The notes on the back cover of Katy Lied begin: “This is a high fidelity recording. Steely Dan uses a specially constructed 24-channel tape recorder, a ‘State-of-the-Art’ 36-input computerized mixdown console, and some very expensive German microphones.” The note continues with a laundry list of gear and settings, which are probably real but delivered with a smirk, and then concludes with, “For best results observe the R.I.A.A. curve.”
I shudder to think how many people have listened to Katy Lied without observing the R.I.A.A. curve. But this is the kind of thing dudes in the 1970s did—list the gear used to create an album and then give suggestions to the listener about the equipment and settings they might use to realize it. The recording summary reminds me of those on another LP by an audio obsessive that came out in 1975—Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, which he may have written while on speed and which definitely makes very little sense. But when audiophile musicians put their music out into the world, they hate losing control of it. What if someone listens to their perfectly sculpted sonic creation on a crappy all-in-one portable turntable with a battered needle? And let’s not even get into what it sounds like on earbuds.
The irony of the note on the back of Katy Lied, and possibly the inspiration for its inclusion, is that the album’s sound was, according to the band, deeply flawed. While Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were recording it with producer Gary Katz and engineer Roger Nichols, they employed a then-new technology called dbx, which expanded the dynamic range beyond the conventional limit of analog tape. The system worked by compressing the incoming signal and then expanding it on playback, with some filtering in there to reduce noise. It was more complicated than Dolby, boosting and then lowering a wider array of frequencies, and also, potentially, more effective.
But something went very wrong. “It was better sounding than anything you’ve ever heard to this date,” Katz told Cameron Crowe a couple of years later in Rolling Stone. “Even Aja. Unbelievable. We went to mix it, and the tape sounded funny. We found out the dbx noise reduction system we were using was not functioning properly.” Panic set in and some steps had to be done over with the release date approaching rapidly but they salvaged the record, at least as far as the label and the audience were concerned. But Becker and Fagen could never listen to Katy Lied again. The well had been poisoned, and they heard flaws in what to almost everyone else sounded pristine.