Quality album recordings.

Yes, this is one of the many amazing things about music, that not many people get to discover...

Sorry this will be a long post, but it's a really neat part of music history that probably most people take for granted, or are generally unaware of, because recording is more or less an easier process now.

Recording albums had just barley started getting taken seriously around the Early 60s, (prior to this most music was released primarily as singles), and recording started to become an art in itself, especially around the late 60s and early 70s.

Some of the most legendary rock bands were so legendary not just for their music but for developing new techniques in the studio and for how they made their recordings.

For example, Led Zeppelin and The Beatles are two of the biggest bands who changed the way popular music was recorded.

The album Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys is regarded as one of the most revolutionary albums in terms of recording.

The Beatles of course are well known for having some of the first Stereo recordings, where some instruments are on one speaker and the vocals are on another, if you ever tried listening to The Beatles with one earbud in, then you know what I'm referring to.

All of the Zeppelin albums are great and must haves, my personal favorite being Physical Graffiti.

Zeppelin I for example was recorded with such a small amount of money, but Page was such a genius in the studio, and that album ended up making back 2000x in profit, which is an incredible amount.

The Drummer for Zeppelin, John Bonham, is also very well known for the massive sound he was able to produce with his drums, he arguably paved the path for the way Rock Drums were to forever sound.

Rush is my favorite band, and I feel like all of their early albums are masterfully mixed.

The Doors did some unique stuff as well, there's the well known story that Jim Morrison sang L.A. Woman in a bathroom to get the perfect reverb sound.

Pink Floyd had a ton of revolutionary stuff on their records, there are many in depth articles that go into how a lot of their sounds were recorded.

I've heard stories that the entire Highway to Hell album by Ac/Dc was edited to sound a quarter note lower than how it was recorded, to give it a darker overall sound.

As someone who loves music (particularly 60s/70s) it's really interesting to know about the recording process of what goes into some of the most classic albums, something that most people (especially today) probably take for granted, there are many many stories, and I think it is a really neat little niche of knowledge to discover.

If you go onto a wiki page for any classic 60s/70s album, they go into depth on how it was recorded and what they did to get all the unique individual sounds, which at the time were revolutionary.

Any time I get an album not only do I listen to it but I do a bit of research on it and learn how and why it was made, music is a very neat and integral part of human history.

But to answer your overall question... I don't really know a lot about the subject but if you are listening to MP3's, or anything off of the internet, it will generally be random quality, all across the board. Even across an entire album as it's most likely just generated from random MP3's.

This is why if you listen to a library of MP3's on shuffle, you'll notice you constantly need to adjust the volume, because some tracks are high/lower than others.

I think to fully understand how well the real album was recorded you need a physical copy of the album, either on vinyl or CD, and listen to it through a stereo system that has speakers, this should generally be a better quality.

However, even then the quality can change, as it'll sound different depending on the format (Vinyl/CD/8-track), or if it's a remastered version, or old etc.

Also the genre of the music can really affect the recording, generally because of the budget that was allowed.

For example, Slayer's first album Show No Mercy is one of the most horrendous examples of a recording I can think of. Nearly all early Thrash Metal / Punk didn't have much of a budget, and is pretty low quality.

Recording is a serious thing now, and very important. That's why there is even college degrees dedicated specifically for it.

If you want to learn more about it just look up some of your favorite albums, and if it's a well known album there will be information on it.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Page#Music_production_techniques" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Page#Music_p...</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles'_recording_technology" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles%27_rec...</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_Boys#Songwriting_and_production" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_Boys#Son...</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_engineer" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_engineer</a>

I like a lot of lo fi music with poot audio quality, can add a brilliant rawness to the instrumentations, I'll give some examples, the sound of a guitar on a lo fi albumnis just fuzzy brilliance

When the guitar kicks in at 3:01 in this song

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bNSY8bDfhGs

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ooj6pEd6YM

I find some lo fi to be abrasive other times it hpgivesnit charm like with slanted and enchanted by pavement or early mountain goats, early mountain goats is a guynin his bedroom with a cheap recorder, I find that gives it charm and this real sense of personality

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7YRWzxYS_nM

But then a lot of music that uses intricate layering techniques wouldn't benefit from lo fi recordings

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V_Ydoe4Q-Gg

I wouldn't ever call a recording bad, because what's technically a bad recording can suit particular genres, in fact a lot of bands deliberately degrade the quality of their music like the antlers did for their album hospice

If you're after a good lo fi album check out in the aeroplane over the sea by neutral milk hotel

Lo fi recordings can benefit vocals too, when I first heard in the aeroplane over the sea I laughed, I hated it, the guy couldn't sing, he could hit the notes but you could hear him straining his voice and I pictured him trying to sing it and just found it funny, actually at one point in two headed boy he's actually a little off key at a high note, but Jeff mangum's my favourite vocalist now, it grew on me, I can't explain it, it's like hearing him struggle to hit certain notes, struggling to convey what he hears in his head, I find a disarming sense of humanity in that, and personality which I get from no other album

I don't particularly care about the recording quality unless it completely sucks (Bathory's first album).

TOME ALERT :/

I'm not an album guy, but before you put up your dukes, let me tell you why. Of course, if I like more than a few songs by a specific artist, I try to listen to their entire discography, but what I usually find is that the singles are often the best or only decent songs. It's not an exaggeration for me to say that most albums, and I listen to almost every genre, have a lot of "filler". Most times, there are 1 or 2 non-singles that are even better than the singles, so of course, I won't stop listening to albums to make sure I'm not missing anything good. But after I've listened to an album once, I only listen to the songs I like from that album afterward. To me, it's a total waste of time listening to long, boring songs you hate, waiting for the ones you like.

I know some people feel this compulsion to listen to only full albums, because if they don't they somehow feel like a mainstream listener or something. But in the end, there are very few artists that consistently put out only great material. Yes, some artists create their albums with a grand vision, whether it be a concept, or just a "perfect ordering", but that goes by the wayside with a "song" person like me.

There are albums people, artist people, and song people. In my opinion, the ones who truly appreciate music, appreciate specific pieces of music. People who are devoted to certain bands; they're groupies, they appreciate personalities/characters. People who love albums usually appreciate the concept and the flow of the album and see it as "one work" instead of a group of many works. But in the end, songs are created separately before they're grouped together. They're almost always separate musical inspirations. So, that's my two cents on that.

You asked us about albums we thought were produced/recorded/mixed well. This is a really complicated question that I could write a book on probably. In the end though, I don't really think recording quality matters to most people. If it did, people would hate the Beatles and classic rock now. Composition is the most important thing to me, followed by the actual performance of the music. Next would be the timbres and the soundscape of the song, because that should be really evocative. Quality is probably next, and underneath the umbrella of quality I'd order it: arrangement, mix, and effects. For me, lyrics come last, because most lyrics are terrible. If I want poetry, I'd read a poem from someone who can actually write, and isn't just rhyming genericisms and clichees.

Obviously, if you're talking about recording quality only, and not about composition, the worst of the worst will be true "indie" music, not what's called indie today. The unprofessional, garageband-like, lo-fi sound is often what these artists are after anyway. For some, the quality does take away from the song, while for others it adds a warmth and a realness. Obviously a lot of distortion, spectral artifacts, and other unintended mistakes should always be avoided.

What a lot of lovers of great music can never seem to admit to themselves is how well recorded pop music usually is. It's made to meet a standard of perfection. In simplest terms, it's calculated take up a certain "space" for the listener; to be a certain loudness and to highlight certain frequencies. The people who mix and master these tracks are often industry professionals and audio geniuses. Now, when I speak about "pop" I don't mean what's called pop today, I mean all popular music, including studio rock, dance, R'n'B, etc.

Today's pop is actually an EXCEPTION to what I've been saying. This is because, since the mid-2000's, the trend has been toward hiring famous urban producers like Will.I.Am and Timbaland, who are not nearly as talented as the ones nobody knows the names of who worked in the nineties and early 2000's and who can't seem to find much work today. Most of today's pop, like it was in the late eighties and early 1990's, is terribly produced and TERRIBLY composed. Pop, as a specific genre, had its heyday in the mid-late nineties. Think of what Max Martin, Guy Sigsworth, William Orbit, etc. were producing then. Even better than that was the "adult alternative" music from that period. It was expertly produced and composed. Anything by Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Jewel, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette, Amanda Marshall, Sheryl Crow, etc. from then was often really well mixed and composed.

To give you one example of an expertly composed, produced, and pain-stakingly recorded and mixed album, I'd suggest Ellipse by Imogen Heap. The attention to detail here allows for new discoveries in each song at every listen. Nothing important is ever drowned out, and everthing meant to be focused on is in the forefront. For really cleanly produced rock, think Goo Goo Dolls or Our Lady Peace. For expertly recorded and produced electronic/ambient/IDM music, think Boards of Canada. You'll never find more evocative songs.

Mmm...tacos.

Yeah. I know what you mean. I got a pair of qc15s from Bose last year and I can hear all the BS fret noise Nd feed back and all kinds of shit. You can really tell the difference between a pro recording booth and a room with foam glued all over it. And the diff between a 4 track and a board fed into the computer