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Hi. When I was a kid in the 70s, and later a teen in the 80s, Time-
LIFE was always airing those long commercials of music collections,
usually gospel or country or soft rock, whatever. "Call now!" I
always thought to myself, "Geez, only old people buy that music, and
buy it over the phone."

So, um, now that I'm 40, these things of course look interesting to me
now. Just tonight, they aired an infomercial on their "Soul Story"
collection, and damn if that isn't a great collection of 50's-70s R&B.
I'm 99% sure I'm going to get it, but there's one problem: How well is
Time-LIFE stuff mastered?

As an audio engineer, I'm concerned about buying one of these
collections and receiving something that was poorly mastered and/or
sourced from poor masters. Who masters these collections? From whom
does Time-LIFE get the originals?

I guess my watermark would be Rhino. Rhino does a great job on putting
out collections. How does Time-LIFE compare to Rhino?

Thanks,
Roger Carlson

[Nono]

On 12 mei, 08:47, wrote:
Hi. When I was a kid in the 70s, and later a teen in the 80s, Time-
LIFE was always airing those long commercials of music collections,
usually gospel or country or soft rock, whatever. "Call now!" I
always thought to myself, "Geez, only old people buy that music, and
buy it over the phone."

So, um, now that I'm 40, these things of course look interesting to me
now. Just tonight, they aired an infomercial on their "Soul Story"
collection, and damn if that isn't a great collection of 50's-70s R&B.
I'm 99% sure I'm going to get it, but there's one problem: How well is
Time-LIFE stuff mastered?

As an audio engineer, I'm concerned about buying one of these
collections and receiving something that was poorly mastered and/or
sourced from poor masters. Who masters these collections? From whom
does Time-LIFE get the originals?

I guess my watermark would be Rhino. Rhino does a great job on putting
out collections. How does Time-LIFE compare to Rhino?

Thanks,
Roger Carlson


That's the thing with these sale methods; you don't really know in
advance what quality is of what you're buying, so I fear that the only
way to find out is to purchase it or find someone who has done that
before you.
I have myself some original 70/80's records that sonically do not
really compare to the good recordings of today.
Nonetheless, when I'm in the mood for these oldies - as long as I
don't keep comparing - the sound don't bother me at all; I just enjoy
the performance.

But I'm wondering, what do you consider good mastering for an 70/80's
recording, one that make it sound like 2007 or one that make it sound
like an 70/80's recording or sounding not mastered at all.
The reason for me asking this is that I have some new well performed,
well recorded, much better sounding versions of some oldies, but I
still find myself prefering to listen to the relatively crappy
sounding originals.
Funny creatures we are, us humans.
I'm curious to know the answer to your question too.

[Ty Ford]

On Sat, 12 May 2007 02:47:52 -0400, wrote
(in article . com):

Hi. When I was a kid in the 70s, and later a teen in the 80s, Time-
LIFE was always airing those long commercials of music collections,
usually gospel or country or soft rock, whatever. "Call now!" I
always thought to myself, "Geez, only old people buy that music, and
buy it over the phone."

So, um, now that I'm 40, these things of course look interesting to me
now. Just tonight, they aired an infomercial on their "Soul Story"
collection, and damn if that isn't a great collection of 50's-70s R&B.
I'm 99% sure I'm going to get it, but there's one problem: How well is
Time-LIFE stuff mastered?

As an audio engineer, I'm concerned about buying one of these
collections and receiving something that was poorly mastered and/or
sourced from poor masters. Who masters these collections? From whom
does Time-LIFE get the originals?

I guess my watermark would be Rhino. Rhino does a great job on putting
out collections. How does Time-LIFE compare to Rhino?

Thanks,
Roger Carlson


Roger,

I remember a studio near Washington DC that was mastering these compilations.
The owner's philosophy back when the work was being done was to make his own
mixing projects sound like the local compressed and limited top 40 FM
station.

Hopefully, he didn't do that to the original masters.

Regards,

Ty Ford


--Audio Equipment Reviews Audio Production Services
Acting and Voiceover Demos http://www.tyford.com
Guitar player?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RZJ9MptZmU

[Scott Dorsey]

wrote:

As an audio engineer, I'm concerned about buying one of these
collections and receiving something that was poorly mastered and/or
sourced from poor masters. Who masters these collections? From whom
does Time-LIFE get the originals?

From the original labels. The nice thing about the digital world today
is there is no reason not to get digital copies that are a million generations
down from the original.

I can only talk about the Time-Life stuff back in the LP era, though. Back
then they commissioned some original recordings which were beautifully done,
some of which were done on 1/2" 30 ips tape back when the world was using
15 ips 1/4". They had a bunch of records that were mastered by some high
grade guys like George Piros.

And they also had some stuff that was cut abominably badly too, including
attempts to get so much time on a single disc that any concept of fidelity
had to be thrown out the window.

Like a lot of the compilation labels, I think it had to do with how seriously
they took the project, and who was available to do the job that week. Since
they were contracting everything out, it depended on who they were contracting
to.

I guess my watermark would be Rhino. Rhino does a great job on putting
out collections. How does Time-LIFE compare to Rhino?

The thing about Rhino is that they do everything in-house, and they go out
of their way to try and get the earliest generation tapes from the original
labels as possible. And they don't screw with the original sound. It's
really hard to beat that.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Chris!]

wrote in message
ups.com...
As an audio engineer, I'm concerned about buying one of these
collections and receiving something that was poorly mastered and/or
sourced from poor masters. Who masters these collections? From whom
does Time-LIFE get the originals?

Several years ago I was working for a studio that back in the mists of time
had recorded a hit and had long ago given the master to the artist. Well,
one of the reissue houses wanted to include it in a compilation and the
artist insisted that we still had the master, which we didn't. Things got
ugly and it was decided to deliver a "master" to the artist. We dug around
in the garage the boss had rented years ago and found a pristine, shrink
wrapped Stereo LP. The LP was schlepped onto a turntable, the hit recorded
at 15 IPS on a two-track machine, paper leader was put on the front and back
and the "master" was delivered to the artist.

A cautionary tale about original masters.