For me, the golden age has a lot to do with the music as well as the technology and is in the post-psych era in the UK, say ’68-71 or a little later. Studios were still somewhat primitive, bands had to be capable of playing the songs ’live in the studio’ rather than depending on dubbing in better parts. (Yes, they could overdub early on, but it wasn’t as much of a crutch). I think by 1970 or so, US studios had 16-24 tracks. That alone wasn’t bad, but it did shift the focus to the engineer/producer as an auteur and in the process, a lot of the product were studio confabulations-- some sound great, but have less to do with the sound of the room and the energy that could be generated by musicians playing together at the same time.
Much also depends on the production choices.
Whether or not you like early Neil Young, for example, Harvest (particularly the early Lee Hulko-mastered copies if you can find an unmolested one), sound fabulous-- very much a ’live in the studio’ recording, though tracks were recorded in different places at different times. It has a very organic quality.
PS: I also like the music in this time window- very creative, went in a million directions, London and environs were an incubator at the time and a lot of the templates for a lot of different genres of popular music were formed in this period that I appreciate-- very heavy rock, psych folk, early prog rock, precursor bands to what eventually was labelled 'metal' (though no cookie monster vocals or shredding). I think the scene then shifted to the LA singer-songerwriter thing by the early '70s. A whole different kettle of fish. And there were some really over the top studios there that got refurbished for the new rock-pop era.
