HOLY sh*t (by Bill Evans)

[PeterSt]

Wow, I don't know. Do you have a few titles for me in particular ?


PS: I only now start to learn how important "labels" are ... but only know of them when it is about vinyl stuff from back then.
Not much of a surpise maybe.

[pedal]

Hey hey hey ... Neil Young 24/176.4 easily is at the (my) very top of worst sounding albums ever !!
I also have a 96 Greendale floating about somewhere, but Redbook's Greendale is near the top of best sounding already. I don't even like to try all this misery anymore, because it is s sheer waste of time, and my obsessions lay elsewhere.

I have 2 Neil Young albums in hi-rez: Harvest and On The Beach. Both sounds good in stereo version. That is "good", relative to the CD.

What I notice on my system is that albums from late 60s/first half of 70s have big track-to-track variation. Songs with simple arrangements sounds better than the complex ones.
-You can "hear" the excesive use of overdubs, when their mixing console didnt have enough tracks available in the first place. Doing this, they quickly ran into a noise problem (tape hiss). So they applied Dolby noise reduction which (at the time) did reduce the audible noise, BUT also robbed the natural "sparkle" and "life" in the treble range. The artist and producers didnt care or notice about this negative side effect. The audible tape hiss was main enemy. They didnt consider us, audiophiles, who 40 years later want to squeeze out maximium sound quality with modern equipment.

On the Beatles White Album, there are some simple songs sounding very good. On the Beatles Anthology #3 (the one covering the final periode), you can hear the outtakes/rough mix from The White Album sounding even better than the official album. On track Julia you really get intimate with John Lennon. And you can hear he is pissed drunk/stoned while recording it!

Or, try Led Zeppelin II: Some songs are mixed to death, while the drum solo on Moby Dick sounds fresh and clear. They were recorded without overdubs, of course.

Back to Neil Young/On The Beach: Initially I got disapointed when I heard it the first time. The first tracks sound quite "muddy", with little "low level" detail. But then I realized that the sound quality of (vinyl) side 2 is much better! The last 3 tracks has a *reasonable* high amount of acoustic ambience, which give me a wall-to-wall filling soundstage in my living room. Check out the title track On The Beach.

The Weavers ? don't tell my wife. I have the hunch that she knows them and next wants to listen to it.haha

You will like it too! Beautiful vocal arrangments, acoustic bass and gitars on a big stage, live recording of old folk songs.

-------------

PS: It is not a coincidence that we have a big number of legendary recordings dating back from the periode between end 50s and middle 60s. (Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans Trio, Muddy Waters/Folksinger, The Weavers, Harry Belafonte, etc) was recorded BEFORE Dolby A noise reduction came into studio use (end of 60s). Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_noise-reduction_system

Additionally, these old albums were recorded more or less "live" in the studio with no or minimum overdubs. The jazz trio went into the studio and recorded the song in one take. If they were not happy, they just did another take, rather than trying to "correct" the track in the latter mixing process.

Legendary studio engineer Rudy van Gelder even bypassed the mixing console, hooking the mics directly to the input of the tape recorder. He hot-roded the whole recording chain, which partly explains the extremely clear and transparent sound of his 50s recordings. [Rudy seems to have Dutch ancestors, of course!] He did a huge catalogue of great jazz recordings.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Van_Gelder

[PeterSt]

What I notice on my system is that albums from late 60s/first half of 70s have big track-to-track variation. Songs with simple arrangements sounds better than the complex ones.

Hmm ... this sure is interesting, assuming that you explicitly mention this opposed to the early 60's recordings. Because that is what I actually started this topic for ... end 60's already seems better than today's BUT it is strange, while going back further all starts to be fairly good, if not the best.

To this regard your Dolby remarks are the most interesting too. If you know about anything else, don't hesitate ...

Btw, when I recorded some 800 vinyl albums to cassette with my "Pro" Nakamichi, I explicitly decided not to use Dolby. It just wouldn't work. Instead I tweaked the cassettes (after infinite trials which brand was the best to begin with), and really couldn't perceive a difference between the vinyl playing and monitoring the recording (the deck had 3 heads).
But this was some 40 years ago ... and today these same cassettes sound quite full of hiss and few dynamics.

Thank you pedal,
Peter


PS:

I have 2 Neil Young albums in hi-rez: Harvest and On The Beach. Both sounds good in stereo version. That is "good", relative to the CD.

IIRC these are not the 176.4 ones, and will therefore be quite different animals (better).

[Gerard]

After some search, this must be the one I have : http://www.bol.com/nl/p/muziek/waltz-for-debby/1000004001303909/index.html

Peter,

I bought it but at the back is written this:

Prduced by ORRIN KEEPNEWS
Recorded in New York; June 25, 1961
Digital remastering, 1987-Joe Tarantino
(Fantasy Studios, Berkeley)

So i guess it is the wrong one? Or should i FM you?

 

[crisnee]

Peter, Here's a blurb from Mapleshade's site and the url:

"Our recording technology is equally radical. We design and build, or custom-modify, all of our electronics from microphones to tape recorders to wires. All must meet standards well beyond commercial state-of-the-art. We record live to two-track analog, transfer to digital at a rate 100 times faster than the CD standard, and use no add-on EQ, reverb or noise reduction electronics. Our recordings are made with only 2 to 4 microphones and no cables longer than 20 feet. The resulting sound has startling, "in-the-room" clarity, brilliance, spaciousness and dynamics. People with $150 boomboxes, as well as audiophiles with $100,000 systems, tell us our CDs convey far more of the music's excitement than any commercial studio recordings. Mapleshade has 40 current releases and many more in the can waiting to be released. These albums document the music of more than 175 musicians including both noteworthy new talents and established artists such as Randy Weston, David Murray, Woody Shaw, Gary Bartz, Larry Willis, Hamiet Bluiett, John Hicks, Clifford Jordan, Walter Davis Jr., Leon Thomas, Drink Small, Sunnyland Slim, Slide Hampton, and Shirley Horn."

http://mapleshaderecords.com/main/catalog.php

They have some free sample mp3s you can download from their site, here's some info regarding that: http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/main/freemp3s.php, I haven't listened to any of them so I don't know how they sound compared to the cds. By the way, the cds are rather inexpensive.

They're also a bit of an "out there," company when it comes to audio products, in my opinion. They make some really crazy or wonderful (your choice) stuff from cheap to very expensive. It's worth getting their catalog in any case, to browse their recordings and to read their audio equipment philosophy.

Two recordings I listened to recently "Cats are stealing my $hit!" Warren Smith and others, "Swingin' and Burnin'," John Cocuzzi Quintet. I'm not sure if these are the best examples of what I said. I'll listen to a few more in the next few days and then I'll be able to give you a better opinion/choice.

-Chris

[PeterSt]

After some search, this must be the one I have : http://www.bol.com/nl/p/muziek/waltz-for-debby/1000004001303909/index.html

Peter,

I bought it but at the back is written this:

Prduced by ORRIN KEEPNEWS
Recorded in New York; June 25, 1961
Digital remastering, 1987-Joe Tarantino
(Fantasy Studios, Berkeley)

So i guess it is the wrong one? Or should i FM you?

 

Hi Gerard,

I really did my best to track down the one I have (I think I bought it in the US 3 years back), but apparently I failed. Too many of these stupid versions around. I must have mine somewhere, but it's all in boxes and at this moment I don't even know where the boxes are.

I suppose you bought the same tracklisting;
The 01 you send me is not of the same length (but within a second), and the average SPL of yours is close to 6dB louder. Yours is close to the digital limit (for output peaks), while mine has loads of headroom. Notice this latter is related to the total album (well, if all is put on there with the same relative level), so t doesn't say much at all. But might you want to compare for the whole album, this is from the XXAnalysis file for mine :

MaxVolume : 32752
SPL : 1546
For my 01 track :

MaxVolume : 23877
SPL : 1176

For your 01 track :

MaxVolume : 31514
SPL : 2013

From the latter two follows that your SPL is almost twice as high (almost 6dB), while the MaxVolume is only 35% or so higher. This means yours must be compressed ...
(at least more than mine, haha)

Regards,
Peter

[crisnee]

Ok, I listened to parts of the Mapleshade albums I have, and it wasn't much fun. Now I remember why I haven't listened to them in a long time. They make me impatient, I'm just thinking "get on with it already." And you're thinking "get on with it already, what do I care that you're impatient." Well I say patience and I'll soon be a patient if I have to listen to more of this Mapleshade stuff.

Ok, it's not that bad (yes it is). It's the SQ stupid. Ok, ok.

Thurman Green; "Dance of the Night Creatures," Has some examples of startlingly realistic stuff on it, mostly percussion. But it's here and there. The music is also fairly listenable, who knows you might love it. But as a whole I think this kind of recording makes a mess of things. The instruments individually sound good to great but as a whole, no. I think one does need to use a bit of processing. They don't even use mixing boards, or at least didn't on any of my cds (from 90's thru 01)

"Cat's are Stealing my $hit," is kind of interesting. It's very simple for the most part, which works better for this kind of recording. And the music (if one can so classify it) is more interesting now that I listened to the rest of my lot from Mapleshade. I think I sent back the cd's that would have made the best examples for what I said in my earlier post. The music was so startlingly realistic  (saxophones if I remember correctly) that I sent it back. It sounded like somebody practicing in the room around the corner, not what I had in mind.

I think there's a fine line between truly realistic sound, and imagined realistic sound. In other words I might have an image of a nice jazz band in a cafe playing "All Blues." I've got the scene all set, the sound as a whole, a nice sound picture in other words. However I don't want the real band playing in my living room no matter how much I might think I want realistic sound.

Mapleshade doesn't quite have it down realistically of course, but it has some elements in place, which in my opinion makes it worse. Now we've got some realistic or near realistic sounds and some not; so it becomes kind of a mess, unbalanced and confused. Or maybe I'm just dreamin'.

-Chris

[PeterSt]

LOL Chris.

Dance of the Night Creatures at least I have. I will listen to it tonght (but I'm running behind with listening).

Btw

Has anyone listened to the other "great," Bill Evans album? It's another 1961 album "Live from the Vanguard,"

Did that yesterday. Didn't sound good at all, but also I didn't want to listen to this rather much of all the same anymore. Must look at it more seriously. Maybe it's a remaster or something.

Ok, just looked into that Mapleshade catalogue, and I already see I have a few more of them (Al Lee, John Cocuzzi, Street Jumpers at one first glance).

Btw, never ask for a trumpet in your house.

Oh, earlier I talked about the alto sax I couldn't recognize much. The same I now say about L. Armstrong's trumpetooter. The dynamics are not in there. I won't say it's a flute, I won't say I don't recognize it as a trumpet, but it *is* a phenomenon that makes it sound more easy. Next though, my brain suffers from "knowing" it ain't right.

But now I wonder ...
When you are at at larger distance from a live jazz trumpeteer combo. Would you perceive that sharp on/off sound ? I don't think so. It's too much smeared underway. This does not happen when it comes from the speakers in your small room (if they can follow in the first place). So, I am used to *that*. But at listening to these older (no, old) recordings, I am listening to a more real life representative ??

Peter

[PeterSt]

I thought I could just as well post the track times of my version :

[christoffe01]

Hi,

I found this on youtube concerning the loudness ................... .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

best

Joachim

[Gerard]

This means yours must be compressed ...
(at least more than mine, haha)

Regards,
Peter

Hmmmmm 

Well still does sound good though... 

 

[crisnee]

Alright, I'm listening to the Bill Evans, "Sunday at the Village Vanguard," 1987 Joe Tarantino of Fantasy Studios remaster. Label: Riverside. I'm guessing it's the original to cd transfer.

It's quite different than the tracks I've been listening to previously, of unknown origin. The hole in the middle is no more, and the audience which at times sounded like it was outside my window where I could hear distint chatter, I can now barely make out while the group is playing.
For those reasons it's much more pleasurable to listen to. As to the actual sound of the instruments, I'm not sure as it's been a few days since I heard the other version. I do know that in one of the songs there was this kind of constant cymbal haze which kind of got on my nerves, this didn't happen on this version.

-Chris

[crisnee]

I thought I could just as well post the track times of my version :

My version of Waltz for Debby (1987 Taratino Remaster) has slightly different times (as listed on the disk) and the cover is the same except for a 2cm x 3cm area on the lower right hand corner that says:

ORIGINAL
Jazz
CLASSICS
COMPACT DISC

-Chris

[PeterSt]

I do know that in one of the songs there was this kind of constant cymbal haze which kind of got on my nerves,

This was exactly my perception of my Sunday at the Village Vanguard. Well, can't have 'm all !


So ... I listened to 3 of those Mapleshade's ...
No.
I don't know exactly what they do wrong, but it seems a lot. Wrong mic placement (too far away) seems one of them. The only thing they have right is the (capture of) the base drum. That really sounds as should, and I don't hear it that often like that from recorded music.
The strange thing is : all the voices have a kind of similar distortion. Quite unbearable.

Now imagine, after this (I only played a few tracks from each of them) I wanted some noise. Put up Black Sabbath The Dio years (sorry Adrian !). I exactly never played that, and thought to listen to something new. Quite revealing after those Mapleshades. But I didn't like the "music". At the 4th track I didn't want to listen to "new Black Sabbath" at all, and dug up Black Sabbath Vol4.
And there you have it again ... so so SO super fresh without any distortion audible. So well taken. This was 1972. I just enjoyed this for its pure sound (and for its again to me familiar tracks, but that is less important (to me)).

I must add that these kind of drastic differences are all new to myself too. The distortion in the voices is something I'm sure I couldn't hear through the "old" NOS1. But the same counts for the total purity of that Black Sabbath Vol4 album.
Btw, no misunderstandings : something like the Bill Evan's '61 is not about "purity" to the sense we're talking about it here. Like I said earlier (I think), you can easily hear the lack of resolution of it. But that doesn't mean something is really wrong with it. The contrary.

Peter

[Flecko]

After all audiophiles don't listen to er, say Black Sabbath, or Rap master so-and-so

Yes I am sure nobody of us do

Put up Black Sabbath The Dio years (sorry Adrian !)

It was ment as a joke. But instead of I should have used ... I listen to Black Sabath/Ozzy myself sometimes. I like "Paranoid" and "Iron Man" a lot. But who doesn't?