In my experience this is not rare. I see it as following from a few things:
Until the 1990s and the arrival of home PC recording tools, it cost a fortune to book hours in the top studios and pay the best engineers to record your music. See the documentary Sound City (2013) for the economics of the era. Studio time was a hidden cost during the LP, cassette, and CD era as the profit margins were huge. However, if you followed emerging, second-tier, or independent artists they’d often have to work with inferior equipment and/or staff.
Contemporary streaming sources contract for access to master digital files. These are obtained from archives and have perfect quality. Per my comparisons with old CDs, the studios seemingly execute de facto ‘remastering’ to get fresh copies or clean up old tracks. Even if nothing was changed, the new files don’t have to suffer degradation with media transfers.
I recently compared Tidal, Qobuz, and Amazon HD. Of the three, Tidal has a slightly creamy, dreamy sound quality. This can indeed be pleasant and smooth out the rough edges from some releases, but it isn’t true to the originals either. In some cases I like it and in other cases I don’t.
I had an unusual experience with this recently. When I first heard Billie Eilish’s “when the party’s over”, through AirPod Pros I loved it. Then I made the mistake of listening to it on my headphone system, and … oy! Terrible! A complete mess, clearly mastered to sound good on really shitty gear. I was so disappointed. Fast forward a few months to earlier this week, after my new headphones arrived, I was looking for things to listen to, spotted that track and decided to see if it was as bad as I remembered Then I noticed that Tidal have a new Master version. "OK, " I thought, “let’s see if high-res crap sounds as bad as CD-quality crap”. Hit play, and got a huge surprise. They’ve remastered it! And it actually sounds really good on high-end gear. I guess winning a Grammy or six means studios care what your music sounds like.
Back in the day, liked tears for fears, especially album ‘the hurting’ and Depeche Mode and the Cure… Now a lot of it just sounds flat and lifeless and monotonic.
Excellent content. Really great stuff. I like to listen to some older stuff from the 60’s and 70’s and oftentimes hear some hiss that gets cleaned up on different versions of the recordings.
You’d think they’d have figured out a way to remove that by now but its probably too ingrained in to the original music that removing it would likely alter it. A lot of classic jazz recordings are plagued by tape hiss and it brothers me to no end.
I know some folks here dread the term “remastered” but I would wager the term “mastered for iTunes” is even more cringe inducing. Actually I have come across some remastered stuff here and there that does sound OK. Most recently some Tracy Chapman (absolute legend IMO).
Not a fan of hiss myself and I would choose a remaster one a crackle hiss ridden track if i had the choice. I love Tracy Chapmans stuff. Such a great voice along with great songs. She’s done some catchy tunes.
Have you checked out the 2009-10 era Stones remasters? Some are more successful than others but I think they are significant improvements on the originals.
Anyway, this is it. This is a favorite of mine from my youth, a song that had a very real impact on my development. Flash forward a few decades and when I finally listened to it on an “audiophile” system I was like “Seriously? WTF?!?!?” lol
LOL, I had the same exact reaction when I first played “Heart And Soul” on some good equipment. Tried both the original and the remaster, the recording just sounds terrible. How the hell did I not notice that before???
I love Jimi Hendrix, but all of his best tracks are recorded like garbage. I listen to them in my car, but never on headphones. I mean, I knew the recordings were not great, but when I first discovered how bad they were on headphones back in 2018, I was so disappointed.
But did you listen to that Vevo/Youtube Video or did you play it from a record or CD? Normally I find that CDs from that time are very well mastered and I really enjoy listening to them. But to re-confirm, I’m going to try and find my copy of “Bridge of Spies”.
Okay, I heard T’Pau back in the day and listened again just now. The lead vocals disappeared into nothing! I think one of two things happened here:
(1) A bad analog to digital transfer or “upgrade” where the volume levels got accidentally screwed up. I’ve heard this with other digital content – a kinked and poorly stored reel-to-reel tape played a couple decades later does not do justice to the original. Were the volume levels set automatically per a bad algorithm?
(2) The old-timey mastering may have been designed for the playback systems of the day, which often had weak bass potential (to avoid LP skipping) and were heard through underpowered mid-heavy paper drivers. TVs had tiny 4" mono speakers. Cars had tiny in-dash amps, tiny speakers, and fought against road noise. The pre-Porta Pro mobile stereo headphones were only half as good as the Porta Pro.
While many people today complain about the 1990s Loudness War, artificial compression, and the decline of recording quality, the pre-1990s era often involved unavoidable compression with a similar effect. The song that I thought sounded great on a car system but terrible with audiophile equipment: Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication (1999). It’s the textbook clipped Loudness War victim.
Very true, but the radio in the 1961 Ford Falcon that Grandma bought, but that we still had when I was in high school was a hybrid with a tube amplifier section. When parked, it didn’t sound half bad, though mono speaker in the front dash, of course. I remember having to wait for it to warm up. By 1969-72, when I was in high school, I was happy to be able to drive something. Although that car was never a “babe magnet”, it did get you from point A to the pickup point to the drive-in and back. And no, the drive-in did not have a transmitter for car audio, you had to roll down the window a bit to move the wired speaker box inside, or hang it on the car glass.
Picture of the speakers above. It was too dark when using them to show you what was going on in the 61’Falcon, Camera at the time was a Kodak Brownie Starmite II which took 127 size film. If you didn’t develop it yourself, you could get in trouble depending on subject when you sent it out for processing.
Oh, I totally get that! Sometimes a song sounds amazing on regular speakers or headphones, but when you run it through a good hi-fi setup, it can reveal a lot of hidden details—for better or worse! For me, it’s “Bohemian Like You” by The Dandy Warhols. I used to love the song, but once I heard it on my hi-fi, the mix just felt a bit flat compared to other tracks. It’s funny how a good setup can change your perspective on a song. “Radioactive” has such a heavy production, I can see why it might feel overwhelming on high-end gear!
