Recording quality by decade

"The jazz recordings made from 1958-1963 were, in general, recorded with better sound than in any other time period (amazingly, including even today)."

That was the time when stereo lps started to hit the market. Sound quality was a selling point and major labels touted their wares accordingly. It was a true golden age for music lovers. The sound quality possible was the culmination of many years of technological developments prior! Good sound gradually became a commodity after that. That's where we stand today. More good sounding recordings of a greater variety accumulated over time than ever, but not all can be winners. 50 years later, there are lots of good recordings and much better equipment to play it on than ever. No audiophile should be complaining IMHO. But have we hit the plateau in regards to how good a recording can sound? I suspect we may be getting pretty close, at least until someone comes up with a way to improve our ears as much as the stuff we listen to has improved over the last century.

As far as pop recordings go, one thing to remember is profitability of the record companies. Up until the early 70's, record companies signed artists to recording contracts where the artists had almost no control over payments, i.e. they were at the mercy of the record companies. Read about how many artists either faded from view or even became depressed to the point of suicide (witness Badfinger). In the early 70's artists became adept at gaining more control over record contracts, and as a result, began taking more and more of the profit. This left record companies looking for new ways to cut costs to recapture profits. One area in which record companies almost completely controlled costs was in recording, mastering, and pressing records. Since it appeared few people cared about how records sounded, there you have it. The recording quality suffered as record companies cut their costs and this is easily heard in the abysmal sonics in 70's and later pop recordings. This was exacerbated by the assembly nature of pop recordings allowed by multitracking technology. Yes, there are terrible 60s' pop recordings as in all decades, but it has been downhill since.

Rlawry,

I don't know much about the realities of the music industry in the '60s or '70s as I am a child of the '80s, but I strongly disagree with you about the "downhill" quality of pop recordings after the '60s. Perhaps you'd need to clarify what you classify as "pop," but in my experience classic rock and pop records after the '60s and well into the '80s sound for the most part absolutely terrific. The superb quality of these recordings was the actual impetus for my original post. Pink Floyd is a good example of the incredible quality I hear on my classic rock records released in the '70s. Starting with "Meddle," the level of the PF pressings is simply magical. The cut-off point is "A Momentary Lapse of Reason," which was recorded digitally and it's obvious from the start, but we're talking 1987.

Same with Supertramp records. "Crime of the Century" or "Breakfast in America" sound insanely good. I have three copies of each from a beat-up $3 used copy to a mint MoFi and they all sound terrific. Kate Bush, who was a complete newcomer and teen in the late '70s, released her first album in 1977 and it sounds as good as analog gets. Ditto for Foreigner records. Ditto for Fleetwood Mac records after Peter Green.

Then take any Jimi Hendrix or Cream record. They seriously sound like a high school garage band in comparison. I love Cream, but when their records sound like played through a transistor radio, even the great music cannot save the experience.

Admittedly, I have not heard the Analogue Productions pressings of The Doors records recently released, which are supposedly amazing. All I know, however, is that my original pressings of a few records of the band I have sound just flat and lacking the dynamic quality of the records from the '70s and beyond.

What puzzles me is that Orrin Keepnews in 1961 was able to record and produce some of the most realistic live recordings in the history of music with a hand-held recorder. I'm talking of course about "Waltz for Debby" and "Sunday at the Village Vanguard." I suppose recording a jazz quartet is not as challenging as a rock trio such as Cream, but still the divide in quality is of monumental proportions.

Actusreus: I would classify recordings as pop if they fall into popular music categories such as pop, rock, soul, etc. And I would have to agree with you that the recordings you listed are great recordings, such as Supertramp, Pink Floyd, and others that could be on the list, including most A&M recordings such as the Supertramp. However, I have a lot of 60's recordings and they sound much more natural to me with a lot more resolution. Pop recordings from the 70s and 80s sound thin, bright, and compressed and I could name hundreds of recordings. I am not saying that there are no good recordings from each era, only that the average recording from the 60s is a lot more true to live music, especially because most are live to two track recordings. Try listening to any of the original Parlophone Beatles, for instance, or any of those earlier A&M recordings, such as Cat Stevens, or the Doors on Elektra. By the same token, you could argue that Rolling Stones records from the 60s are dreadful and you would have a point. But listen to a Bruce Springsteen LP such as Born to Run and you will see my point. BTW, I have heard several of the AP Doors recordings and I prefer the originals.

In the early days of stereo, engineers were unsure what to do with the extra speaker. Sgt. Pepper was recorded on a 4 track machine. By the 70's, 16 and 24 track recorders were everywhere, and solid-state electronics had finally reached a level of reliability that wasn't available in the 60's.