Article: Audio Recording Primer Part 1: Commercial Recording Quality

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14 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

Funny because I was just about to start a thread along the lines "what makes a good recording good". Looks like my question will be incorporated here.

 

It has taken a long time since the dawn of digital but playback systems have eventually become very good. It is now the lack of similar quality recordings of mainstream artists that is the limiting factor. There are a small handful of people like Barry Diament making such recordings and I have also heard one of your excellent recordings. I think it is the crime of the century that this is not more mainstream. As you say, they did it better in the 1950s and 60s. Why have things not progressively improved since that time?

My theory is that if you give “them” the electronic toys to play with, “they” are going to use them. I think the reality is that since studios and studio equipment  are there to make pop recordings, that the process has developed to make these pop music cheaper and easier to record. Most recording engineers are rockers, and AFAICS, recording companies no longer have separate classical or jazz divisions, like Columbia had in the 50’s and 60’s with their “Masterworks” division, or RCA Victor with their “Red Seal” division. The same engineers hat recorded Snoop Dog yesterday, had to record the Fine Arts Quartet today. This would be a “gig” that the normally rock/pop oriented engineers would do because they had to, and not because they were interested in the music or in making that recording. This is quite different from the ‘50’s and early ‘60’s when the people doing classical and jazz recordings were the likes of C.R. Fine, Lewis Leyton, Bert Whyte, Rudy van Gelder (jazz) etc. Of course, there are and have been exceptions all along. For instance, Dr. Johnson of Reference Recordings, the freelance engineer/producer at Klavier Records(whose name I can’t recall at this moment. Klavier has a large catalog (over 200 classical titles), all made by independent contractors) and Robert Woods of Telarc (they tried, but I never agreed with their three spaced omni microphone setup (they were “aping” Bob Fine and Mercury from the late ‘50’s who also used spaced omnis).
Also in those days, the engineers didn’t have the tools they have now. There were no multi track (4, 8, 16 track, etc.) tape recorders yet, and tube mixers with more than about 4 channels were noisy as all heck. Pop genres could handle it because the music was generally loud enough to cover up any accumulated noise, but a ppp in a Mozart chamber piece would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb if more than a couple of mike channels were used. So, for reasons of practicality, recording set-ups were simple (and in my estimation, they served the music better than multi-Mike, muti-channel recordings. One thing that I find really amazing is that the entire catalog of Mercury Living Presence classical recordings were made by a single three person team (although I understand they added a second team at some point):

Bob Fine, Bob Ebernez, and Wilma Cozert Fine (who produced all the Living Presence recordings for Mercury Records). In fact, these three were the classical division of Mercury Records! That a lot of audiophiles and music lovers still buy and cherish these albums, 60 years and more after they were recorded speaks volumes about how correctly made stereo recordings still appeal and that people do know the difference.

 

14 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

The usual answer is that artists and engineers are making things to sound "good" over earphones, iPhones and the like and this is why such things as compression and the loudness wars exist/existed. I still really don't get it, and very happy to be shown why, but for me a good recording sounds better on every medium that I play it on. It certainly sounds better on my high-end system, it sounds better on headphones, it sounds better when played on my TV and small contraptions like phones.

That might be true, especially in the pop realm, but I think it has more to do with the same pop/rock recording practices being used for all genres of music. It makes sense for especially the big record companies to do it this way due to the economics involved.

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10 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Once spoke to him on the phone - my strongest memory is his thinking that the presentation of the Bose 901 speaker was what he thought was ideal for the music he had recorded, 🙃.

Yecch! Well at least that opinion didn’t seem to influence the way that the recordings were made! Frankly I’ve never heard a Bose product that I liked. I once bought a used pair of 901s figuring that they would be perfect for the rear channels of a surround system... Boy was I wrong! Sold them on just a couple of weeks after buying them. Of course, I finally decided that surround sound, in general was not my cup of tea, and abandoned it altogether (practical reasons, not sonic ones).

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2 hours ago, feelingears said:

I have taken audio for granted. My son sings in a boy choir and they were part of an amazing ensemble performance of Carmina Burana in a lovely acoustic space which was recorded. We sat about 15' from the soloists and piano–what an experience. I thought the recording would be marvelous.

 

I obtained a copy of the recording after a couple weeks. I wondered why it was taking so long, and after I got it, I was reminded why recording is a bit of an art itself. Despite hitting the wall a couple times in the beginning (Carmina's dynamic range is just too wide, I guess), the rest of the performance is a satisfying (if not a "pro audiophile") listen. I now own something like seven Carminas and none of them are perfect recordings and performances, but I love each for its own strengths.

 

Finally, this reminds me of J. Gordon Holt reading his article about the characteristics of different microphones on Stereophile's first test CD where they switch the mics as he reads so you can hear the substantial differences. Looking forward to this whole series of articles here, thank you @gmgraves 

Gordon was one of my closest friends and I miss him greatly. We spoke about recording often, and were pretty much of a single mind with regard or microphone technique. He was the first person I knew who recorded digitally. I was down in Sant Fe once and we recorded an amateur chamber group together. He had a “portable” VHS recorder and a Sony ADC hat had been modified by Apogee and a Yamaha mixer IRRC.

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Anderson said:

As one who has run live sound for both music and theater productions and has dabbled in recording, I am looking forward to this series with great interest, @gmgraves!  I've often wondered the same as you -- why so many older recordings sound marvelous, and so many newer ones sound comparatively lifeless. Arguments about the Loudness Wars and such find their place here, but even records that are not mastered to sound LOUD are still lacking a lot of that joie de vivre. I'm buckled in and looking forward to where you take us next!

Actually, part 5 is the last in the series. But thanks for your kind comments.

[gmgraves]

5 hours ago, Jeremy Anderson said:

Ah, I've only read Part 1 so far! Looking forward to the rest (I do see them published already). 

Enjoy, and lemme know what you think!