Why recordings made before 1965 sound better.

@onhwy61 has it right. Done correctly, Dolby does NOT change the original tonal structure (timbre) of instruments or vocalists. It takes the original signal and boosts the high frequencies for recording, in playback reducing the high frequencies by the same amount, thereby restoring the original tonal structure. And the hiss encoded into the recording is simultaneously reduced by the same amount, the very rationale for the Dolby process.

By the way, the RIAA recording and playback curve was invented and employed in much the same way, with the addition of a generous bass cut in LP mastering (to reduce bass-induced groove modulation size), a generous boost in LP playback via your phono stage’s RIAA compensation filter.

cleeds,

thanks for the info about cartridges, I have read in several places over the years that 8 tracks were developed by Lear, for radio ads, so I am guilty of repeating bad info, it's good to know more.

consumer pre-recorded 8 tracks, bad as they are, were a revolution because of portability. the 1st time I took one apart, I couldn't believe the mechanism. how does tape come off the inner diameter and go on the much larger outer diameter? 1 revolution, very different lengths of tape on and off???  took me a while to understand the slip sheet and gradual tightening involved. then yanking the tape up and over the top of the spool of tape, OMG.

They sound better because engineers back then had real talent. Today, it is a lost art, like everything else nowadays...pretty sad. Most, not all, recordings today sound like garbage.

I never understood why multi generation mix downs were accepted as means to an end without any consideration of downgrading quality.

 

There are many factors entering into the possible answer to the question, "Why do recordings made before 1965 sound better (than, I assume, those made in more recent years)?"

I’ll add my guess to the mix: At that time the electrical grid we relied on was much simpler and less cluttered with appliance-generated noise than there is now - there was no digital hash in the atmosphere or entering our power lines - thus the idea that we needed power-conditioning hadn’t yet entered anyone’s mind (to my knowledge anyway) as an issue to contend with when making recordings. Besides, everything audio was purely analog, so there was no extraneous digital noise being generated. Recordings were pressed onto vinyl discs and/or magnetic-tape reels, and there was simply NO digital processing of any kind anywhere in the recording chain.

1965 was simply a less electrically-polluted era, resulting in purer recordings (when they were done conscientiously, with scrupulous attention to detail at every step in the recording process).