Well, if you want them to sound like what I listened to in the 60s, I recommend laying out your CD on a table and dropping a couple of burning sandalwood or wild cherry incense sticks on them and letting them sit there until you have a couple of warped craters on the CD surface. If you're worried about the CD player being able to track through the damage, all you have to do is tape a couple of pennies to the top of the laser armature.
More seriously, I'm not sure there is a single "60s sound" outside of the use of 100% analog gear with relatively low signal-to-noise ratios and the resulting vinyl mastering and pressing artifacts. But here's a few different ways people try to emulate classic recordings:
- Don't push the final loudness and RMS levels to the maximum the way music has been produced since the 90s. At the same time keep the overall S/N range below what modern digital recording is capable of. Your average rock/pop song of the 60s/70s probably averaged a total dynamic range of about 55-65dB with an RMS equal to a digital equivalent of about -17dBRMS.
- Roll off the high frequencies above 6kHz with a geometrically steeper slope as the frequency increases. Apply a similar low frequency roll off start at about 60Hz.
- Decrease the number of tracks used to record the drums to a minimum. One to three microphones/tracks.
- Unnaturally hard pan everything to either full left, center or full right. Do not follow some of the modern "standard rules" of panning as we know them today; i.e. do not be afraid to throw drums full right and bass full left, for example.
- Add a track of light pink (somewhere between white and pink) noise at a level of about -60dBFS or so to simulate analog tape/circuit noise.
G.
