[[email protected]]

On Wednesday, July 19, 2017 at 4:42:55 PM UTC-4, Tatonik wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

One very offensive example I can think of from that era, though, is
the GRP "Digital Duke" recording. Now, it's aggressively multimiked and
incredibly bright and everything is in your face, but that's not the fault
exclusively of the conversion.

But.... listen to how notes die out... the reverb tails are almost chopped
off by the truncation. I'd never actually heard how bad truncation even
at 16 bits could be.

This is a DDD recording so there are at least three and possibly five
converters in the signal path.

But you can pick up just about anything from that era and hear the tonality
changing in the reverb tail as it drops down.
--scott

I happen to own that album. I did hear the aggressive brightness and
that it generally sounded odd and a bit unpleasant, for want of a better
description, though I didn't specifically notice the reverb tails. But
then I'm not always the most critical of listeners.

According to the liner notes, these are the perpetrators of the Digital
Duke album:

Produced by Michael Abene and Mercer Ellington
Executive Producers: Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen
Recorded by Ed Rak at Clinton Recording Studios, NYC on the Mitsubishi
X-850 32-track digital recorder
Assisted by Rebecca Everett
Digitally mixed and edited by Josiah Gluck at The Review Room, NYC on
the Sony PCM 1630 Digital Audio System
Assisted by Jim Singer
Digitally mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound, NYC on the Neve
Digital Transfer Console

Sterling Sound is pretty good. But if KMA wants to point fingers, I never heard anything remixed by Sterling, just "enhanced". I guess they started with electronic enhancing and eventually went all digital. But, by that time, most everyone had, and Sterling sort of faded.

First CD I bought, Doobie Brothers, was excessively bright. Nothing unusual.. And it seems to correct it, they had no choice but to remix multi-tracks.

Just my two cents.

Jack


Special Thanks to [among others]: Phil Vachon, Mitsubishi Pro Audio
copyright 1987

(An Ellington album I prefer is one by the American Jazz Orchestra led
by John Lewis, from a year or two later. It has a looser feel and the
sound seems fuller.)

[geoff]

On 20/07/2017 12:35 a.m., wrote:
JJAck wrote: "You know what is interesting on early CDs? Generally,
no credits given who did the audio. It appears Columbia Records hired
their party people to do their audio work, since they probably lacked the
knowledge and equipment. "

Credits for engineering & mastering, for
the original vinyl album release are listed,
on the album cover shrunk down to fit
in the CD jewel case. Since those early
transfers were *largely* done flat, there
was no need for CD engineering or
mastering credits to be listed. As I
mentioned earlier, minor leveling or
pre-emphasis to existing masters was
just standard procedure at that time,
not worthy of mastering credit as is
the squash-boost-&-brickwall-limit
job done on MOST "remasters"
since 2000, and practically any new
artist work.

Sigh. Pre-emphasis is not done as an audio mastering process. It is a
tick-box on or off in a later authoring stage.

geoff

[geoff]

On 20/07/2017 12:46 a.m., John Williamson wrote:
On 19/07/2017 12:14, wrote:
And why John, during those initial '80s era transfers
of those original master tapes to CD, should that
'compression and other faffing about' have been
done at all? I glad that stuff WASN'T done, and don't
get this culture that everything being transfered to
digital *must* be compromised by such processing.


Just for the heck of it, go to a recording session. Classical or pop,
electric or acoustic. Sit in and listen to what's going on and what it
should really sound like.

Get a copy of the session recordings, and see what happens when you
mix them together without effects of any sort. It'll sound flat, quiet
and uninteresting compared to the original.

One outstanding example. I did a recording of an orchestra, with a
simple stereo pair just behind and above the conductor's head. It's a
good recording, with all the instruments clear and well separated, and
just enough room tone to blend them into a cohesive whole. Full
modulation on the loud bits, and his comment when he heard the raw
recording? "It's a bit quiet, isn't it?" Well, you were the one waving
the stick, controlling the volume, sunshine, *you* turn it up a bit...

Otherwise, I'll compress the dynamic range on the CD to stop him and
others whinging.

Or take a live session from a pop group at a performance. Record it to
8 master tracks, then mix to suit you. Then someone plays it back in
their car and all the subtle but quiet bits disappear under the engine
noise, so you remix with less dynamic range and a bit of equalisation.
Then it gets onto the radio, and not only the engine noise but the FM
background noise drowns out the good bits, so they need turning up,
either by riding the faders or using a compressor.

In the early days of CD, none of this was done, leading to complaints
form the public that the new medium was too quiet, so in part, that's
why we now have the fashion for "sausage skin" envelopes on a lot of
recordings. Another reason is people listening in noisy locations on
earbuds with limited output levels, which is a relatively new thing,
leading to a need for even less dynamic range in the recording.

However, as None says, this has all been explained to you and JackAss
many times, and you still show no sign of even a glimmer of
comprehension.

Certainly, the dynamic range of a recording more often than not needs to
be tailored for the medium on which it is being heard, and the likely
listening environment. And then maybe for the listening tastes of the
likely audience (which could be fickle).

Nothing to do with and not to be confused with brick-wall limiting or
clipping, or whatever the rant is over.

geoff

[geoff]

On 20/07/2017 1:19 a.m., wrote:
John Williamson:

I actually comprehend all of what you just
posted. I understand the need for light doses
compression and other processing *during
recording and mixing* as a means of leveling
control. In other words, whatever was done,
from recording to mixing to mastering, to
albums like "The Stranger" or "Thriller"
back in that era.



When CD came along, very often the master
tapes - the two channel stereo ones - for albums
like those were transferred flat to the digital master
tapes(quantized), and a CDglass master was made
from that. The way I would want it to be, no sausage
factory between this paragraph and the one above it.

Yep. Model T Fords are where it's at. Nothing should improve.

geoff

[Scott Dorsey]

geoff wrote:

Sigh. Pre-emphasis is not done as an audio mastering process. It is a
tick-box on or off in a later authoring stage.

Well, for the most part nobody ever did pre-emphasis.

I would frequently record with pre-emphasis because my converters sounded
much better that way. I'd had the recording off to Don Grossinger at the
mastering lab, and he'd put it into his Neve mastering console and
de-emphasize it in the digital domain and then the Neve would output
straight un-emphasized data into the Sonic system which would spit out
a DDP or later a PMCD.

But... if I wanted to record without it and issue a cd with it, I
could ask him for that and he could emphasize it in the mastering room
with the Neve and then set the appropriate subcode bits on the disc so
that a CD player would de-emphasize it properly.

But really I was pretty much the only guy he ever dealt with who used
pre-emphasis. Gabe Weiner was always amazed that I'd bother with it,
but it helped hide a lot of converter issues.

I think the last time I ever actually touched it was a compilation
album I did in 2003. I certainly haven't used it since then. It's a
pain in the neck to make sure all the subcode data remains accurate
throughout the whole recording and mastering chain.

These days you'll encounter a lot of CD players and ripping applications
that don't know how to handle it, or which handle it very poorly. Just
like with index marks. I wouldn't recommend anybody use either one today,
and neither one were used much ever.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

geoff wrote: "Nothing to do with and not to be confused with brick-wall limiting "

If you don't think limiting has any impact on
dynamic range of a recording then you must
be kidding. Applying I.E. 3dB of limiting to
a waveform, and then applying 3dB of
gain to it makes it both louder - and less
dynamic, last hundred times I did it.

[[email protected]]

geoff wrote: "Sigh. Pre-emphasis is not done as an audio mastering process. It is a
tick-box on or off in a later authoring stage.

geoff "

Thanks for correction. Just like RIAA applied to
cutting stage on records.


So flat transfer really means flat, as in the
case of of my Target CDs - the original topic
of my post. I still don't know why the target
and non-target of that Clapton nulled out
like that. I just assumed that the target was
even less 'processed' than the regular
release.

[[email protected]]

geoff wrote: "On 20/07/2017 1:19 a.m., wrote:

When CD came along, very often the master
tapes - the two channel stereo ones - for albums
like those were transferred flat to the digital master
tapes(quantized), and a CDglass master was made
from that. The way I would want it to be, no sausage
factory between this paragraph and the one above it.

Yep. Model T Fords are where it's at. Nothing should improve.

geoff"

You think sausage factory processing would
have been an improvement?? How about
better converters over a decades time. More
storage? 24bit yet flat transfers from those
same master tapes?

Sounds to me like you are in favor of what
was done on that Remasters: The Lie
page, geoff.


Well, I have a dresser bureau with over
300 original CD releases of pre-1990,
pre-loudness albums in it, out of 400
or so, the latter being stuff from 1995
or later new releases, mostly squashed,
just the way you'd preferr.

[[email protected]]

On Wednesday, July 19, 2017 at 7:11:23 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
On 20/07/2017 12:46 a.m., John Williamson wrote:
On 19/07/2017 12:14, wrote:
And why John, during those initial '80s era transfers
of those original master tapes to CD, should that
'compression and other faffing about' have been
done at all? I glad that stuff WASN'T done, and don't
get this culture that everything being transfered to
digital *must* be compromised by such processing.


Just for the heck of it, go to a recording session. Classical or pop,
electric or acoustic. Sit in and listen to what's going on and what it
should really sound like.

Get a copy of the session recordings, and see what happens when you
mix them together without effects of any sort. It'll sound flat, quiet
and uninteresting compared to the original.

One outstanding example. I did a recording of an orchestra, with a
simple stereo pair just behind and above the conductor's head. It's a
good recording, with all the instruments clear and well separated, and
just enough room tone to blend them into a cohesive whole. Full
modulation on the loud bits, and his comment when he heard the raw
recording? "It's a bit quiet, isn't it?" Well, you were the one waving
the stick, controlling the volume, sunshine, *you* turn it up a bit...

Otherwise, I'll compress the dynamic range on the CD to stop him and
others whinging.

Or take a live session from a pop group at a performance. Record it to
8 master tracks, then mix to suit you. Then someone plays it back in
their car and all the subtle but quiet bits disappear under the engine
noise, so you remix with less dynamic range and a bit of equalisation.
Then it gets onto the radio, and not only the engine noise but the FM
background noise drowns out the good bits, so they need turning up,
either by riding the faders or using a compressor.

In the early days of CD, none of this was done, leading to complaints
form the public that the new medium was too quiet, so in part, that's
why we now have the fashion for "sausage skin" envelopes on a lot of
recordings. Another reason is people listening in noisy locations on
earbuds with limited output levels, which is a relatively new thing,
leading to a need for even less dynamic range in the recording.

However, as None says, this has all been explained to you and JackAss
many times, and you still show no sign of even a glimmer of
comprehension.

Certainly, the dynamic range of a recording more often than not needs to
be tailored for the medium on which it is being heard, and the likely
listening environment. And then maybe for the listening tastes of the
likely audience (which could be fickle).

Nothing to do with and not to be confused with brick-wall limiting or
clipping, or whatever the rant is over.

geoff

What is up with John? Seems jealousy has struck with his name calling.
But, I will challenge John on whatever he wishes in audio, let others be the judge. I'm far from shy when it comes to audio. I do take may work VERY seriously, even though a hobby, per se'.

Also, since Angelfire now has great site statistics, I find "Hoffman" is a highly searched word on my site. Have to guess Steve Hoffman, you know, the shyster audiophile.

Jack

[geoff]

On 20/07/2017 11:49 a.m., wrote:
geoff wrote: "On 20/07/2017 1:19 a.m., wrote:

When CD came along, very often the master
tapes - the two channel stereo ones - for albums
like those were transferred flat to the digital master
tapes(quantized), and a CDglass master was made
from that. The way I would want it to be, no sausage
factory between this paragraph and the one above it.
Yep. Model T Fords are where it's at. Nothing should improve.

geoff"

You think sausage factory processing would
have been an improvement?? How about
better converters over a decades time. More
storage? 24bit yet flat transfers from those
same master tapes?

Sounds to me like you are in favor of what
was done on that Remasters: The Lie
page, geoff.

So, by you reading-comprehension logic, everything that isn't a Model T
Ford is a Chevy Camaro ?

geoff

[Tatonik]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

These days you'll encounter a lot of CD players and ripping applications
that don't know how to handle it, or which handle it very poorly. Just
like with index marks. I wouldn't recommend anybody use either one today,
and neither one were used much ever.
--scott

I have only three albums with index marks - two from Telarc and one from
Newport Classic. The Telarc albums use the index marks for movements,
while the Newport Classic, a complete set of the Prokofiev Piano
Sonantas, uses them within the movements for analytical purposes -
marking themes, development sections, and so forth. The latter case
seems better suited to the feature.

My CD player, a JVC model from 1988, recognizes index marks, but it
irritates me that the index buttons are only on the remote control. All
the other remote buttons are duplicated on the machine itself, but not
the index buttons. Fortunately I'm only irritated when I play one of
those three albums.

[Trevor]

On 19/07/2017 9:28 PM, None wrote:
stupid.stupid.stupid.troll @ tardsRtheckmajjj.com wrote in message
...
And why ...

Its all been explained to you, countless times. You're just too
retarded to comprehend. You'll never understand, because of your mental
impairment. FCKWAFA. AFSBRAD. Right, li'l buddy?

But which is worse, the troll or those who keep replying to him rather
than simply add him to their kill-file? IF *everyone* added him to their
kill-file, the problem would be gone! Instead some people prefer to feed
his jollies, then bitch about him. Seems pointless to me.

Trevor.

[None]

theckhhmaaaahhh @ eat-at-denneys com wrote in message
news:57e83116-6fb0-4208-8296-
I actually comprehend all of what you just posted.

No you didn't. You yourself have proved that you don't actually
understand anything, due to your extensive brain damage from jamming
your head in your anal sphincter.

[None]

braindead-hobbyhorseman @ gmail.com puked:
John Williamson wrote: "However, as None says, this has all been
explained to you and JackAss "

Why you even include a filth-spewing spam
-bot in the same ranks as yourself, Jack, Scott
D., Geoff and Mike R is beyond me! lol

Thanks for the mention, li'l buddy. You know that when you post about
me, I'll respond to you. Or you would know that, if you weren't
constantly smearing your hobby-horse-**** all over yourself.

Of course, Williamson never "included in me in the same ranks" as any
of those other posters, or anything of the kind. And you included that
dog**** Jackoff in the same ranks as those others, which is just
****ing retarded.

But I get it; nobody expects any reading comprehension from a drooling
cretin such as you, especially with your head so firmly planted in
your sphincter. And of course, you entirely miss the point he made,
which was to agree with me that you've never shown even the tiniest
speck of comprehension, after it's been thoroughly explained to you
thousands and thousands of times. There's just no way for a clue to
penetrate your concrete skull to that teaspoon of horse manure that
passes for your brain. You're just too ****ing stupid, and you always
will be. You try so hard to make sure that everyone reading this group
knows what a retarded dumb **** you are. And what an annoying little
prick you are (hung like a hamster, li'l buddy?)

And continuing on later in this thread, you keep jamming your tiny
little head into your stinking asshole, and proving that you're an
idiot who can't get off the "groundhog day" cycle of the same moronic
ignorance over and over. The "dumb****" switch inside your head is
permanently stuck in the "on" position. If you didn't want people to
know what a retarded ****-for-brains you are, you wouldn't spend so
much time on usenet proving it repeatedly.

But still, thanks for the shout-out, li'l buddy! Now, be sure to put
your hockey helmet on before the short bus arrives to take you to work
at the "Hire A Retard" used **** store. KSDS. KIHFIAS. FCKWAFA!

[[email protected]]

On Thursday, July 20, 2017 at 7:03:55 AM UTC-4, None wrote:
braindead-hobbyhorseman @ gmail.com puked:
John Williamson wrote: "However, as None says, this has all been
explained to you and JackAss "

Why you even include a filth-spewing spam
-bot in the same ranks as yourself, Jack, Scott
D., Geoff and Mike R is beyond me! lol

Thanks for the mention, li'l buddy. You know that when you post about
me, I'll respond to you. Or you would know that, if you weren't
constantly smearing your hobby-horse-**** all over yourself.

Of course, Williamson never "included in me in the same ranks" as any
of those other posters...

Boy, everyone is getting their share! :-)

Jack

[Scott Dorsey]

Tatonik wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

These days you'll encounter a lot of CD players and ripping applications
that don't know how to handle it, or which handle it very poorly. Just
like with index marks. I wouldn't recommend anybody use either one today,
and neither one were used much ever.

I have only three albums with index marks - two from Telarc and one from
Newport Classic. The Telarc albums use the index marks for movements,
while the Newport Classic, a complete set of the Prokofiev Piano
Sonantas, uses them within the movements for analytical purposes -
marking themes, development sections, and so forth. The latter case
seems better suited to the feature.

Columbia used it too. The 1981 Glenn Gould CD of the Goldberg Variations
used index marks for individual variations within each piece.

Part of the problem is that nobody could really agree on what the index
marks were actually for.

Sonic will still let you put them on today but you have to jump through
a whole lot of hoops in order to manually alter the subcode. Most other
premastering systems have no idea what they are.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[John Williamson]

On 20/07/2017 00:42, wrote:
geoff wrote: "Sigh. Pre-emphasis is not done as an audio mastering process. It is a
tick-box on or off in a later authoring stage.

geoff "

Thanks for correction. Just like RIAA applied to
cutting stage on records.


So flat transfer really means flat, as in the
case of of my Target CDs - the original topic
of my post. I still don't know why the target
and non-target of that Clapton nulled out
like that. I just assumed that the target was
even less 'processed' than the regular
release.

If the Target had been less processed than the other version, they would
not have nulled out. The only way two CD tracks will null exactly is if
they were made from the same digital master with no (or identical)
processing applied.


--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[[email protected]]

John Williamson wrote: "If the Target had been less processed than the other version,
they would not have nulled out."

That was my point John. So in the case
of my Target Clapton CD vs the regular
of that same album, the only difference
was the labels on the discs. Disappointing!

[Scott Dorsey]

Tatonik wrote:
I happen to own that album. I did hear the aggressive brightness and
that it generally sounded odd and a bit unpleasant, for want of a better
description, though I didn't specifically notice the reverb tails. But
then I'm not always the most critical of listeners.

Some of it is the basic mike technique and the idea of miking instruments
rather than the band. Some of it is that engineers at the time were having
some issues coming to terms with the generation loss on the digital systems
being very different than that on the analogue systems. But some of it,
and certainly all of the low-level artifacts (crossover distortion, chopped
off reverb tails) were the result of the converter technology of the day.

According to the liner notes, these are the perpetrators of the Digital
Duke album:

Don't blame the people, I am sure it seemed like a good idea to them at the
time. I assure you that in my first days with the PCM F-1, I did far worse
sounding things.

Produced by Michael Abene and Mercer Ellington
Executive Producers: Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen
Recorded by Ed Rak at Clinton Recording Studios, NYC on the Mitsubishi
X-850 32-track digital recorder
Assisted by Rebecca Everett

Okay, so the original recording was made on a Pro-Digi machine, the X-850.
This was a linear-track 1" digital recorder. By the time the X-850 had come
out, Mits had given up on the 50.4 ksamp/sec stuff, so it was likely run at
44.1. Unlike DASH you couldn't razor-blade it, so although you could go back
and overdub a flubbed part you couldn't edit within a take.

So, one set of A/Ds, then to tape.

Digitally mixed and edited by Josiah Gluck at The Review Room, NYC on
the Sony PCM 1630 Digital Audio System
Assisted by Jim Singer

The 1630 was a horrible digital recorder that took analogue or digital
inputs and put them on a U-Matic tape. "Digitally Mixed" is something of
a misnomer here since there were no digital mixers... what they mean is
that they mixed to a digital tape.

So, one set of D/As in the Mitsubishi, analogue console, another set of A/Ds
in the Sony. If you're keeping count we've been through three converters.

Digitally mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound, NYC on the Neve
Digital Transfer Console

Okay, now if they did this RIGHT, they took the S-DIF (not S-PDIF, different
animal and not self-clocking) output from the Sony, ran it into the Neve
console, ran the output of that into another 1630 and kept everything in the
digital domain.

If they didn't, they added two more A/D and two more D/A steps in the
process. Total count: three to seven conversion stages involved.

All of this had to be done in realtime.... until Sonic came out with their
digital mastering workstation later that year, there was no real way to work
on one piece at a time.

I'll point out also that the Neve digital console had some serious problems.
Zipper sounds when the master fader was operated. Some interesting artifacts
with equalization. These were a result of the lack of horsepower on the dsp
processor inside the box, but also the result of design engineers not really
understanding dither or doing careful numeric analysis on the equalization
algorithms.

But the big advantage of the thing, and it WAS a huge advantage at the time,
was that it allowed you to skip two more generations of conversion in the
mastering room, compared with using analogue processing. A decade later that
wasn't an issue, but at the time doing the processing digitally seemed
revolutionary and people weren't really so upset that it sounded worse than
the Sontec because the sonic benefit from eliminating the conversion more
than made up for that.

Special Thanks to [among others]: Phil Vachon, Mitsubishi Pro Audio
copyright 1987

THERE'S a name I haven't heard in years. He was the field tech handling
just about all of the east coast. With the Pro-Digi and DASH machines, you
got to know your field service guys very well.

(An Ellington album I prefer is one by the American Jazz Orchestra led
by John Lewis, from a year or two later. It has a looser feel and the
sound seems fuller.)

It's hard to sound less full than the horrible screechy abomination that
GRP put out. Even the Lewis recording you cite, though, has aggressive
multimiking... the trap kit is in your face instead of way back in the middle
of the orchestra where it belongs. It doesn't sound like a band in a room.
I want it to sound like the band.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Tatonik]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

Tatonik wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

These days you'll encounter a lot of CD players and ripping applications
that don't know how to handle it, or which handle it very poorly. Just
like with index marks. I wouldn't recommend anybody use either one today,
and neither one were used much ever.

I have only three albums with index marks - two from Telarc and one from
Newport Classic. The Telarc albums use the index marks for movements,
while the Newport Classic, a complete set of the Prokofiev Piano
Sonantas, uses them within the movements for analytical purposes -
marking themes, development sections, and so forth. The latter case
seems better suited to the feature.

Columbia used it too. The 1981 Glenn Gould CD of the Goldberg Variations
used index marks for individual variations within each piece.

Huh, I have that disc and never realized there were index points because
there is no mention of them in the notes or on the case. I always
thought it was just one giant inconvenient track. I just put the disc
in the player, and sure enough, they're there. So I guess I have four
albums with index marks. You learn something every day.

They don't seem too precise on this album - at each starting point you
hear the tail end of the last variation, too.

[geoff]

On 21/07/2017 1:53 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Tatonik wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

These days you'll encounter a lot of CD players and ripping applications
that don't know how to handle it, or which handle it very poorly. Just
like with index marks. I wouldn't recommend anybody use either one today,
and neither one were used much ever.

I have only three albums with index marks - two from Telarc and one from
Newport Classic. The Telarc albums use the index marks for movements,
while the Newport Classic, a complete set of the Prokofiev Piano
Sonantas, uses them within the movements for analytical purposes -
marking themes, development sections, and so forth. The latter case
seems better suited to the feature.

Columbia used it too. The 1981 Glenn Gould CD of the Goldberg Variations
used index marks for individual variations within each piece.

Part of the problem is that nobody could really agree on what the index
marks were actually for.

Sonic will still let you put them on today but you have to jump through
a whole lot of hoops in order to manually alter the subcode. Most other
premastering systems have no idea what they are.
--scott



Really ?!!! Jeepers, on Sony (now Magix) CD Architect, all it takes is
popstioning the cursor to whatever desired point on the timeline and
pressing "I" .

geoff

[Tatonik]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

Tatonik wrote:
I happen to own that album. I did hear the aggressive brightness and
that it generally sounded odd and a bit unpleasant, for want of a better
description, though I didn't specifically notice the reverb tails. But
then I'm not always the most critical of listeners.

Some of it is the basic mike technique and the idea of miking instruments
rather than the band. Some of it is that engineers at the time were having
some issues coming to terms with the generation loss on the digital systems
being very different than that on the analogue systems. But some of it,
and certainly all of the low-level artifacts (crossover distortion, chopped
off reverb tails) were the result of the converter technology of the day.

According to the liner notes, these are the perpetrators of the Digital
Duke album:

Don't blame the people, I am sure it seemed like a good idea to them at the
time. I assure you that in my first days with the PCM F-1, I did far worse
sounding things.

I guess this would be a case of "Don't shoot the recording engineer,
he's doing his best."


(An Ellington album I prefer is one by the American Jazz Orchestra led
by John Lewis, from a year or two later. It has a looser feel and the
sound seems fuller.)

It's hard to sound less full than the horrible screechy abomination that
GRP put out. Even the Lewis recording you cite, though, has aggressive
multimiking... the trap kit is in your face instead of way back in the middle
of the orchestra where it belongs. It doesn't sound like a band in a room.
I want it to sound like the band.
--scott

In my admittedly limited experience attending jazz concerts, even a band
in a room doesn't sound like a band in a room. Or at least I can't tell
if it sounds like a band in a room. I remember hearing Dizzy Gillespie
and Co. in a high school auditorium and the band was miked to the point
of discomfort. This is always how it is at the jazz concerts I have
been to, which is probably why I haven't been to more of them. I'm not
sure I could make any judgments as to how well Dizzy's band was miked or
how the room sounded because I was too busy holding my fingers over my
ears.

In most rooms and auditoriums, I don't understand the point of
amplifying groups like jazz bands. It just hurts your ears.

Do you have any jazz albums you could recommend that aren't heavily
multi-miked? I have several of Bob Mintzer's albums recorded by Tom
Jung in the '80s on the DMP label that I think have a fairly unique
sound. The photos show 13 players standing in a circle around one
microphone - a Speiden SF-12 stereo bi-directional ribbon, according to
the text. Everything was done in one or two takes and the players
balanced themselves by distance from the microphone and how they played
(they're all wearing headphones). Bass, piano, and drums are miked
separately (the drum kit is in a glass booth).

Four of the Minzter albums are done this way. By the fifth Minzter
album (from the '90s), Jung appeared to have given up this specific
approach. The band is no longer arranged in a circle, but seated more
conventionally, and the microphones are B&K 4003 and a Crown SASS-B
Stereo Boundary Mount. In the notes Minzter writes that "the microphone
bears a striking resemblance to my high school band director's head" -
could that mean the B&Ks were mounted on something like a Schneider
disk?

I kind of miss the sound from the earlier albums. I think what I liked
was the way the ribbon microphone captured the brass - there was a
nicely-blended smoothness to it.

Incidentally, the notes from one of the '80s albums indicate it was
recorded direct to digital on a Mitsubishi X-80, with digital transfer
from the Mitsubishi using the Harmonia Mundi sampling frequency
converter. The '90s album lists a Yamaha 19-bit 64-times oversampled
delta sigma converter and a Yamaha 24-bit digital mixing console, with
data stored on a Sony DTC 1000.

[Tatonik]

Tatonik wrote:

Incidentally, the notes from one of the '80s albums indicate it was
recorded direct to digital on a Mitsubishi X-80, with digital transfer
from the Mitsubishi using the Harmonia Mundi sampling frequency
converter.

I found an interview with Tom Jung from 2004 in which he talks a bit
about the X-80:

Lander: In the early years of DMP, you used a Mitsubishi X-80 digital
tape recorder. Why that particular machine?

Jung: It was unique in that it was designed by a Japanese engineer who
happened to be an audiophile, knew about discrete class-A electronics,
and used them in the X-80. He was also aware that there were inherent
problems in the PCM format, so he compensated for them, correcting phase
errors created on the record side in playback. To a large extent, he was
successful. We'd record and play back in the studio, and musicians
always liked the way the X-80 sounded. But it had the god-awful sample
rate of 50.4kHz. By the time I got to the mastering stage and had to
convert that 50.4kHz to 44.1kHz in the digital domain, the mathematical
formula led to significant losses.

Two SACDs in our catalog, Flim and the BB's' Tricycle and Jay Leonhart's
Salamander Pie, were made directly from Mitsubishi masters. When I made
the SACD versions and couldn't go from 50.4kHz to 1-bit DSD in the
digital domain, I remembered that machine had always sounded good
playing tapes that it recorded. So I used that same machine and the
original master tapes, the ones that actually had razor-blade splices.

https://www.stereophile.com/intervie...ung/index.html
https://www.stereophile.com/content/...l-sense-part-2

Interesting interview. He seems to be a big fan of DSD.

[geoff]

On 21/07/2017 8:17 AM, geoff wrote:
On 21/07/2017 1:53 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Tatonik wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

These days you'll encounter a lot of CD players and ripping
applications
that don't know how to handle it, or which handle it very poorly. Just
like with index marks. I wouldn't recommend anybody use either one
today,
and neither one were used much ever.

I have only three albums with index marks - two from Telarc and one from
Newport Classic. The Telarc albums use the index marks for movements,
while the Newport Classic, a complete set of the Prokofiev Piano
Sonantas, uses them within the movements for analytical purposes -
marking themes, development sections, and so forth. The latter case
seems better suited to the feature.

Columbia used it too. The 1981 Glenn Gould CD of the Goldberg Variations
used index marks for individual variations within each piece.

Part of the problem is that nobody could really agree on what the index
marks were actually for.

Sonic will still let you put them on today but you have to jump through
a whole lot of hoops in order to manually alter the subcode. Most other
premastering systems have no idea what they are.
--scott



Really ?!!! Jeepers, on Sony (now Magix) CD Architect, all it takes is
popstioning the cursor to whatever desired point on the timeline and
pressing "I" .

geoff


Oh yeah, another good use for Indexes - minor sections of a lecture,
where more significant sections are separated as Tracks.

geoff

[[email protected]]

Another rare but desirable category of initial CD releases:

http://www.keithhirsch.com/the-japan...ney-tug-of-war

[[email protected]]

On Friday, July 21, 2017 at 3:57:21 AM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
On 21/07/2017 8:17 AM, geoff wrote:
On 21/07/2017 1:53 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Tatonik wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

These days you'll encounter a lot of CD players and ripping
applications
that don't know how to handle it, or which handle it very poorly. Just
like with index marks. I wouldn't recommend anybody use either one
today,
and neither one were used much ever.

I have only three albums with index marks - two from Telarc and one from
Newport Classic. The Telarc albums use the index marks for movements,
while the Newport Classic, a complete set of the Prokofiev Piano
Sonantas, uses them within the movements for analytical purposes -
marking themes, development sections, and so forth. The latter case
seems better suited to the feature.

Columbia used it too. The 1981 Glenn Gould CD of the Goldberg Variations
used index marks for individual variations within each piece.

Part of the problem is that nobody could really agree on what the index
marks were actually for.

Sonic will still let you put them on today but you have to jump through
a whole lot of hoops in order to manually alter the subcode. Most other
premastering systems have no idea what they are.
--scott



Really ?!!! Jeepers, on Sony (now Magix) CD Architect, all it takes is
popstioning the cursor to whatever desired point on the timeline and
pressing "I" .

geoff


Oh yeah, another good use for Indexes - minor sections of a lecture,
where more significant sections are separated as Tracks.

geoff

I know of another use for Indexes, to invade a Target CD topic!!

Jack :-)

[[email protected]]

"I know of another use for Indexes, to invade a Target CD topic!! "

Is that the best you have to contribute, Jack?
Seriously....

[Scott Dorsey]

Tatonik wrote:
In my admittedly limited experience attending jazz concerts, even a band
in a room doesn't sound like a band in a room. Or at least I can't tell
if it sounds like a band in a room. I remember hearing Dizzy Gillespie
and Co. in a high school auditorium and the band was miked to the point
of discomfort. This is always how it is at the jazz concerts I have
been to, which is probably why I haven't been to more of them. I'm not
sure I could make any judgments as to how well Dizzy's band was miked or
how the room sounded because I was too busy holding my fingers over my
ears.

That is shameful. There's no reason for that.

In most rooms and auditoriums, I don't understand the point of
amplifying groups like jazz bands. It just hurts your ears.

There isn't any. I once attended a performance of a pops orchestra back
in the nineties, backing a very elderly Cab Calloway. The power went
out, and the band sounded so much better. The amorphous and mushy Barry
Manilow string section congealed into a real set of instruments. And it
was still plenty, plenty loud.

Do you have any jazz albums you could recommend that aren't heavily
multi-miked?

One person who lead the fight against it in the seventies was Stan Kenton.
He lost the fight when making a number of his Columbia recordings in that
era, but if you listen to the recordings of the Los Angeles Neophonic
Orchestra, they have a realistic stereo image and the band is amazing.
He's willing to take more musical risks than just about anyone, too.

I have several of Bob Mintzer's albums recorded by Tom
Jung in the '80s on the DMP label that I think have a fairly unique
sound. The photos show 13 players standing in a circle around one
microphone - a Speiden SF-12 stereo bi-directional ribbon, according to
the text. Everything was done in one or two takes and the players
balanced themselves by distance from the microphone and how they played
(they're all wearing headphones). Bass, piano, and drums are miked
separately (the drum kit is in a glass booth).

And the drums, and piano don't sound like they are part of the
same group.

Four of the Minzter albums are done this way. By the fifth Minzter
album (from the '90s), Jung appeared to have given up this specific
approach. The band is no longer arranged in a circle, but seated more
conventionally, and the microphones are B&K 4003 and a Crown SASS-B
Stereo Boundary Mount. In the notes Minzter writes that "the microphone
bears a striking resemblance to my high school band director's head" -
could that mean the B&Ks were mounted on something like a Schneider
disk?

They were mounted in the SASS-B, which is a sort of boundary arrangement
with multiple baffles. It... it was a very eighties thing. It's actually
kind of cool, although the stereo image isn't marvelous it's comparatively
immune to placement. You can throw it up almost anywhere and get an
acceptable result, which is not the case at all for most mike techniques.

Incidentally, the notes from one of the '80s albums indicate it was
recorded direct to digital on a Mitsubishi X-80, with digital transfer
from the Mitsubishi using the Harmonia Mundi sampling frequency
converter. The '90s album lists a Yamaha 19-bit 64-times oversampled
delta sigma converter and a Yamaha 24-bit digital mixing console, with
data stored on a Sony DTC 1000.

The X-80 was a pain in the neck. It was designed by people who actually
did some listening, and they did some things like run at an elevated sample
rate in order to move the worst of the group delay from the converter filters
up another two notes. It didn't help enough but it helped some. Of course,
this made digital transfers into any other machine a pain in the neck. You
still couldn't edit it like you could DASH. The X-80 was very popular in
Nashville but never made inroads into any other US markets.

Roland made a sample rate converter that could take the output of the X-80
and turn it into 44.1 or 48 ksamp/sec data, and unfortunately that didn't
have enough horsepower either. Everything was in combinational logic and
there wasn't enough room on the chip to make the coefficients long enough
(and nobody at the time knew how long that was) and in the end it added a
whole other set of artifacts. And of course people made dubs from X-80
tapes to more standard formats using the SRC and then discarded the originals...
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

On Saturday, July 22, 2017 at 5:32:23 PM UTC-4, wrote:
"I know of another use for Indexes, to invade a Target CD topic!! "

Is that the best you have to contribute, Jack?
Seriously....

I guess so, I have no Target CDs.

Jack