>
, in the great old days of Top 40 AM radio,.. the records weren't
>really compressed much if at all in recording or mastering, just peak
>limited to keep the needle from bouncing around in the groove, so we ran
>everything on the air through those old glorious tube compressors at a
>pretty hefty rate of speed and that's why the radio sounded so By-God
>cool in the sixties.... It sounded very, very good.
>
>Can I get an amen?
>Joe Gracey
Amen, Joe! Even if I didn't have a readily-available tube Radio much past
he early 60s!... The same stuff was still used at the low-power AM campus
station I worked in '68-'71 in DC...that was the first place I'd ever heard
of peak limiting or compression or any of the available tube-era sound
processing --but, yeah, the point and result was actually to sound better
on the air, given the "limitations" of the situation--and it did.
I'd only add that this is one of the missing elements in less-informed
comments on how "bad' all those old records sound in the primitive olden
days --back before flaming every recording to hotter than hot than trebler
than treble became the norm. You don't hear 'em now the way they most
often sounded then.
Hell, I've also heard 1930s 78s through a no-juice wind-up player with a
resonator box and cone that sounded pretty good--and way louder than
anybody would expect, too!
(I happen to own one of those "Back to Mono" buttons--but, it's not a
philosophical statement, just some ass-busting fun... it was a giveaway
with the Phil Spector box set!)
Barry M.
