Would have to go with all the Husker Du albums. Can barely make out the words, little or no separation of instruments, etc.
I think Robert Fripp has been making a cottage industry of remastering/rereleasing the old (pre-Disipline) KC albums. Discipline and beyond have not suffered in the production department, IHMO.
Rollins Band pre-End of Silence could stand some fattening up. The albums I’ve heard don’t lack for balls, but they could stand some sweetening. Of course, I’m up against the “poor quality is part of the charm argument,” hereinafter known as “the Misfits principle.”
My vote would be for Field Day by Marshall Crenshaw. This album has some of the best songs the man has ever recorded, but it’s almost unlistenable due to the HEAVY reverb that saturates every single track.
Verve’s A Storm in Heaven. One of the trippiest albums I own, but its awful production makes is seem like you’re listening to it at the end of a long hallway. Granted, this album is chock full of reverb, but it could have sounded clearer. Even their first effort, The Verve E.P., sounds much better.
Have to put Aenima by tool in this category, too. It’s never sounded good on any stereo I’ve played it. I almost have to think it’s intentional, however, since Undertow and Lateralus are two of the best sounding CD’s I own.
And Justice For All came to mind the instant I saw the thread title in the forum listing. Re: the bass being deliberately mixed low because of the bitterness around Cliff’s death, I often wondered why Jason didn’t walk out of the band straight away.
Oh, and I third the suggestion of rerecording the Husker Du albums. Very, very mushy sound. Not good.
One of my all-time favorite albums belongs on this list: “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.” The songs are wonderful, probably the best Ray Davies ever wrote (which is saying sopmething), but the sound quality leaves much to be desired.
To the earlier poster who mentioned King Crimson: from what I’ve read, Robert Fripp agrees with you abouit the sound quality of King Crimson CDs, but Fripp blames the CD format itself, rather than the age or quality of the original tapes. Fripp says that many of Crimson’s albums were designed to take advantage of qualities specific to vinyl. For example, there are many Crimson tracks in which sounds seem to come out of nowhere (from near dead silence). That works splendidly on vinyl records (in which the sound of a needle in the groove can mask subtle sounds) or even on tape (the natural hissing of a tape can disguise subtle sounds, too), but doesn’t work NEARLY so well on CD.
So, Fripp thinks Crimson’s older work sounds much better on vinyl too, and doesn’t think there’s much he can do about that using current technology.
Black Sabbath’s Vol. 4 disappointed me in terms of its sound quality. Years ago I bought I used tape and thought that it might have been a bootlegged copy. I swear it sounded like someone just set a $20 tape recorder next to a stereo speaker to record it. I thought it was just my tape, but years later when I [whisper][sub]downloaded a couple MP3s[/sub][/whisper] from the album and heard these tracks again they sounded no better.
I like the charm of low production values in many cases. Sometimes I think it would be an interesting thing to put the sound of old record nicks into a CD recording. And BTW, if Jimmy Hendrix ever rerecorded he’d have to work on his chops because he was unbelievably sloppy.