Couldn't wait...

[Stephen Swann]

hijinks at UTARLG.UTA.EDU writes:
>
> On Sun, 6 Dec 1998, Stephen Swann wrote:
>
> > Paul Mather writes:
> > (As a ide note, _Black Sabbath_, and _Welcome to Sky Valley_ were two
> > of the dozen or so test disks that I used when auditioning speakers.
> > It was Kyuss that revealed the sorry bass response of just about every
> > brand of speaker on the market these days, btw.)
>
> I made a series of introduction to heavy music tapes for my girlfriend,
> and included a good bit of Kyuss among the other usual suspects.  But the
> Kyuss (and Fu Manchu)! She really liked and started turning it up in her
> car, and after a while, her speakers started sounding funny, all woody,
> muffled, and wishy-washy.  Kyuss ruined her speakers!

I used _Welcome to Sky Valley_, _Black Sabbath_ (Castle remaster), and
Rusted Root's _Cruel Sun_ (1998 remaster) as my main test disks when
checking speakers for bass response.  All speakers that I tested fell
down on the job, barring one brand (which not coincidentally, is what
I ended up buying).  The better speakers failed gracefully, by just
failing to reproduce the depth and impact of the bass on those disks;
the others failed by distorting horribly (I particularly remember a
pair of Acoustic Energy towers, sounding desperately "boxed in" as they
tried to throw the huge, volcanic bass sound of _Sky Valley_ through
a pair of 5-inch "woofers".

> When I hear Kyuss, it makes me wonder what early bands exploring the
> possibility of bass, downtuned or not, could have done with better
> recording techniques. I mean, imagine Black Sabbath Master of Reality or
> Vol. 4 and Hawkwind's Doremi Fasol Latido with the kind of bass recording
> techniques available now... as demonstrated by Kyuss, Fu Manchu, etc.

Those early Black Sabbath albums aren't as lacking as you might
suspect (especially if you've only heard the american CD releases).
The Castle remasters sound absolutely crushing (and thank god, Castle
didn't take the edge off their sound by trying to "clean up" the
recording too much).  I don't have the reissue of _Vol 4_ or _Master
of Reality_ yet, but even the first album sounds *really* good, and I
don't mean "really good, considering its age", either.

Steve
swann at plutonia.com