Albums you wish had been better recorded

I've not heard this one yet but have it ordered on vinyl. The reports on the SQ of the CD and DVD are worrying. You would think it wouldn't be difficult, with the amount of technology available to them, to produce something decent.

One of the best live albums I own is Etta James "Rocks The House" recorded in the early '60s with a simple 2 track tape machine. I thoroughly recommend this album. I have the Chess 1st press but it's available on CD.

Steve

I was referring to the quality of the original recording & the quality of releases made from it.

With the three examples I gave in the OP, no subsequent issue I have heard on vinyl or CD has been entirely satisfactory IMO, even when making some allowances for recordings of the time.

I have Pretzel Logic and Court & Spark on original vinyl, both of which sound muddy to me and in Joni's case (of you) not as good SQ as the albums immediately before and after it (For The Roses and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns - again, both of which I have on original vinyl).

Regards,

Vlad

I have never been a big U2 fan. However I find the original vinyl of The Joshua Tree a real disappointment . It's is produced by Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, and mixed by Steve Lillywhite, I think it is the mixing of the album that is the problem. However I have always found it difficult but to put my finger on the problem with the SQ. A case of to many cooks maybe?

Regards Graham.

James Taylor & Carol King 'Live at the Troubador' could/should have been recorded much better.  G

Almost everything by Pavement, especially Slanted & Enchanted. There's intentional lo fi noise, but you can tell that the recording wasn't done well.  The reissued CD is better, but still lacking.

I also suspect that OK Computer could have been mastered a bit better for all the trouble they went through.

Agree with Quad 33 on U2.

Graham,

Also agree with you about Joshua Tree. A truly great album sadly let down by a muffled unclear sound. I think the mixing was only part of the problem, the production process was poor too, I suspect.

Maybe some experts out there can point us in the direction of the problem.

Steely Dan - Laty Lied is my is my biggest diasppointment. The LP sounds dull & lifeless, contrary to what was expected when you read all the technical guff about the DBX noise reduction system on the back cover. Does anyone have a good sounding Katy Lied on Vinyl?

Denny Dias has produced an interesting write up to explain what happened back in 1975... http://www.steelydan.com/dennys3.html 

More - http://granatino.com/sdresource/5audio.htm

I AM a big U2 fan, but all their albums seem to have been poorly recorded / mixed / mastered

However, if I could wave a magic wand over any album it would have to be Exile On Main St.  I guess it's a bit unreasonable to expect a 40 year old album, recorded in a basement on a mobile studio down miles of cable by guys who were not exactly clean living to sound pristine!

Tom Rapp's Pearls Before Swine albums could have done with a much better recordings - there is a lot going on in many of the songs and it seems to get lost.

Obviously, the Pretty Things Emotions and the Captain's As Safe As Milk and anything with Phil Spector on oy would sounded better if he had been somewhere else. 

The Kinks classic albums could have been better recorded too. 

And the Autumn Stone by the Small Faces .... in fact most of their superb records deserved better. 

"Layla and Other Love Songs" is surprisingly muffled sounding on vinyl. I haven't heard it on CD.

"Volunteers" by Jefferson Airplane sounds like the microphones were set up in an adjacent closet.

"The Allman Brothers Live at the Fillmore" got a lot better when it was transformed into "The Fillmore Sessions". It's the only example I can think of where my CD sounds better than the vinyl, but they did a massive digital overhaul on the original performances, including splicing solos from some performances into others.

This is is a brilliant album and does sound better recorded than the equally fine After Bathing At Baxters though the SQ on Surrealistic Pillow and Crown of Creation were both better. However, I acquired, as you do, a new vinyl pressing of Volunteers (please click here) on Music on Vinyl - these Dutch guys just love great music and do their very best to make it available to us. It sounds better than the CD Japan version I have ... and Hey Frederick still has one of the great opening lines. 

Agree with you about the other two records, but the Layla I have have very ordinary SQ and I have Live At The Filmore (which isn't a great recording, but the music for a live album is excellent). 

Can we nominate albums we wish had NEVER been recorded?

If so, I'll nominate Arsetral Weaks by Van Morrison, Brothers In Arms by Dire Bolical, and everything by Sting and The Pogues.

Why? There are lots of albums i wouldn't ever buy like those by the Dire Straits and New Order and those type of bands, but that is just because i don't like that type of music. Others do so i'm very happy that those albums are available for those who do. I am sure there are lots of albums in my collection that others would not care for .... There is at least one forum member who isn't a Chas & Dave fan. In fact i think it is only Bauhaus that everybody on the forum agrees are beyond reproach. I have a theory that 90% of Naim users look like Bob Todd. 

Why?

Because there are things we call standards Guy, and they should be maintained, even in a world where most people look like Bob Todd. And Van Morrison, Pogues, Sting and Straits have, despite a number of warnings, continued to perform and record. They must be stopped.

As the old saying goes, must we fling this filth at our pop kids?

I agree, I don't think I've ever seen a bad bit of design come out of the Bauhaus.

However, I did hear that a bunch of silly goths from Northampton or some other East Mids hellhole co-opted the Bauhaus name for a string of increasingly fatuous records back in the 1980s.

Is this true Guy? If so, it's an outrage - especially if, as has been said, they sound like a cut-price Joy Division with a few Bowie-isms thrown in for good measure.

Harsh, but true!!!

How about removing the existence of Trout Mask Replica, Metal Machine Music, all of Genesis and Zappa???

Vlad

The recording on this is so bad it makes you wonder why they bothered wasting it on nicely pressed vinyl, unless you like the sound of audience noise and PA systems from a range of half a mile : (

Debs

Well there you go (said in a Denis Weaver type New Mexican accent) .. a difference of opinion whereas only thing I have by Joy Division is a pair of oven gloves - you have one their records. Actually, it is New Order I can't stand as they seem to have no humour at all and they go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on ... just like Céline Dion DiMucci. No they are one band that completely eluded me - not exactly Polly Jean Harvey or Siouxsie Sioux. Still if they have fans then that is fine by me.  

On the other hand, I like Bauhaus, just like ever other forum member apparently from the recent survey, because they put a smile on my face and I thought that was universal across the land. Indeed I thought Naim kit was optimised for Bauhaus because of the groups popularity ... so are you saying you don't love Northampton's finest Goth band. I mean did Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó Lugosi die in vien (some say he didn't die and lives in Stamford Bridge).  I'm sorry, but I know that is wind up (you like your little joke) ... come on own up ... you are a big Bauhaus fan really and have all their albums ... 

Nice furniture by the way, but a bit bright for me as I always advocate dark clothes ... 

All the best, Guy 

I have a box set called Fairport Unconventional ... I'll buy almost anything with Sandy on it, but apart from the superb opening track with Judy Dyble singing Ribbon Bow, the rest is awful beyond belief ... quite why it was released is beyond me ... there are also some ELP official bootlegs and a volume called best of the bootlegs that is just so terrible it is untrue ... these kind of records are pointless as even as a fan you can't hear anything .... so I thank you for the heads up as I would have been caught out by these .... 

All the best, Guy 

White Light White Heat  (VU)

Loaded (VU)

Raw Power (The Stooges)

Emergency (Tony Williams)

Turn It Ovet (Tony Williams)

Tony Williams Lifetime with Larry Young, McLaughlin and Jack Bruce was a fantastic short-lived underappreciated group. Unfortunately something went wrong during the recording sessions and all tracks of both albums are severely saturated, it is a pity for  the drums.

The most recent release from Tom Waits - Bad As Me. 

Musically great - but sonically squashed with no headroom: THUS EVERYTHING EQUALLY LOUD WITH NO DYNAMISM, EBB OR FLOW.

May a brave loudness warrior re-mix/master it to set it free.

I am a big VU fan and have to agree that the sound quality of their albums isn't great. The thing though is that, like a lot of recordings from the pre-digital era, the music still shines through in spite of the recording quality. Even the Quinn tapes, the live recordings done on cassette and released on vinyl and CD, is a pleasue to listen to. 

A very big disappointment to me has been the two TV on the Radio albums I have. Dense inventive guitar rock with lots of things going on all the time made completly unlistentable by heavy compression. Unfortunately a lot of new releases and remastered old albums suffer the same heavy handedness.

Hans

I don't really know the two Williams albums you mention but I have to disagree with you about the VU and Stooges. They're not supposed to be pristine. They're garage albums, not Dire Straits or hi-fi demo discs.How can a record called "Raw Power" made by some ne'er do wells from Detroit possibly be well-recorded? And if it was, would it be any better? I really dobt it.

On vinyl at least, I think they all sound fine (no idea about the CDs). Wouldn't  change anything about those three albums. 

I said on the Led Zep thread that there is far too much obsessing about sound quality. If the music and the performance are strong enough, sound quality is largely irrelevant.

Aren't we here to listen to music, rather than equipment?

The previous two albums by the same ne'er do wells from Detroit where well recorded

All legitimate reasons - ambience, increased use of electronic instruments and effects, cost, speed to market etc. We've grown accustomed to these over the years, I suppose.

No doubt we'll get used to every instrument at maximum loudness as we have to hearing an acoustic guitar "louder" than the drums on recordings or effects like phasing.

I still listen to Court and Spark, Pretzel Logic, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat and many of the albums mentioned above - my opinion of SQ doesn't stop me playing them and enjoying them!

What I find difficult to accept is that major artists, with all the money and expertise available at the time, still managed to be poorly served with some real below par recordings.

Sometimes, it was their own fault (e.g. Todd Rungren), sometimes horrible mistakes were made with new technology (e.g. dbx on Katy Lied), sometimes the studio (accidental deletion, poor storage, unwanted resonances/glitches - Bobby Bland's Ain't Nothing You Can Do) or a poor batch of tapes, sometimes the artist makes the recording in an unsuitable environment, which catches fire and sinks in the harbour (yes, you, Lowell George!).

Even where people have gone back to the original master tapes (multi-track or stereo masters), the results on re-mastered vinyl or CD have still been below what could have been acheived had the originals been recorded/enginered/mixed to the best contemporary standards.

This is what frustrating with the albums I've mentioned - they could have been so much better!