2026-08-19 10:53 UTC
@silvermoats@mastodon.social @Cognessence@social.linux.pizza nothing about 80s hifi was accurate tbh.
idk if u rem 'loudness' buttons. really ridiculous but some of them sounded ace, eg aiwa's 'dynamic super loudness', that was amazing
but with tape u had diff tape types with diff bias settings and nothing about that was flat, you were cutting and boosting based on the tape response - plus you had dolby which is similar to multiband compression
it was a minefield of tonal modification
also why a lot of 80s albums sound thin and terrible on modern 'flat' setups
Replies (1)
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@Cognessence@social.linux.pizza 2026-08-19 11:17
@sean_ae@post.lurk.org @silvermoats@mastodon.social oh my gosh, you’ve triggered such distinct memories of loudness buttons from my childhood. I distinctly remember feeling “guilty” about liking it, like I wasn’t hearing the music as it “should” be. But I remember now a kind of proliferation of them, and how some sounded better than others; my dad’s hifi boosted things really nicely, but smaller more portable systems sounded even nastier when it was on, like they could barely cope with their own loudness buttons. As you mentioned though there’s probably similar-ish-in-principle but more sophisticated things going on with some modern phone and laptop speakers. :)