90s records sound

[xazrules]

Hi everyone, while i'm waiting for some parts to arrive and some spare time from recording i'd like to know what's your opinion about 90s through early '00s records sound. i'm talking about heavy music with med to high gain guitars, think Millencolin, Satanic Surfers, Nirvana, Slayer, NOFX, The Hives, QOTSA, BRMC, White Stripes etc etc.. or your favourite bands from that era.
I ask this because i can't get my head around why all of the records from this period:

1 -  lack bass in respect to today records, like a shelving cut from 200/300hz range and no sub bass
2 - just beautiful transients without sounding too smashed or saturated while remaining super punchy, not like today where we have horrible spikes on every percs hits or the opposite where everything is smashed lacking punchiness
3 - while having less bass that bring us that "warmness", they sound so smooth in the highend down 'till 2khz (i think today is our struggle the region from 2k to 6khz where we define a record harsh if too much or dull if too low)
4. the vocals are always up front the mix while not sounding out of the music behind.
5. everything else comes you to mind..

we know that a brickwall limiter in mastering wasn't being used until late 2000 i think..

So, what do you think about one of the best period for music (after the 60s) mixing/mastering wise?
gear? digital vs analog? tape? tubes? transistor? guitar wood? strings gauge? pick thickness? drums heads?  ;D

Hope you'd like to share your opinion and i love'd to, and sorry for my rantling!! i don't want to fall in the same spot where the music was better yesterday and today the music is just bad. we have to be conscious of the time we live in and have the most joy from it, and it's my aim help people make great records with what we have (less money) 

 

[Whoops]

Hi everyone, while i'm waiting for some parts to arrive and some spare time from recording i'd like to know what's your opinion about 90s through early '00s records sound. i'm talking about heavy music with med to high gain guitars, think Millencolin, Satanic Surfers, Nirvana, Slayer, NOFX, The Hives, QOTSA, BRMC, White Stripes etc etc.. or your favourite bands from that era.
I ask this because i can't get my head around why all of the records from this period:

1 -  lack bass in respect to today records, like a shelving cut from 200/300hz range and no sub bass
2 - just beautiful transients without sounding too smashed or saturated while remaining super punchy, not like today where we have horrible spikes on every percs hits or the opposite where everything is smashed lacking punchiness
3 - while having less bass that bring us that "warmness", they sound so smooth in the highend down 'till 2khz (i think today is our struggle the region from 2k to 6khz where we define a record harsh if too much or dull if too low)
4. the vocals are always up front the mix while not sounding out of the music behind.
5. everything else comes you to mind..

we know that a brickwall limiter in mastering wasn't being used until late 2000 i think..

So, what do you think about one of the best period for music (after the 60s) mixing/mastering wise?
gear? digital vs analog? tape? tubes? transistor? guitar wood? strings gauge? pick thickness? drums heads?  ;D

Hope you'd like to share your opinion and i love'd to, and sorry for my rantling!! i don't want to fall in the same spot where the music was better yesterday and today the music is just bad. we have to be conscious of the time we live in and have the most joy from it, and it's my aim help people make great records with what we have (less money) 

Hello xazrules,
I also like records for that era, more because of the music as I was teenager back them , as for the sounds I like records from any era, all eras are really interesting in terms of sound to me.

1 -  lack bass in respect to today records, like a shelving cut from 200/300hz range and no sub bass

Thats understandable, in the 90s most consumer Hi-Fi systems didnt have a subwoofer, so it's normal that music was not mixed thinking about  frequencies that most systems (common average systems)  would not reproduce.

Nowadays even laptop computers have a small sub woofer speaker, it doenst reproduce the sub quite well but it's considered something that  was not considered in the 90s.
Even Small bluetooth speakers, external computer speakers are designed nowdays to reproduce at least a litle bit of sub.

It's normall as those are frequencies we can hear and feel, so it makes sense to broaden the frequency response of the playback systems.

Also in the mid 80s and 90s most the records were mixed using yamaha NS10 near field speakers.
Yamaha NS10 don't reproduce the lower 2 octaves.  Of course there were Main Monitors in the studio, but most of the time the engineer was mixing in the yamaha NS10

2 - just beautiful transients without sounding too smashed or saturated while remaining super punchy, not like today where we have horrible spikes on every percs hits or the opposite where everything is smashed lacking punchiness

less limiting maybe helps what you're refering to.
If you are talking about heavy music nowadays maybe you're right

But if you are talking about present music in general I disagree, there's a lot of diversity, people are doing different things.
Listen to Laura Marling, Sharon Van Ettan,  The Black Keys and Arctic Monkeys.
Those artists have amazing sounding records

3- they sound so smooth in the highend down 'till 2khz (i think today is our struggle the region from 2k to 6khz where we define a record harsh if too much or dull if too low)

Nirvana Nevermind doesnt sound smooth in that region, I love the record but it can be harsh in some systems.

"i think today is our struggle the region from 2k to 6khz where we define a record harsh if too much or dull if too low"

Define "today",  like I said in point 2, "today" is really diverse, it's great

4. the vocals are always up front the mix while not sounding out of the music behind.

Depends on the band and music aesthetics , it's not a 90's thing

Maybe an Andy Wallace thing?

we know that a brickwall limiter in mastering wasn't being used until late 2000 i think..

Sorry, not true.
For example Waves L1 was released in 94.

Also Brickwall limiting technics were used  in mixing and mastering for a long time to suppress unwanted peaks.
Theres a lot of ways of achieving brickwall limiting, analog cliping is one of them or using an analog limiter with a really high ratio.

Even before was L1, cliping the A/D converter is another way of achieving that.

The only diference that software Limiters brought was a Lookahed feature, but A/D peak limiting was already being used.

And to be honest all those tools are great, just at some point Artists/Labels/Managers started to abuse from wanting to sound louder than the neighbour (something that remonts to the beggining of the record industry)

A certain level of Brickwall limiting can actually make the record and rock music sound punchier, too much it destroys everything.
The problem was abusing

Seeing the bands you referred to and the type of sounds and the points you wrote, I think you are talking more about the Andy Wallace sound than the 90s sound.
In case you don't know him search a bit for his works in the 90s, his style was the sound you describe

 

[john12ax7]

I would say a lot of it is due to real musicians playing real instruments in a real acoustic space recording to tape and mixing with a console and outboard gear.  Things were much different then,  on both sides of the glass.

 

[Whoops]

I would say a lot of it is due to real musicians playing real instruments in a real acoustic space recording to tape and mixing with a console and outboard gear.  Things were much different then,  on both sides of the glass.

90's rock music is also full of Real Samples on top of Real instruments, like for example Kick and Snare (toms also)

 

[john12ax7]

90's rock music is also full of Real Samples on top of Real instruments, like for example Kick and Snare (toms also)

True,  a lot of records seemed to even use to the same samples,  especially for share

 

[Whoops]

True,  a lot of records seemed to even use to the same samples,  especially for share

yes probably, less libraries back then, more difficult to share them without internet also

 

[Bo Deadly]

I would say a lot of it is due to real musicians playing real instruments in a real acoustic space recording to tape and mixing with a console and outboard gear.  Things were much different then,  on both sides of the glass.

Wow. That's some hard shade. I don't care for 90's music at all and I graduated HS in 91. When Nirvana came out, I tried like hell to like it but it just didn't take. I liked Jane's but I don't own any 90's music at all. Having said that, I think they are real musicians using real instruments and if you watch rockumentaries about that period like "Sound City", they used real consoles and spaces.

To me the 90's sound was about massive guitar distortion, dropped E and gimmicky dissonant chords. Everyone wanted to sound like Black Sabbath (but of course it was nothing like BS because BS was actually a wannabe blues / jazz band that was so bad they just fell back into the weird tongue-in-cheek occult-rock and of course it worked because it was so unique and different). That massive mid-scoop guitar sound is pretty sweet. But it just doesn't work with simple 3 chord rock.

 

[john12ax7]

Wow. That's some hard shade.

Ha,  perhaps it was a little overboard.  I'm actually not a big fan of a lot of the more popular 90s music. But even worse for me is the current trend where everything is done on a laptop.

 

[Whoops]

Ha,  perhaps it was a little overboard.  I'm actually not a big fan of a lot of the more popular 90s music. But even worse for me is the current trend where everything is done on a laptop.

I really don't know whats the current trend as the only thing I really see is diversity.

It's great that some people are able to do their record on a laptop and share that music with other people something that was not possible in the past.

It's great also that other people are recording to tape

other people using Neve preamps designed in the 70s and recording to protools

there's even people  recording direct  to a lathe cutting machine:
https://theaudiophileman.com/direct-disc-third-man-style/

Diversity is quite good

But I think it's getting of topic...

 

[living sounds]

90's rock procedure was track-on-a-Neve-and-mix-on-an-SLL(tm). Still analog, even analog tape got plenty of use. Lo-Fi was an important aspect (distortion aka grunge), but not universal (RHCP, Pearl Jam or RATM sounded really clean and polished).

I vastly prefer the chord progressions/melodies/asthetics/sound to anything more current.

As for the low end, at least in the early 90s there was an ideal of an almost white noise like frequency distribution. Not much different from the 80s really in the low end (vinyl demands to keep that in check) but the digital recording media allowed for more high end now.

Maybe it was considered more consumer-radio friendly (music had to sound good on a kitchen radio or with the weak build in car-stereo).

This thread has a good rundown of 90s sound:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/high-end/1259590-any-90s-albums-translate-2019-a.html

 

[boji]

mixing in the yamaha NS10

Seems reasonable that pro-studio expectations/ mixing traditions were part of it, as was the cost of great sounding recording gear back then.  But, it's a bit of a chicken or egg thing, as progressive rock / metal wasn't written for low frequency emphasis like today's music either.  Hiphop certainly required car subwoofers or big home speakers to be fully enjoyed, and there was plenty of it being made in the 90's, but it wasn't being mixed and mastered in the home.
A bit off the OP's point, but I think complex Ableton composition and programming demands for genres like EDM and dubstep are the equivalent of 90's metal / hard rock in terms of young artists figuring out new ways to be as loud and as obnoxious as possible while thumbing their noses at Daddy's cassette/cd  collection.     

In many cases the daw has itself become the instrument, and digital control of frequency and space in a mix is the wow factor, where in the past it was proficiency on real-world/old-world instruments.  To some degree I think houses that mix older, more traditional genres are taking notes and adjusting frequency and dynamics to match 'progressive'  genres.

 

[gyraf]

The relative lack of low end compared to today was also because most productions would run at 30ips to get as far above noise floor as possible. And higher tape speed means less low end:

Jakob E.

 

[Tubetec]

excelent stuff Jakob,

15ips non dolby  Ampex 456 , that was the sound of the era , loads of balls in the low end , for vinyl mix  that would need tailing off substantially , for modern digital no ,

Sucking the midrange out of the guitars goes way back , listen to Bowie live 72 in comparison to album version , Black sabbath's accoustic sounds were nicely layered back then too ,caravan ,and more

 

[Tubetec]

I saw a few sessions where dolby bypass wasnt enough , it had to be wired direct from console to tape machine ,same session all vocal takes were routed 'Dolby'  ,when you look at the activity leds on dolby ,it makes a lot of sense .

I think the punk era co incided with a certain London sound ,scouped cab 15ips , exactly like you hear on a vintage 'Madness' record
, still records with a bad ass punch in the 80- 100 hz region  to this day .

 

[Tubetec]

Specials ,'comin like a ghos town ' 15 ips ,lotta throat to it

 

[Tubetec]

Reggae knew the value of 15ips all along ,

 

[Bo Deadly]

Sucking the midrange out of the guitars goes way back , listen to Bowie live 72 in comparison to album version

Live? How would they mid-scoop guitars live? Mis-aligned cross-overs in the cabinets?

Mmm, that might actually work!

 

[alexc]

I remember the 90s as the era of Yamaha digital desks with spx and tc effects processors    AND  adat recorders   

Plus lots and lots and lots of of adat tapes!
 
When I last used my adat deck, prior to it's repurposing as landfill,  I was quite happy with the punch and depth of the bottom end - it sounded quite a bit more solid than some of the computer audio interfaces that I have used, despite the less capable spec of the adat system.

 

[xazrules]

Whoops i think you are really spot on what i've meant, you gave me something to think about!
RATM, RHCP, and Placebo (one of my favourite band of that era) still translate almost perfect in our rooms with our next gen 1hz-27khz speakers and give a lot of smoke to "today same genres".
i love black keys and arctic monkeys (their first records) but i'd like to keep them out of question for their "bigness" and because they basically do their sound by their own. that sound like plastic by the way but it's a stilistically choice i guess.

Today's records sound like PLASTIC!! even if the songwriting is excellent, the parts are well played etc.. they lack that powerfullness and i can't feel the feelings because of the sound (dynamics especially) sure there are some that i enjoy a lot but i have to be very picky to not get fooled by fackery.

I respect a lot your opinion but if it is just people that play togheter in a room can you explain me why Greta van Fleet sounds plastic even they supposed to be the new Led Zepp? i'm sure the industry give them everything to sound like the zeps and launch hard rock again, but guess what? a lot of us are: mmhh i don't know, even if they do a great job writing and playing as young kids.

i'm talking about real music, yes today we have a lot of variety and i'm glad, and i'm glad that computers helped a lot of people express themself, it means more work for us! and some competivity for rock bands that need to get more creative and musicians in general, so we haven't to get stuck in just one genre for a decade and wait for the next big thing like our history tell us.

So, i think we are very lucky to be here right now, but we need to squeeze out more our brains and give that liveness to records like it should. 

I remember the 90s as the era of Yamaha digital desks with spx and tc effects processors    AND  adat recorders   

Plus lots and lots and lots of of adat tapes!
 
When I last used my adat deck, prior to it's repurposing as landfill,  I was quite happy with the punch and depth of the bottom end - it sounded quite a bit more solid than some of the computer audio interfaces that I have used, despite the less capable spec of the adat system.

Adat nice topic alexc! maybe is one of that medium that comboed with R2R defined that color!

yes white stripes are known to use samples live too back in the day so in studio almost for sure.


True,  a lot of records seemed to even use to the same samples,  especially for share

 

[Whoops]

xazrules  I think you should post in gearslutz, it's a forum much  better suited for you

Regards