Why recordings made before 1965 sound better.

Dolby noise reduction solved several problems that plagued early analog magnetic recording.  Prior to Dolby, it was of critical importance to maximize record levels  in order to avoid excessive amounts of tape hiss and to achieve the greatest dynamic range that the tape was capable of.  Unfortunately, this came at a price.  If you hit the tape too hard, the tape would get saturated and would clip (although gently) the loudest portions of the signal.  Then you had the problem of print through, the propensity of loud portions of the program to impart a ghost image of itself on the next layer of tape (a bit like magnetizing a screw driver by rubbing it on something magnetic).  There was also the issue of additional distortion experienced at higher levels of modulation.  When Dolby was introduced, it was then possible to increase the dynamic range possible by lowering the noise floor (tape hiss) amongst other things.  Tape manufacturers were introducing new, more highly doped oxide coatings that could withstand higher levels of modulation before clipping and backing treatments that would reduce static and print through to a degree.  It was a technological race to reduce noise and expand the dynamic range possible.  This was even more important in small tape formats like the compact cassette where slow speed and narrow track width presented even more of a challenge.  Of course when digital recording became a reality, so many of the problems of analog magnetic recording were at last overcome.  The constant maintenance and alignment needed and the associated cost thereof were certainly not missed.            

elliotbnewcombjr and onhwy61,

What  melm says.

Haven't read this whole thread but just though I'd chime in with this ditty.

Back when I had a pretty good Denon cassette recording machine... you know, when dinosaurs roamed the land... I used to record cassettes to play in my car's cassette player and for other folks who wanted to play tunes in their car's cassette players.  My machine had Dolby B & C and something, as I recall, that was called HX Pro?  Can't remember for sure.  Anyway, I quickly learned that recording (usually from vinyl but sometimes I used mics and recoding live stuff, too) in Dolby was better than not but playing back without Dolby was much better than playback in Dolby. Compress once; not twice.

I agree with oldaudioopjile.  Dolby recording was OK.  Playing your deck with Dolby on took all the air out of your music.  Does anyone want to buy my cassette deck?

From the book of Geoff Emerick "Here, There and Everywhere". About a new SS mixing consol:

 "As it happened, the first week of the Abbey Road sessions were quite peaceful without John and Yoko's presence, though  a bit tentative because of equipment problems. The new mixing console had a lot more bells and whistles on it than the old one, and it gave me the opportunity to put into practice many of the ideas I'd had in mind for years, but  it just didn't sound the same, mainly because it utilized transistor circuitry instead of tubes. George Harrison had a lot of trouble coming to terms with the fact that there was less body in the guitar sound, and Ringo was rightfully concerned about the drum  sound-he was playing as hard as ever, but you didn't hear the same impact. He and I actually had a long conversation about that, which was quite unusual, but after a good deal of experimentation I came to the conclusion that we  simply couldn't match the old Beatles  sound we had be- come used to;  we simply had to accept that this was the best we could achieve with the new equipment.  Personally, I preferred the punchier sound we had gotten out of the old tube console and four-track recorder;  every- thing was sounding mellower now. It seemed like a steр backward, but there was nothing we could do-there was an album to record and we simply had to get on with it.