Quote:
Originally posted by 73Bruin:

Shoddy mixing, recording and mastering is a reflection of the market a recording is sold for. I remember being told about various artists who mastered their albums to a 6x9 single cone car speaker because thats was the preception of the artist's audience. [/B]


While it is true that songs intended for the popular music market were sometimes mixed or at least mastered on small speakers to simulate the home playback experience, this was not at all the case outside of this music segment. Classical, Jazz and other types of music were recroded with great care most of the time. There were instances where the "official" record label practices were such that the sound was not up to the best of standards, such as the mandatory bass rolloff below 50Hz at EMI for popular music recordings.

The real problem was horrible stamping vinyl quality by the majority of the labels, sometimes even using ground up discarded records to press new records - lables and all ! ! Even classical labels like Angel had bad pressings. The audiophile lables used actual virgin vinyl and manufactured them thick enough to withstand use.