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General Discussion / Re: Golden Age of Recording?
« on: May 14, 2010, 09:46:45 AM »
I was just listening to "sing along with Mitch" last night. I think a lot of people enjoy music from 1957-1962 when reordings were done correctly. It's true that "big" sound is intoxicating and there's really nothing like it. I have to say some of the best sound I hear is when I use my Ampex 350 as a post preamp. Why the 350 should sound better listening through the tape section on my preamp than the "preamps electronics puzzles me. Some might say it is too Hi-fi,but if that's what hi-fi sounds like, I'll take that kind of heaven anyday. Btw that 350 sound not only brings out the best in "kind of blue" but one of my favorites Nancy Griffin's "One Fair Summer Evening" which is a live recording, sounds incredible. Live recordings can't be boxed in and thank god for that.
So I think that old Ampex 350 had a lot to do with the signature sound that is produced listening to these recordings of that era.
Any electronics that has point to point wiring and uses octal tubes,including 12sj7's and 6sn7's should sound stunning and it does. Now my 350 has all glass tubes,Tungsol,RCA,and Brimar,which I have found to be magnitudes better than the metal can tubes. Incredible detail and a black background that gives a live sound in the listening room.
Enjoy,
Roger
So I think that old Ampex 350 had a lot to do with the signature sound that is produced listening to these recordings of that era.
Any electronics that has point to point wiring and uses octal tubes,including 12sj7's and 6sn7's should sound stunning and it does. Now my 350 has all glass tubes,Tungsol,RCA,and Brimar,which I have found to be magnitudes better than the metal can tubes. Incredible detail and a black background that gives a live sound in the listening room.
Enjoy,
Roger
I seem to be stuck somewhere around 1960 in my tastes for music and recording techniques plus or minus a few years.
I was 5-6 in 1960. I love the sound of the best of these early stereo recordings which could truly be very high fidelity, but before we got to the era of very complex multi-tracking and non-real time studio sessions . These techniques later produced their own "magic" in that one person could play all the parts and led to our present era. But I love the older big-group-in-big-room sound.
I have posted before
http://www.tapeproject.com/smf/index.php/topic,1233.0.html
about pre-recorded tapes of this era of the pop "Beautiful Music" category that seem so ubiquitous even now because, let's face it, they outsold rock or jazz or classical titles in the era and to the demographic most likely to own a reel to reel machine in this era. Like my father.
While there are certainly many great jazz, country, folk and classical recordings from this early 60s era as well as the pop ones, they have been covered in other posts and in some cases have been issued as TP tapes.
I struggled whether to place this post as an actual suggestion for a TP album or not. Perhaps it should have been two posts.
I just got done listening to ... here it comes... "The Happy Beat" 1963 Ray Conniff. Yes, you can probably still find zillions of copies of this in the $1 vinyl bins, along with his other albums. This stuff was enormously popular in it's day. My father and mother actually went to one of his concerts (the only concert I can remember them going to as a child). My father came home and excitedly explained to me, his budding techno-geek 8 or 9 year old about how the concert sound system was actually stereo. BTW, I would love to know what equipment they pulled that off with in the early 60s.
This stuff was state-of-the-art pop recording with all the kitschy, tape delay echo and reverb saturated, left, center mono, and right counterpuntal stereo arraigning that had been in development as the Columbia "sound' by Conniff and Mitch Miller since the 50s. It also represented one of the last gasps of the old form "dance orchestra" carried over from decades past, brought into the early rock era, spiced up with new songs and the use of wordless voices as part of the orchestra, doubling the instrumental parts with their "oohs, daas and ahs". And it was recorded with excellent studio musicians and all the quality a major label could throw at it at the time.
Much as Nelson Riddle's orchestrations kind of "made" the Sinatra Capitol era what it was, this stuff deserves it's place in history, beyond muzak and the dusty bargain record bins.