Deutsche Grammophon: When were the "bad" years?

Over and over again I come across references to a period of Deutsche Grammophon recordings that were notoriously shrill, and widely disliked because of it (not the music, the sound quality). I'd like to know: when did this happen? Or was it a sporadic occurrence throughout the 80s? I recall someone warning me years ago about some DG recordings from the late 80s.

Among my DG CDs I've yet to encounter any downright poor recordings, although I did notice some of my DG lps are less than desirable in terms of sound quality.

As I am rapidly expanding my classical music collection, I'd like to have a general idea of what to avoid.

Additionally, if anyone knows, I'd like to find out what the problem was with those disliked DG recordings. Was it simply the choices of the studio engineers? Is it a matter of taste in some instances?

Thanks in advance for your insights. :nerd:

For me, the worst recording period was during the 2-3 year transition from analog to digital recording (first digital recordings, up to 83 or 84). Those recordings sound muffled to my ears. Some notorious examples are Strauss´s Alpensymphony and Holst´s The Planets conducted by Karajan, which are great performances in bad sound, IMHO. But there are many. DG got better results later on, and most recordings tapes live (Bernstein and some Karajan) sound very good to excellent.

A second bad period was during the late 60´s, regarding this time recordings made in Philharmonie Hall in Berlin, home of the Berliner Philharminiker. The recording engineers couldn´t figure out how to record there (as compared to the contemporary recordings made in Vienna, for example) and took them some time to learn how to do it, IMHO. Again, some examples of Karajan serve as evidence to this comment.

In both instances, the problems I mentioned were associated to the recording engineering itself rather than with the music performances.

Thanks guiller, that was very informative. Now that you mention the analog to digital transition of the early eighties, I recall someone bringing it up in the past on AK.

I just wanted to know because there are so many DG releases from all time periods, it can be a little confusing.

Agreed, those were some bad years. Not just because of early digital technology and the associated learning curve, but also the over use of spotlight mics. The result was a loss of hall ambiance and messed up imaging compared to earlier efforts.

Raynald said:

Agreed, those were some bad years. Not just because of early digital technology and the associated learning curve, but also the over use of spotlight mics. The result was a loss of hall ambiance and messed up imaging compared to earlier efforts.

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I read somewhere that the longer Karajan was there, the more he had a say in mic placement. And the results weren't good. I assume I read it online, though, so who knows. I'm no expert.

I have learned to just avoid most of the Digital recordings from the early and mid 80's from them. I picked up a mint Karajan Fest record at Goodwill and it ended up sounding very muddy much like EMI's DMM lp's. Thank got I have only spent about $4 in total on these recordings.