Fabulous Sound Labs - Dr Ebbetts - Trash Or Treasure?

I'm curious; I'm of the unthinking opinion that if the music isn't "official", then it's not worth listening to. I have recently be able to hear a few Beatles releases from these folks & they sound real good. Basically I don't do boots. Having said that, I was an avid collector of the innumeral (sp?) vinyl Beatle outake boots so prevalent at record shows, Goldmine auctions & record shops - and ate 'em up! That was then - this is now. Anyway, all I want now in the Autumn of my musical life is the real deal. Am I too picky? Too anal? Who are these people? Should i broaden my horizens ?

 

IMO the Doc Ebbetts boots are very "wearable". For the most part they have been done very well and some of them (most) sound better than the "official" releases.

I think the good Doc has put a lot of effort into obtaining virgin vinyl sources and these "needledrops" are a pretty good example of how good the original vinyl LPs sound. A very good job of cover art reproduction has been done as well.

He's working on doing early Who selections these days which are fine as well.

 

I have a couple of Dr. Ebbitts boots of Beatles stuff taken from vinyl, and they sources are good, but I still have to go back and fix stuff up to my standards.

I am of the mind that boots are fine IF the same material cannot be found anywhere else. I guess one can call a vinyl restoration to CD-R as a "boot"...

 

Yes, he's doing a fairly good job, but it's not absolutely perfect. That being said, I've liked what he's done so far. Far better than many related Who and Beatles releases of the same material. Just don't pay dearly for the stuff as it's been traded openly on the Internet for no or very little money...

 

How hard were the were the Original Fabulous Sound Labs HDCD Cee Dee's to come across? I've never came close to an original pressing...The HDCD was applied up to Rubber Soul and NOT on AHDN? Also, did anyone ever get their hands on an original FSL set...if so, are they silvers or CDR's?

 

The Doctor Ebbets and Millenium Remasters are great. I have several of both. In my mind, since certain mono or stereo versions of certain Beatles albums are not available, there is nothing wrong with getting cdr copies of the original albums. Even the mixes are different on some of them. You can also get the American albums that arent available on cd. All of these cds sound better than the official cd releases. The outtakes are great. Seeing as how these will never be released, you might as well trade for them. They can be had for the cost of a few blanks and you are not putting money in bootleggers hands. One listen to mono Sgt Pepper, Beware of Abkco, or some of the Lennon outtakes should be enough to convince you how great these sound, not to mention the historical significance.

 

CDRs, originally in DVD keep boxes. It was only a few weeks after they were released some member in the Beatles newsgroups had shrunk the size of the artwork down to CD size. So, when you see these discs looking like CDs, the printed artwork was truncated albeit intelligently.

AHDN was accidentally not encoded properly to HDCD. Don't let that make you believe that the sound is any worse or very different.

Again, these FSL are Japanese in origin, and intelligent rips of the MFSL LPs. The distortion on the title track to PPM is indicitive of the MFSL LP, and a dead giveaway. There is surface noise on Rubber Soul that is audiable.

Please don't sprout too much excitement over these releases. They're very good, but they're MFSL product, and one of several different encarnations of rips-to-bootleg.

There should be a lot on this forum covering this subject.

I'm not saying they're bad, but they are what they are....

 

I do prefer the Ebbetts rips over the Spock or Millineum remasters. The Millenium set seems a little too hot for my ears...

 

Scott, That's surprising that the Original FSL Japanese Origin Cee Dee wouldn't be Silver...I know there were a few different incarnations of the FSL's...Someone downloaded them onto the internet and 'fooled' with them and a friend told me they were actally better than the original FSL
s? I believe they were downloaded at the hightest bitrate available...Ever hear of those? It's endless!

 

These were posted on the newsgroups/usenet in lossless format. Before that, they were found quite a few times as MP3.

The lossless posts preserved the HDCD encode.

Well, I fooled with the title track to PPM to remove the distortion during John's harmonica. I guess you can fool with these CDs to your heart's content, but if you think of just how many generations of sound tweeks since the master tape, it's mindboggling.

They have to be done right. The boots were better. It can be done near-perfection. Keep your fingers crossed...!

 

I have a couple of copies of the FSL and they are pretty good. However, despite the HDCD indicator lighting up, I would be very surprised if the bootleggers had access to the Pacific Microsonics encoder. Very surprised. Much more likely is that someone figured out the flag for turning the indicator on.

- Gabe

 

That's exactly what happened. They missed the binary flag on AHDN. You really can't tell the difference much in the sound....

 

If the discs weren't encoded with HDCD, you'd be better of not having them decoded. If there is just some way to get the indicator on without the decoding circuitry it wouldn't matter. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if the flag controlled the decoding process and not just the indicator.

- Gabe

 

I have Dr Ebberts first 5 UK disks as well as Spocks, ( I think he's puts a little more TLC in his work) plus the FSL's 24 bits with the mono CD re-master of The Beatles Swedish Radio Show, also the first 4 on the Beat label. And of course there are still other's out there. Dr E has the best as far as all he offers. I think that it is good to support some of these guys after all their prices are a lot cheaper than having to buy the vinyl and have to do the needle drop. And the Artwork is suburb plus Dr E offers upgrades on both the discs as well as any artwork for free usually. Then as I'm sure as we all know Lance Hall aka Texlance and his fine mixes too but to my knowledge Lance dosen't sell any of the Needle Dropped original vinyl versions as better mixes. I also have some nice bootlegs from a bootleg label called Cranberry Sauce. These are nice sounding CD's of mixes as well as Outfake mixed versions that ya just have to play them back. I like these very much also. So I say just listen to all you can of the better Needle Drops that I've and other's have mentioned. If anyone would like I do know what these are going for from their direct sources, so if ya need to know what is the going price for them just leave me a PM and I will let you know at least in US dollars. I truly think that FRED our new member hear probably has a lot of good Beatle Boots on old vinyl. The material might be good but the sound would need to be tweaked and to get them on CD would be nice. However Fred, if ya want to get what I have heard as being excellent stuff, don't be afraid to buy anything from Dr Ebbert or Mirror Spock you will find yourself playing them more than the original EMI/Capitol release's on CD. This is my honest humble opinion!

 

About a year ago, I made a needle drop of the 1982 Japan mono white lp. I did little or nothing to this transfer, I let the Japan lp speak for itself. This thing turned out great, it had the same stuff that sounds so good on the lp I own. Anyhow, I sent a bunch of these out for critique, and everyone liked it. From one guy I received in trade a mono Dr. E's white album.

I listened to this thing very carefully, it sounded nothing like the mono white album that I love. Dr. E boosted the upper mids and lower treble, giving a "clearer" sound at quiet levels, but the buzz-saw effect was clearly evident at realistic loud levels. Even my wife heard the harshness in his transfer. If you have a Dr. E's mono white album, try this test: play "Everybody's Got Something to Hide" very loud. Now, on the lp, you will be dancing and nodding your head, maybe playing some air guitar. Bass rules the day on the mono white album. When I played the same track from Dr. E's white album, my concern was turning the thing down, it hurt!

As many of you know, most of the mono Beatles stuff sounds different from the stereo stuff. I think the mistake people like Dr. E make is to try to make their needle drops sound like the stereo versions. This way leads to ruin. I've said it before, those old EMI guys knew what they were doing in the '60's. Their stuff sounds awesome on a good set up. It does not need to be eq'd!!!

It may be difficult to swallow, but the best sounding mono Beatles are from the Lp's, original UK or Japan reissues. Just because someone spends a lot of time making a transfer on their computer, it doesn't make it right. In fact, I would argue that the less time someone spends transferring a lp to cdr, the better!

My bottom line is, this guy, (Dr. E) eq's quite a bit and made a cd that was impossible to listen to LOUD. Sounds great on 'phones tho, (at a reasonably quiet level). Just like hitting the "loudness" button. To me, Dr. E's transfers are the opposite of the Steve Hoffman ethic.
Yecch.

 

With the profits they make, why couldn't they have access? I guess an a/b would confirm?

 

This is not incorrect. There isn't a binary flag to indicate HDCD. The HDCD material, and flag, in encoded in the LSBs of the data stream. The Redbook Standard does not have a binary flag in it for HDCD, as it does for pre-emphasis.

The HDCD web site, at least before Microsoft bought Pacific Microsonics, use to have a technical paper or two with the details.

 

Hi David,
Do you believe -they- are HDCD encoded? A friend brought over "With The Beatles" and we did an a/b and the HDCD sounded better...Better bass responce and better in general...I believe -they- are HDCD encoded...a clear difference.

 

Yes they are HDCD encoded, and they sound very good to me. The "A Hard Day's Night" CD is not encoded, however. From what I've been able to gather, even the "original" AHDN from FSL was not encoded, as something went wrong in production. That is not as unusual as it sounds, as I purchased a couple of "remastered" CDs by Laurence Juber that was were supposed to be HDCD encoded and one was not. When I e-mailed the company, they told me that they do not check their copies on an HDCD equipped player, they took the word of the mastering engineer. They also told me that they couldn't afford to repress, and I was offered my money back if I didn;t want the CD because it wasn't HDCD encoded. (I kept it BTW.)

 

Guys, for the Beatles first Four albums, which is better sounding, the Dr Ebbets (why didnt he call himself Dr Roberts?)
or the Mirror Spock?

I have the Beat Records "Original Master Recordings" verison and I love them, but I hear there are significantly better versions out there.

Luke, you wanna chime in here? I trust your judgement.

 

Mikey,
I have them both and I prefer the Mirror Spock (for the first four - I don't have any others (from Mirror Spock) if there are any ). The sound is a bit warmer, a little more analog. But I have the entire mono and stereo of Dr E and they are well treasured (I only have the Canadian issued stereo / reprocessed vinyl from the 70's and 80's).

Cliff

 

Mikey,
I have several different collections of the first four in stereo (cd-r's and silvers) and by far the best I've heard are the millenium remastres(Japan silver) with the Dr. Ebbetts a very close second. The Spocks also are very good but not quite as good as the other two.

Regards,
Kemp Neal

 

Mikey,
I have all the above mentioned Beatles CD's from DR E and Spock and the Beat. They are all great I have A/B'd them all song by song. Some tunes from each CD do sound better from one to the next. But that will be up to your ears, also the FLS remasters are excellent. Dr E does have a little more of a higher end sound to them but I think this is good for the most part remember the guitar is a Mid Range instrument. I have a 4 yr BA in Music and the guitar from Berklee College of Music. So I hope you would trust my opinion on this as well.

 

One line should read that "I have a 4 yr BA Degree from Berklee College of Music and my main istrument is the Guitar. I didn't want to mislead anyone about my credentials here on the board.