Rubbish Recordings! (Shoot the engineer!)

[Les Adams]

Ok guys, let's "out" them.... The sound engineers, cutting engineers or producers who were given the job of balancing the mix or eq-ing the final cut of an otherwise great or classic piece of music and got it wrong!

Apart from the many rock engineers of the 70's who's were either deaf, on a very tight budget or limited studio time, (or just drugged out of their minds and it sounded good to THEM) there have been others who really had no right to be behind the controls! Guitars too loud, drums too quiet, vocals recorded using old socks as pop sheilds and so much compression that PPM meters stand still like battery level indicators!

They can't blame the technology. 60's and 70's Studios had classic gear such as Valve Neve desks, Neumann and AKG condenser microphones and great sounding analogue tape machines such as Studer and Otari. Most of this equipment would give today's over complex and sonically inferior equipment (such as SSL recording consoles) a run for its money.

Sure, in the early days of stereo it was common practice to put all the drums on one channel and the vocals on the other, even George Martin did it with a lot of Beatles recordings, but maybe this was a gimmick to sell the stereo effect to a public who grew up listening to A.M mono radio! But from the 70's onwards, stereo surely did not have to be "sold" in this way?

I would like to start the nominations with the original meatloaf "Bat out of hell" album with the tag - "Where did all the low frequencies go?" Was it the mix engineer or producer that didn't think a bit of bottom end would add some weight to the sound or did the cutting engineer nod off and switch on a high-pass filter by mistake?

Which "classic recordings" would you nominate because of that muddy sounding vocal or piano, or a confusing, poorly mixed or just plain silly soundstage?