Mine is an original, 1983 Mercury 812 870-1
Imaging question
Hey,
A friend gave me a copy of Big Country's LP "The Crossing". I'd heard "In a Big Country" on the radio many times but never the album. Anyhow, I dropped the needle on the first track - "In a Big Country" and was amazed at how narrow the soundstage was. Like, every instrument and vocal seemed to shmushed into a 4-foot wide corridor of sound, not even stretching out to where the speakers were.
What gives?It was just this album as I put on other LP's and they imaged wide and deep as usual. Is it a production artifact? Could it have been that pressing?
A friend gave me a copy of Big Country's LP "The Crossing". I'd heard "In a Big Country" on the radio many times but never the album. Anyhow, I dropped the needle on the first track - "In a Big Country" and was amazed at how narrow the soundstage was. Like, every instrument and vocal seemed to shmushed into a 4-foot wide corridor of sound, not even stretching out to where the speakers were.
What gives?It was just this album as I put on other LP's and they imaged wide and deep as usual. Is it a production artifact? Could it have been that pressing?
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- 17 posts total
I wasn't at the recording, the mix down or the mastering sessions, but I'm going to speculate. What you hear is exactly what they wanted the song to sound like. Dense and loud. Kind of like an assault to your ears. Reducing the stereo width lends to this effect. Steve Lillywhite was the producer. Compare it to his work with U2. |
I have the original '83 pressing, too. It's an anomaly in my listening experience. And it may well have been what Lillywhite and the band wanted to sound like, except I would never deem Big Country a band that goes for "an assault to your ears." Again, this is all curiosity from a technical perspective as to how and why the sound would be so. |
- 17 posts total