1980s CDs- "The Softness Wars"?

I was playing the 1987 Soundtrack CD of "Some Kind Of Wonderful", and couldn't believe how low in volume it was. If you turn it up loud, it still sounds kinda puny and digital. I remember the CD of Stevie Wonders "Characters" being lower in volume than the vinyl- when is that ever the case? Was there a conscious decision at the time to make CD's LOWER in volume than LP's- to make them seem more dynamic in comparison to compressed sounding vinyl?? There are other 80's CD's that has a fine volume- certainly not all of them are low-fi. But it seems like the "all digital" recordings especially were pretty weak.


Annette

 

You'd be surprised how many refuse to believe this exists.

 

I've never quite understood all y'all's fetish with mid-80's CD mastering. Most of it never did much for me. Yes' "Big Generator" was one that always stuck out to me as sounding particularly lifeless...never 'got' that album till I picked up a minty LP a few years ago and started cranking it

 

I'm re-doing my lossy collection this year. Part of the process is to scan an album, find the max level and then tweak the tool I'm using (Audiocoder) to adjust the gain during the rip.

With modern CD's, I usually have to drop the gain a little or else the files will clip (as expected). But with a few of my 80's CD's, the volume is so low that I actually have increase the gain during the transcode.

I have several examples of LP's I've bought, or taken off the shelf after 20+ years in storage, needle dropped them, A/B tested against my 80's CD and realized just how muddy sounding those old CD's are.

 

I don't believe many people truly fetishize early CD mastering in an absolute sense; I think they just see it, on the whole, as better than the more contemporary "brickwall/NR/extreme EQ" approach so ubiquitous now. Even our host has stated on multiple occasions that not all early CDs sounded good, and that they were sometimes mastered unnecessarily quietly. My impression is that for most proponents of early CDs, some sound good, some sound bad, but the average unremastered CD from the '80 will probably sound better than its remastered equivalent (even if a vinyl cut sounds better, as they often do).

 

I remember hearing an early release of CCR Chronicles, and it was almost comical how low the sound was.

 

Obviously, some are good, some are flat out terrible. However, I have found some really come to life when the volume is adjusted. Whenever I make compilation CDs, I will many times include older CD versions and adjust their volume or normalize the volume to level everything out. As long as you don't squash the volume, many sound great! Bowie RCAs, 80s Jimmy Buffett discs and the ultra quiet original Japanese target of "Rumours" are examples that really shine when you crank 'em up! I agree it's hit or miss.

 

I dunno, what's wrong with CDs not being loud? They can always be cranked up and the dynamics of the original recordings are intact (even for the quieter passages) albeit possibly at a tad lower resolution. The brickwalled CD's dynamics are gone for good and although quieter passages may sound nice & resolved, the loud ones are congested and distorted. I 'd likely to choose the higher DR 80's CD over its brickwalled remaster most of the time. And, to do a fair comparison between albums/tracks with different masterings I can always apply ReplayGain during playback, so everything sounds equally loud

 

What's wrong is that there is a such thing as too low that in fact impairs the song beyond just turning it up to fix it. They aren't talking about CDs not being loud but too soft and there is such a thing.

 

I think it comes down to it can aclso be a bad "Mastering" or "bad transfer" from a higher generation copy , things like noise reduction etc.
But some of the better sounding cd's from the 80's are just chilling to hear they sound so good , they have amazing stereo seperation , great dynamics .... a few cd's i have that sound amazing Cutting crews 1st album , some of the Taylor dayne cd's , Thomas dolby ..... they really are amazing to hear , but there certainly are a ton that just sound "flat" & no matter what you do , they do not liven up .

 

Flying Cowboys by Rickie Lee Jones is the first thing that springs to mind as quiet to the level of insanity. I thought something was wrong with my system first time I heard it.

 

I think mastering engineers were still coming to grips with this new technology while under pressure by the record companies to get these CD's on the shelves as quick as they could.

There are a lot of lousy sounding 80's CD's, but I blame them for not doing proper tape vault research and using bad master tapes or too much NR than keeping the volume low.

 

How about posting the DR numbers for the CD(s) in question then? Then we'll be able to see how dynamic the material really is...

 

I think you're correct, and even our host has acknowledged this. However, the question is whether the slight loss of resolution this can produce is equal to the damage produced by modern brickwalling. My sense is that while many early '80s CDs were far from ideal, they were at least closer to it than the vast majority of modern masterings.

 

Dynamic =/= sounding good. Just because it is dynamic doesn't mean other factors that might make it sound bad don't apply. (bad tapes, transfer, etc)

I wouldn't go that far as it is almost always some obscure pressing from then that is considered good instead of the standard mass released version a lot of the time. It's not every 80s CD that are preferred. Only select ones.

 

True, however, the recording with better dynamics sounds 'livelier' to my ears

 

The first "too soft" CD I recall was the original "Ghost in the Machine". I got that one in early 1985 and couldn't get over how quiet it was. I'd load it into the changer I got in late 1986 - whenever I'd go from one normal-volume CD to "Ghost", the level would drop by half!

 

Exactly.

 

Some early Zappa CDs had quite low output levels and sounded rather thin to me. Turning them up didn't help much, either.

 

The US AM+ version of Joe Jackson Night And Day is ultra low in volume in my opinion to the detriment of the SQ. The original UK PDO is uniformly about 30% higher in volume and still does not go over 84% on any track.

 

I cannot agree with this as a general statement. Perhaps you can provide a specific example.

 

A quiet CD that sounds good? My 1985 canadian Vertigo pressing of Brothers In Arms (album ReplayGain is whopping +6.44dB; modern brickwalled albums a la RHCP - Californication clock at about -12dB). BIA sounds amazingly alive with astonishing DR16 for the whole album

 

One only needs to look the two posts above yours to see some.

 

Are you sure these 2 masterings will sound a lot different in a level-matched listening comparison?

 

I actually have both and the UK sounds dynamically superior on every level when I crank up the US to the same level. Its as if there is less data to process because its so low.