So, I've been listening to LOTS of reference tracks in my car recently. When I hear a song that was made recently (past 5-10 years), I can basically pinpoint how it was made and then "recreate" it essentially using my modest set of plugins. But when I hear 80s music, I just CANNOT figure out how they made all of those WILD sounds. It's not even the sounds - It's like the whole aura/ vibe/ sonic landscape is totally different. I wonder what would account for that. Was most 80s music recorded in the same place? I've been doing some reading this morning, and some of the things I'm seeing are the heavy reverb/ gated snare thing, introduction of certain synthesizers, etc. but I'm not really finding any satisfactory answers as to why things sounded so drastically different in all those recordings. I'm sure tape and outboard gear, but even then...

Does anyone have experience recording stuff in the 80s, particularly any radio tunes? Any experience working in any studios that were big in the 80s?

Thanks.

Cheers