[78-L] HORRIBLE 78 transfers, on a major label

[David Lennick]

Good old NoNoise..MCA would turn that on full blast overnight and issue the 
results. Philips put out a series of historical reissues like some Feuermann 
and the Prokofiev (or Samosud) Romeo and Juliet Suite that were unlistenable.

dl

On 10/26/2011 9:43 PM, Jeff Sultanof wrote:
> Dan Morgenstern tells the story of being invited to RCA with some other
> writers and historians to hear the No Noise transfers of the Benny Goodman 3
> CD set of the 1935-37 band back when that set came out in the late 80s. They
> were appalled; notes were missing, cymbals were missing, and some recordings
> sounded like they were recorded under water. After some questioning, it was
> clear that those who 'cleaned up' the recordings were computer programming
> people and not professional engineers. Several tracks had to be redone, and
> the new ones weren't much better if we remember that set.
>
> Paul Goodman once told me that he'd worked on the Glenn Miller complete CD
> box, and several tracks were run through No Noise as a test. He said that
> the result was so poor, and a completion deadline fast arriving, that
> everyone decided to clean the recordings up the old way and not do digital
> cleanup.
>
> Jeff Sultanof
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 6:10 PM, David Lennick<dlennick at sympatico.ca>wrote:
>
>> This station wouldn't have been inclined to do anything other than play the
>> CD
>> as it came off the shelf. I've heard some other rotten dubs on London but
>> mostly on LPs..to be fair, the original 78 may date from wartime when not
>> everything was FFRR and some 78s were dubbed from poorly recorded
>> originals.
>> But this was so squeezed that the violin sounded like a theremin at times.
>>
>> I was listening on cable, and their feed is definitely not compressed.
>>
>> dl
>>
>> On 10/26/2011 2:28 PM, Kristjan Saag wrote:
>>> Sometimes broadcast engineers make their own "transfers": they edit the
>>> CD sound, which may be a transfer itself.
>>> I do it regularly (being both host and sound engineer for my programme).
>>> Some early (and even contemporary) CD transfers sound dreadful; usually
>>> the sound is squeezed, and I have to raise treble, which may work, but
>>> sometimes there's no sound editing done at all and I have to use noise
>>> reduction, declicking etc.
>>> Hopefully I adjust the sound wisely, being used to manage old
>>> recordings. But most engineers are not, and may well squeeze the sound
>>> of a really good transfer.
>>> So we shouldn't automatically blame the CD, if we hear it broadcast, and
>>> it sounds bad.
>>> Kristjan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2011-10-26 18:53, David Lennick wrote:
>>>> I just suffered through 8 minutes of appalling 78 transfers, full of wow
>> and
>>>> squeezed audio, played on a classical request program. And amazingly,
>> according
>>>> to the announcer, it was a Decca/London CD, not something from Pearl or
>>>> Biddulph. Ida Haendel playing a couple of pieces by Szymanowski. Oy!
>>>>
>>>> dl
>>>>
>>