I'm wondering if someone could give me a good answer why the sound quality of the 1969 soundboards (get yer ya ya's out & Gimme shelter) is so much better than the 1972-1973 tour? (Ladies & Gentlemen / Brussels affair)

Differences:
1969
The stereo mix; Taylor hard left, drums/bass/vocals center, Richars hard right
Big fat sound with good clearity and dynamic

1972/1973
Ladies & Gentlemen had a very bad stereo mix; compressed, narrow mix of instruments, Guitars low mixed (Especially Taylor's)
1973 had a somewhat better mix, Taylor's guitar volume is good, but not that wide stereo mix we saw in 1969.

In 1969 we had 8- or 16 tracks; in 1972 Ladies & Gentlemen is recorded in 32-tracks! Brussels is recorded in Quad in 1973.

The 1969 soundboards are way better sounding than the later released live recordings (1972,1973,1975/1976 (Love you live)

Quote
kevinkamphuis
I'm wondering if someone could give me a good answer why the sound quality of the 1969 soundboards (get yer ya ya's out & Gimme shelter) is so much better than the 1972-1973 tour? (Ladies & Gentlemen / Brussels affair)

Differences:
1969
The stereo mix; Taylor hard left, drums/bass/vocals center, Richars hard right
Big fat sound with good clearity and dynamic

1972/1973
Ladies & Gentlemen had a very bad stereo mix; compressed, narrow mix of instruments, Guitars low mixed (Especially Taylor's)
1973 had a somewhat better mix, Taylor's guitar volume is good, but not that wide stereo mix we saw in 1969.

In 1969 we had 8- or 16 tracks; in 1972 Ladies & Gentlemen is recorded in 32-tracks! Brussels is recorded in Quad in 1973.

The 1969 soundboards are way better sounding than the later released live recordings (1972,1973,1975/1976 (Love you live)

Interesting that the supposedly better technoloigy produced inferior live recordings. LYL is terrible, except for the El Mocambo side, which sounds great. And I agree that Ya Yas sounds better than LAG.

not sure you can compare an album to a film. What versions of Ya Ya's and Ladies and Gentlemen are you comparing?

Love You Live is in part compromised by the poor overdubbing. Perhaps the stages were not as conducive to recording as in '69?

mick makes an interesting comment in the Old Grey Whistle test interview on Love You Live's release that he isn't happy with the finished sound, that he wishes live albums were recorded from the audience (as on bootlegs, which he listened to) rather than multitracked.

recording "technology" is unusual in that enhancements are often not improvements. So this shouldn't be too surprising. Plus the Stones were never all that careful about these things.

For Ladies & Gentleman I don't know I assume that they used multi track recording equipment for this concert, but it would be silly to overdub and mixed them after 40 years.
Brussels is a bootleg so they probably taped it illegal.

As for GYYYA they are taped multi track and mixed and overdubbed as an normal LP release.

Not long time ago I downloaded 3 multi track recordings from The Who Live At Leeds all the vocals and instruments are in separated tracks

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Putting SBs aside for a minute, I've always noticed that the best 1972 audience tapes is nowhere as good sounding as the best 69 aud tapes! The 73 European aud recordings seem to be a little better-maybe better equipment? But then its strange that the 1970 European aud tapes are usually crappy comepared to the 69 tapes so it confuses me all the way around!

I think all the 1970 European audio tapes are just recorded from the audience.

So I think we got:
The original tapes from the Stones (Ya Ya's)
The illegal taped concerts by the engineers (Brussels)
And the recordings taped by the audience (Any 70th concert)

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