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How can it be that some old recordings sound sublime?

How do some older records sound insanely great?

I'm listening to Bill Evans "Song for Debbie" on vinyl. The soundstage is palpable. This is a live recording from 1961.   How is this possible?  
128x128jbhiller
oregonpapa's avatar
oregonpapa
4,867 posts
 
^^^ Agreed. Redbook CD's can sound wonderful if mastered properly ... as long at the hands are kept off of the reverb knob and the recording is EQed properly.  

On the early recordings from the mono era and the golden age of stereo ... I often wonder if the folks recording them really knew what they were archiving in those grooves. We have the high resolution systems to get the best out of the recordings, but did they? I know that many times after making an upgrade, I often wonder how much more information is contained in those grooves. We continue chasing it, don't we? 
zufan's avatar
zufan
563 posts
 
The liner notes to the box set 'Sunday at Village Vanguard' where your set comes from (or maybe you mean "Waltz for Debby") goes into detail how the trio was recorded that day. The kicker is that it was done by a total amateur student. He knew nothing about recording, and it turns out he captured incredible sound. I'm also a huge fan of this set of recordings. May be the best sounding live stuff I've ever heard.
jbhiller's avatar
jbhiller OP
1,439 posts
 
If ScottW is correct, his post makes this all the more intriguing because a student recorded this live work!

And yes, I'm talking about Waltz for Debbie. I must've been tired when I posted. Nonetheless, it is one of the best live recordings ever. 
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,947 posts
 

In the 70’s I made some recordings of my Jump Blues/Swing band playing live, using a pair of omni condenser mics straight into a Revox A-77. No pre-amp, no mixer, no EQ, no compression, no limiting, no noise reduction---no nuthin’. Those recordings sound more like life music than 99.99% of my LP’s and CD’s. I use them to evaluate Hi-Fi equipment, especially loudspeakers. I also recorded solo speaking and singing voices, and those recordings are invaluable for ascertaining the freedom from vowel colorations of speakers. Electrostatics = excellent; magnetic-planars = very good to excellent; dynamics (cones and domes) = okay to very good; horns = not so good. Just kidding!

The sound on 50’s and 60’s LP’s are recording engineers of the time attempting to make "High Fidelity" recordings, capturing the sound of live music. The closer the sound of the recording to live sound, the higher the fidelity, of course. In the documentary I mention above, Tom Dowd is shown in the studio, walking around the musicians, stopping in front of each and listening. He then returns to the control booth, making adjustments to his recording equipment to make the sound in his monitors more closely resemble that of the live sound he just heard in the studio.

When I’m in the studio now, the engineer usually compares his recorded sound, not to the live sound in the adjoining room, but to commercial recordings, a/b’ing between his recording and a hit CD. It’s relative fidelity, not High Fidelity. The intent of engineers now is quite different than that of the guys who made the recordings "we" think sound so good. "Fidelity" is now a quaint notion, of relevance only to audiophiles. Hardly the target audience of the vast majority of record companies!

But the best recording engineers of today (Kavi Alexander of Water Lily, Keith Johnson of Reference Recordings, Pierre Sprey of Mapleshade, Barry Diament of Soundkeeper Recordings) are as good as any of the old-timers, maybe better!

mmakshak
589 posts
 
Don't forget that recordings, starting about 1982, had digital involved.  Current digital might be much more acceptable, but I don't like most cd's until about 2000.
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