I'm not into 50's music, but I can bear witness that the sound systems before digital music sounded better in some way that's impossible to describe to someone who's never heard it. Maybe the proper term is analog music, as opposed to digital? Whatever it was, it had greater depth and substance.

edit: Analog is exactly what it was called, and was distinguished from digital because it was made up of a continuous signal, rather than digital "bits". If one listens to digital music closely, one can almost hear each individual bit, making the music sound almost like static interference. Analog music on the other hand was a continuous blast of deep sound.