Worst Analog To Digital Conversion (Artwork)

[Craig]

The latest issue of ICE lists a May release by RCA/BMG of The Youngbloods Ride The Wind: The Best Of The RCA Years and that got me to thinking about some of the worst conversions of the vinyl artwork to CD booklets. This one by The Youngbloods always bugged me. This CD has been available now for about fifteen years and goes to show how they sometimes cut corners on the artwork.

[Craig]

Here's Three Dog Night's first album on CD - complete with the wear rings from the vinyl record jacket "source".

[reidc]

One thing that has always bugged me about CBS/Sony was their "cheap" line of CD's. I don't recall the name of the line, but it is roughly the equivalent of their old "NicePrice" series.

They shrunk down the LP artwork even smaller to take up maybe half of the face cover, and then surrounded it with some weird color. There was/is almost nothing else on the back except maybe track times(if lucky), with no other artwork from the LP.

CD titles such as Blood, Sweat, and Tears III, Chicago 8, and Jane Oliver Chasing Rainbows are in this series. Very shabby I feel.

Chris

[Gary]

That Three Dog Night is a classic - ring wear from an LP!?! :rolleyes: Amazing.

But I like the "Compact Price" series from MCA. Why? It *could* be Steve's work, like the "recently discovered" Reach the Beach by the Fixx. Thanks to Dave!

Soooooo (he said hopefully), what does this sound like? :)

[BradOlson]

Sony does have a "Best Value" line of CD's as well.

[mcow1]

I always hated the MFSL artwork with just a little picture of the actual artwork in the center.

[ArneW]

It's kind of funny, but the first thing I noticed when I received my copy of DCC's "Robin And The 7 Hoods" was that they did not use the original typeface for the word "Stereo". I know what happened. Some guy opened the "Robin.qxd" file and it said something like: "Merle Shore Original Reprise and Verve Cover Script is not installed on your system." The guy then said: Nah, we'll just use Times New Roman. I'll rather not phone the guys at DCC, Ms. McGovern is out for lunch anyway, I give a **** and they'll probably never take notice.

[YaQuin]

Gary or Dave,

Reach The Beach - The Fixx MCA CD was mastered by Steve Hoffman?! Yes, or No? I reluctantly sold this one because I thought it was going to be remastered like Shuttered Room (Verese Serabande). This happened before the point I realized that remasters do not always sound better than the original.

Thanks.

[YaQuin]

Just had to use the trusty Search function. I was able to answer my own question. The answer apparently is YES.

[Dave]

Ahhh yes GammaSpace confirmed by Steve himself.;)

[Andrew]

Originally posted by Craig
The latest issue of ICE lists a May release by RCA/BMG of The Youngbloods Ride The Wind: The Best Of The RCA Years and that got me to thinking about some of the worst conversions of the vinyl artwork to CD booklets. This one by The Youngbloods always bugged me. This CD has been available now for about fifteen years and goes to show how they sometimes cut corners on the artwork.

Could it be that BMG deleted the "RCA" and "Victor Stereo" logos that were on the original LP cover? Sure looks like something got cropped from the upper corners.

[Jimbo]

The George Carlin box set on Atlantic, titled The Little David Years, includes mini-lp CD versions of his popular 70s albums. Some of the covers show extensive ring wear. It looks like they photographed somebody's worn-out LPs. I'm not sure if they did this on purpose, to make it seem more like a real "record collection," but it just looks very bad.

[bob g.]

Jimi's Axis Bold As Love provides a good study in the various approaches to reproducing cover art. Many releases all a bit different in color, contrast, cropping, as well as substitution!
Best of the bunch but still frustrating IMO is the 91 Polydor UK.
Good color, focus, contrast, complete except that the two halves are side by side instead of up and down. A digipak mono boot gets that part right but then prints song titles over most of the bottom half. There is a competing boot that I don't have but I gotta draw the line somewhere.;)

I don't think anything will come close to DCC - Wheels Of Fire for over the top perfection - FOUR FOIL FRONT covers!:D

[mcow1]

Originally posted by bob g.
I don't think anything will come close to DCC - Wheels Of Fire for over the top perfection - FOUR FOIL FRONT covers!:D

How about the great DCC of LA Woman. Clear window and all.

[bob g.]

How about the great DCC of LA Woman. Clear window and all.

Touche. I don't have it but I'll guess it's not as repetitive as WOF.

They could stretch the Grammys to be longer than the Oscars by including Best Art Direction in the following formats:
Jewel Case
Mini LP
Digipak
Box Set
vinyl 12"
vinyl 10" etc.

Best Original
Best Adaptation:rolleyes:
Oops, this was supposed to be about the WORST.

[Todd Fredericks]

A cool one is the CD collection of Jobim: "Man From Ipanema"...

A big recent vinyl reissue boob award goes to Classic Records. They made digital scans of MF's copy of Townsend's 'Rough Mix' for their reissue yet they didn't notice the "Last" sticker on the back. I think they noticed after release and are doing a lot of reprinting chores... Ouch!



Todd

[Andrew]

Here's how a UK original looked:

http://abacus.sj.ipixmedia.com/abc/M28/_EBAY_46392ff6ecca866c193d7ad137/i-1.JPG

[John Buchanan]

I think the MoFi Warchild takes the award. The original back cover is "recreated" with advanced cropping techniques, new improved contrast limiting and brightness control to extend the functional life of ones eyes.
I was never fond of MoFi's art department (DCC ALWAYS does a fine job - e.g. Wheels of Fire, LA Woman) but this really was their nadir. The cheapest, nastiest home scanner could have done a better job. I suspect that they took a digital picture of this in a semi-darkened room with a $10 camera! :mad:

[njwiv]

The back cover of Line's release of Moby Grape's 20 Granite Creek looks like a bad fax.

Jay