why are some 70's recordings so muddy?

That's a really bad quality version of course, but it's down to both the old microphones aswell as tape recording which gives it a different sound to digital. All adds up, but like i say - i think the main reason behind that sounding bad is due to the loss of quality as they've put it online.
 
I'm pretty sure YouTube not only destroys the quality of the MP3 it also plays it in MONO as opposed to stereo. A lot of mixes will suffer from this.
 
I was on the road a lot back then, like many bands of that era we were more concerned with volume than with clarity. I think some bands (and producers) tried to take that "live and loud" feel with them into the studio and the result was muddy sounding recordings. The 70s was also a time of expansion and change when computers were really in their infancy so the changes from tube to solid state and analog to digital may have also been a contributing factor.
 
Tifstorey said:
That's a really bad quality version of course, but it's down to both the old microphones aswell as tape recording which gives it a different sound to digital. All adds up, but like i say - i think the main reason behind that sounding bad is due to the loss of quality as they've put it online.
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Mostly true but many mics used in the 70s were the same as now with many still sold now days

it was mainly the desks they had that were crap! also myspace sucks it compresses way too much and as danny said they may be in mono. dunno about the mono i will not listen to myspace any more as i hate it so much when there are much better sites like soundclick to use (i freely admit im a soundclick fanboy. but then again its pretty handy so lond as you dont need very high quality.)
 
fishkarma said:
...also myspace sucks it compresses way too much and as danny said they may be in mono. dunno about the mono i will not listen to myspace any more as i hate it so much when there are much better sites like soundclick to use (i freely admit im a soundclick fanboy. but then again its pretty handy so lond as you dont need very high quality.)
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Not everything I've heard on MySpace sounds like crap. My old demos do because of the high frequency content and tape hiss (I think MP3 in general doesn't always work well with high frequencies), but I'm not really too concerned with it. It's another FREE and great way to get your tunes out there - how can that "suck"?
 
fraserhutch said:
EVERYTHING sounds like shit on YooToob.
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Agreed. I don't think I've seen anything on YouTube that has looked or sounded all that great. BUT, it's a nice free way to get video's on the Web.
 
Tifstorey said:
That's a really bad quality version of course, but it's down to both the old microphones aswell as tape recording which gives it a different sound to digital. All adds up, but like i say - i think the main reason behind that sounding bad is due to the loss of quality as they've put it online.
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Old microphones really doesn't explain it. I'd love to own some old microphones in my collection.

The end of your post does make sense - loss of quality.
 
warble2 said:
Agreed. I don't think I've seen anything on YouTube that has looked or sounded all that great. BUT, it's a nice free way to get video's on the Web.
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Agreed - but just don't expect quality :)
 
Those old commercials aren't very well taken care of after they stop running. The video machines at TV stations back then were very different than they are today. In order to play an old commercial like that you would have to dig the tape out of someones closet, find a machine that will play it (no doubt in a museum), find someone who can get it going long enough to play the tape, then dub it to something else. The quality of both the tape and machine went away from years of sitting.

The other thing that could have happened, someone recorded it on their new betamax in 1978 and the tape has been rotting in the living room ever since. Video tape doesn't last forever.
 
It's not a sound recording per se. It's an AV advert.
The initial sound recording would've been ok then the types of compression used for ads on tv, the media it's been stored on, the amount of use it had before archiving, the match up of & state of heads post archiving for play back then the compression to get it to flv & the streamin play back all have a role.
The 70's isn't renowned for muddy recordings anymore than the 70's was just known for British punk. In fact I think it says more about the state of video than anything else. Audio from the 70's in fact even my cassettes from the 70's, still sounds pretty good. Lots of stuff coming out on DVD from the 70's seems less so as the media used wasn't up to storage. Seems film and audio tape come up trumps against video tape.
 
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