I can't really call it on this one. These days it's a lot easier to keep time playing with a click track or MPC(for some, not all), so I can't really say whether it's better now days. On the other hand, I can say that the knowledge, and execution of time and various time signatures are better now days because the older music just didn't incorporate too many different time signatures and tempos to study and play to depending on what time of music you listed to in those days.
I disagree on the comment that older music didn't incorporate too many different time signatures. In fact the knowledge of only a select few and their execution of time is better. The majority today has gotten so dependant on MPC, ProTools, Beat Detective, Loops etc that they cannot play time time without them. Because of the over use of these mechanisms today's music doesn't flow as well nor does it interact with the listener as well on an emotional/spiritual level.
In response to the general post:
The guys with the most exceptional timing these days are the guys who study the fundamentals of music - classical, jazz improv, and Middle-Eastern/Indian and African based music and play to records of old. Technology now allows them to more accuratley measure what was inatley played before. Guys like Jojo, Virgil, Thomas Lang, Marco Minnemann, Benny Greb, Johnny Rabb, Gavin Harrison, Antonio Sanchez, Chris Dave and others are not dependent on technology but exploit it's possibilities by commanding it's control through mental preparation and physical discipline. Most of these guys actually want to return to playing music without clicks.
Everything vibrates, pulses...sound, light, objects all cycle in peaks and valleys with consistent rhythmic landmarks (because they were spoken into existence). How you travel this path tells the musical story. Man has gotten further and further away from it's natural cycle. We now have to train ourselves to play time rather than infusing our natural time upon the musical vision at had. The heart and soul of the listener now rarely has any sustainable connection to the music of today.
Bottom line:
1. Technology is a tool that is abused today
2. Man has become distracted lazy and abdicated his leadership to electronics.
3. The lack of self-discipline of man is evident in the vast inability to maintain consistant time without machinery and the inability to hear the heart over the machine.
