Albums that you love that you wish had been better produced/engineered

After posting, it occurred to me that the producer also manages the budget. Maybe, in this case, the budget didn't allow further work on the drum sound.

 

Wilco - Yankee Foxtrot Hotel - sounds intentionally too low fi with disparate noise thrown in and pro tools dominated

 

So right on Californication. Listening in my car is sounds like one giant mess and a ton of distortion when I try to turn it up. I suppose it came at the time of the loudness wars where CDs were produced to be loud distorted messes. It's still one of my favorite albums though and I'm sure I can work with it once I get my pre-amp, amp and CD player set up to my B&W speakers.

 

Another vote for the First National band and bottom-end -less Monkees records.

 

All of the Who albums up to Who's Next

 

YES's Relayer and Going for The One
Genesis Wind and Wuthering

 

It seems to me that before the 1960s at least the major record labels seemed to have people working for them that imposed a level of quality control over the sound of their product, whether they were recorded in one of a label's own studios, or in an independent facility that could deliver masters of a comparable quality standard, like Radio Recorders. So if a master was delivered that was too bassy, too dull or too shrill or what have you, these QC people would listen to it and supervise doctoring the delivered master to meet as closely as possible their standards. They'd bring up the bass in an AND JUSTICE FOR ALL or reject a VAPOR TRAILS or a CALIFORNICATION because of the distortion....not that they'd want to transform any of them into so much Mantovani.

Was it part of the contract terms record companies had to accede to to get newer performers to sign with them that such quality supervision would not be involved in the production of their records? It seems like giving the artists so much liberty has resulted in quite a few records that pushed sound quality and music forward but also opened the door to some OTT sonic disasters as well.

 

Going for the One. - Yes
Physical Graffitti -Led Zeppelin
Summerteeth. And Yankee Foxtrot Hotel. - Wilco
Gabriel Era Genesis

 

Anything by T.Rex after Visconti left.

 

Hotter than Hell by KISS
And Justice For All by Metallica
Green Mind by Dinosaur Jr.

 

Stone Temple Pilots- Tiny Music

 

Why NO bass on And Justice still baffles me

 

This is an interesting thought shared by many- and yet, those 2 albums , in my opinion ..were produced just fine and have carved a music-memory played on radios all over the place to everyone, and came off very convincing. What would you change about LIB and ATMustPass ?

 

Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full
The Fireman - Electric Arguments
Dwight Yoakam - 3 Pears
The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Bruce Springsteen - Magic
Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
The Rolling Stones - A Bigger Bang

They all suffer from LOUD.

 

The 2010 remasters are absolutely dire. Some of the worst sounding albums I've heard. Shame.

 

Anything by Deep Purple

 

Tim is mainstream rock? Your thinking of PTMMee or Don't tell a soul

 

The Growing Concern's album on Mainstream Records. Apparently, if Mainstream offered you a deal to record an album, you had to pretty much go in and record it, whether you were ready to or not, and The Growing Concern only had one session in the studio.

 

Gentle Giant-The Missing Piece. Absolutely no bottom end, which is a shame as they had a kick- ass bassist in Ray Shulman and the music is top tier !
I put it on every few years thinking that maybe it isn`t that bad, but always have to take it off when my ears start bleeding !

Also the frst Journey album could be killer if it was not so poorly mixed and mastered. Good fusion stuff mixed with a residual Santana vibe.

 

Even Machine Head ? Personally I think this is a great, ballsy recording that suits the music perfectly.

 

I would say much of the Jeff Lynne late-80s/early-90s drums could stand it be redone.

All Things Must Pass for sure. A lot of McCartneys albums whe he's the producer. Jackson Browne s/t album.

 

Obituary - Cause of Death
And basically every other album produced by that butcher Scott Burns. He made half the genre sound so plasticky and samey in the 90s. Seems like only Incantation and Autopsy were keeping it real at this time.

New York Dolls - s/t
Guitar sounds nice and raunchy, that's about it. No bass, the vocals are way too high in the mix, like he thought he was producing his usual pop...

Judas Priest's run from Sad Wings of Destiny to Stained Class
Maybe the most classy, emotional, ahead-of-its-time metal out there, musically speaking... but their studio sound was just feeble. I wonder if Iron Maiden would have culturally eclipsed Priest as 'the go-to traditional metal band' the way they did if any of Priest's old albums sounded good.

Raw Power is screwed up five ways from sunday but IMO that's part of what the album is artistically. I think fixing that would be like somebody remixing MBV's Loveless and saying "let's get rid of all this reverb and make the vocals more clear."

 

Well, look at the individuals involved in the decision to bury the bass. There are versions in the ether that sound a ton better.

 

Country Life - Roxy Music

Just doesn't sound good, sonically speaking, at least not any version I've heard

 

The 80's Queen albums.