybe it's because I grew up in the south and just wound up with my hand on my forhead, shaking my head whenever Skynyrd came up.

When I got older, I was able to give Skynyrd their due. I got to meet Artimus Pyle and few years ago through complete chance (that's a wild story) and he was a totally nice dude. I also got to work with a few people close to and in the Skynyrd camp (including their long-time manager, the late Joe Boyland) and heard some batshit crazy stories about those guys.

I have always loved "Gimme Back My Bullet," though, and when I found out from a Skynyrd fan what it was about, I though, "Well, that's alright!"

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emrr
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Post by emrr » Thu Dec 31, 2009 11:57 am

Bedfordstop wrote:But then they ask questions like, 'ooh that smell? can you smell that smell?' yeah, sadly, i can and it smells like a dumb lyric thats should never have made it off the napkin.
ah, you just don't understand the linguistics of the old southern people. you'd never say that in brooklyn.

I haven't heard all the Skynyrd records, but what I have all sounds like records should. We'd do'em differently now, which is a different question. They would too, not being the same people in the same era.

I understand in the south back then, many people were divided into "Zep or Skynyrd" camps, like "mods vs. greasers" or something. Might as well say "local or foreigner", and get it out in the open. Around here in the late '60's, it was supposedly "psych or soul?"
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Post by cgarges » Thu Dec 31, 2009 3:26 pm

emrr wrote:They would too, not being the same people in the same era.
They do. Skynyrd is still putting out records and they sound like slightly grittier than the usual modern Nashville records. (Speaking of Skynyrd, Doug, have you heard Mitch's recent cassette acquisition?)

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