Re: Recordings mixed for AM (Was Re: Radio Disney in Boston)

[Sven Weil <sven@lily.org>]

The old songs that were mixed  with AM radio in mind actually do sound
brighter. 

 Compare this to a contemporary pop song which is usually heavy
in a bass beat - especially rap and so-called "dance" tunes (The KISS-108 
garbage; I hear better stuff in the clubs, but that's not the issue =) ).

THe bass is so heavy that it drowns out the highs and midranges (and the
voice).  Recently I had to toss a bunch of records that were so badly
recorded (so much bass) that no amount of weight on the tone-arm could
prevent the needle from literally jumping out of the grooves!!

Todays contemporary music isn't mixed with hi-fi in mind, just like music
from the 50s and 60s wasn't mixed with hi-fi in mind (although back then
engineers did seem to be concerned about how the product would sound like
during playback over some kid's 2.5" speaker.)

Does anyone mix songs and check how they sound on low-fi setups like
boomboxes and walkmans anymore?  
  

On Sun, 12 Mar 2000, Martin J. Waters wrote:
> 
>         I disagree here. This was a practice that was used with a lot of
> top-40 recordings and I'm sure it's used now in other ways to achieve a
> certain sound on the typical FM receiver /portable CD-tape player of today.
> There's a famous case in the olden days in which they went so far as to
> have had a tiny, tinny-sounding transistor radio speaker hooked up in the
> recording studio control room to listen to what the recordings sounded like
> on that. They used it in the mixing. It's not quite famous enough that I
> can remember who it was for certain <g>, but it may even have been Phil
> Specter.


Sven F. Weil
e-mail: sven@lily.org
World Wide Web: http://www.lily.org/~sven