Best Speakers for Compressed 1960s Recordings?

[ajant]

Many of my favorite 60s pop and soundtrack recordings, while often well produced (relatively low noise and distortion) were then often slammed with lots of compression in the mastering room. Presumably, record labels insisted on this to prevent overloads on AM radio, but perhaps even more so to make them playable on cheap vinyl players, or even the SOTA turntables of the day.

My situation is that I want to build my friend Pierre’s speakers; see posts 15,266, 15,276
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/t...00392/page-764
https://www.usspeaker.com/radian 745neoBepb-1.htm
https://audio-database.com/PIONEER-E...l-1601b-e.html

Being highly transparent (Pierre claims the are very comparable to the TAD speakers he heard at the Montreal audiofest last month), they will deliver all the best from my SACDs and my great recordings on CD.

But not surprisingly, when we played my compressed recordings-especially those which probably had compression applied globally post final mix rather than to individual tracks beforehand-they sounded mostly flat; no appreciable dynamic range. And some also sounded “congested” when the orchestrations would get busy.

Unfortunately the compression is “baked” into these recordings so the lost dynamics cannot be restored even with this software. https://www.izotope.com/en/shop/rx-10-advanced/

But might there be particular speakers (active or passive) with the right driver/horn combinations and voicing filters that would tend not to emphasize the audible effects of compression-even if they couldn't be played at anywhere near the sound pressure levels of the original studio event, and without audible distortion?

 

[thedudeabides]

Unless the speaker is voiced with wacked out FR, can't squeeze water from a rock. Suggest you try to find a "dbx" dynamic range expander that meets your needs. Will obviously impact sonic performance in other areas.

 

[Hear Here]

Clever idea of trying a dbx decoder. I wonder if it would work.

It uses the principle of HALVING the VU levels at the recording stage, allowing up to +10dB or so (reduced to +5dB by dbx) before distortion sets in and DOUBLING the VU levels on playback, allowing the true performance levels to be restored while the noise levels (tape hiss. etc) becomes inaudible. A great system mainly used on cassette decks but it never caught on because it required dbx equipment to do these jobs, while Dolby's simpler but less effective noise reduction system. didn't.

Your theory is based on the assumption that the engineers compressed the sound in much the same way that dbx does, so a dbx decoder may expand it. Give it a go, though I suspect dbx will over-cook things as it's a very aggressive system.

The main reason for compression in those days was, I believe more to do with music played in cars where the background noise is inevitably very high and quiet passages would need a volume increase to make them heard, only to require a volume reduction after music returns to normal levels.

My dbx machine was a Technics cassette deck and it allowed a external analogue input from a record player playing a dbx-encoded LP. I guess these old Technics machines can be found in charity shops, etc for next to nothing. The mechanism doesn't need to work - only the electronics with the dbx circuit and an Aux input for an external dbx-encoded source.