Born to Run: Why the Poor Sound Quality?

The first 2/3s of the Greatest Hits has poor sound quality while the last 1/3 sounds excellent. Kind of a chronology of music as well as recording technique.

"Born To Run" sounds the way it does becuase it was made in 1975. It was mixed in a typical studio of the time with speakers with no bottom real bass. The track needs to be heard on Altec Big REds or the equivalent JBL studio speakers of the time. There is a huge bump in the frequency response of those speakers at 12HZ so that the ear thinks it is hearing real bass, ergo, the bass isn't on the tape. Secondly the tracks were mixed with lots of compression/limiting (for the cartridges and amps of the day as well as the radio) so there is not dynamic range on the master. That is why it sounds so flat and small on a system of today (and on some special systems back then too). This mixing style also affected many other great musical tracks that don't sound great such as the Eagles Hotel California, etc. The Brits always made more dynamic records with more real bass such as 10CC, SuperTramp, etc.

Lastly, the Springsteen track was so great to listen to they mixed it for a week or more and by that time one's ears get to know the track so well all objectivity is lost in judging a mix. It is ideal to bring in a fresh remix engineer or wait a week or more to mix a track so that your ears come to it fresh.

I think that even if you went to the 16 or 24 track of the original session you would find a lot of EQ/compression/limiting on the recorded tracks which was the style back then, and even a modern cost no object remix would not make it come alive to a significant degree. I bet Bruce kicks himself everyday when he hears that track and its missing bass.

I am always amazed at the engineers from the RCA and Mercury Living Presence classical recordings. They knew that they were getting what they were hearing onto the tape but no playback system was invented yet that would get it back off the tape to your ears. It was a labor of love truly, and that is why the recordings sound so good today.

A lot of studios were getting rid of their tube stuff and "modernizing" with solid state recording equipment.
IMO: That early transistor stuff was harsh. Could this have contributed to the sonics of the era? Thankfully, some Luddites kept recording with tube equipment!

I have an advanced copy of the new album, Magic and I had to hear it in my car to really appreciate it. The title track and Radio Nowhere are the stand out tracks audio wise and performance wise. At first listen I was not impressed, generic Springsteen, but after repeated listenings I found myself enjoying the songs more and more. The sound is very reminisent of the wall of sound captured on the Born to Run sessions. It should go over great live as these tracks seem to be written for that purpose.

I met Jimmy Iovine, the engineer, several years ago and had a nice discussion on the session environment. I also have heard various bootlegs of this album as part of the studio rehersal environment while it was being creating. A general problem of this album was that it was multi-tracked over many takes (Born to Run alone has 100 plus known takes over a year in progress)and during the mixing sessions, the combining of many takes and tracks degraded the overall production. This was before tape hiss reduction and the downstream degrading of generations of tapes was very common to work around that particular problem. The sessions were especilly grueling (they knew they would be dropped)and Bruce has a high work ethic, and really puts his band through the paces ALL DAY AND NIGHT. Very hard to remain fresh and composed after so many takes. Born To Run the album was always very flat and uninspired compared to the 1975 shows that supported the album. The LA Forum bootleg is a good approximation of the tour at its height.

As a side bar, the very best Springsteen cd is a master tape bootleg of the 1979 "river" sessions. It came out in 1992 in Italy and was titled "The Ties That Bind." Only 1000 were made and one fetched $1,000 on Ebay several years back. I am sure it is online in P to P exchange sites. It was live in studio before mixdown and best approximates the live and dynamic sound what the band is capable of. Those sessions at the Record Plant in NYC absolutely kill the final release that CBS issued as The River in 1980.