Gentle Giant remasters

Eroc, I am very excited to hear this.

And with your skill, if you keep listening to people like Mal, Anton and myself winkgrin: )
you are going to start helping Rep to sell even more CDs because the word will spread fast in the audiophile community that you are doing your best to respect those values! Even though you have to consider the values of your employers!

Audiophiles may be picky, but we spend boatloads of money on music! That's part of why we give a damn!

Anyway, it seems like you are trying to juxtapose your EQ skills with a more audiophile approach, and I for one, truly respect this. A lot of people can just be closed minded but you are still ever evolving as an artist and this is to really be respected.

 

Thanks for your kind words, Jeff...

as I use to say: "no engineer or producer ever started out on a production with bad results in mind". All of them (us) always gave and still give their best. That's what in first case the musicians deserve, and in second case the listeners deserve.

For all of you (us) with high-end equipment and great listening-experience it is fairly easy to get things going. But the major community of music-consumers just is surrounded with cheap amps and speakers and a hoover blowing in the background. And for them, who are the most important group for the industry (and for many artists) the sound has to come over as placative as possible. So many mastering tricks to get the sound more attractive and "sparkling" are just right for that purpose, but may be "too much" on two 800 watts class-A monoblocks.

I have them monoblocks and I always was "thee" audiophile in person, as mentioned before. Sorry to say that, but several tracks from my album Eroc 4 (cutted half-speed in 1981) were used for stereo-reference albums over here. There is a real "heart" behind my efforts to produce the best possible sound, you can bet. But an artist's heart always has to fight against commercial interests. I'm paid for polishing up old material, but my heart never will be for sale...

Thanks for your suggestions, we only can learn from each other.


- Eroc

 

Eroc,

I wish I could get some 24-bit GG from Repertoire!
Do you have any insight as to whether a high-res format or hybrid format was considered for these re-masters? Oh ya, you did mention that folks with mid-fi and hoovers going are the target market. As Zappa said, Eat That Question...

 

Btw, Dobby, I ordered the 35th IaGH remaster and will compare it to my Alucard and RGoF soon.

 

"The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show..." (FZ, Lumpy Gravy, 1967)

But sad enough, not for Repertoire as far as I can see. They're just pretty into the normal 16-bit CD market. No efforts so far to release SACDs or audio-DVDs. The market for these is still to small, they say.

But IMHO: how can the market grow if nothing's offered?

- Eroc

 

No noise and compression, oh boy! Isn't musical information being lost with some of the hiss? Could Sparkle = bright/harsh? Me thinks so.
:thumbsdn:

 

Eroc,

Sounds great. I trust you'll be careful with the added sparkle not to make it too bright. I'll definitely be buying it when it comes out. What other GG releases did Rep announce? Will you be working on them as well?

Have you heard the recent 35th anniversary remasters of GG's later stuff? I think that sounds fabulous (though some here disagree).

 

Hi Tullman,

not in general musical information is "lost" with hiss and noise and it's removal. It always depends on the signal itself and it's quality. See, a flute e.g. may sound much better with a slight tape-hiss in the background, because your brain adds some of the hiss to the original sound of the flute and makes it more "shiny". In genereal a very slight amount of hiss seems to add more transparency to the sound, because the brain of the listener modulates and "masks" the sound with that noisefloor.

In the studio field sometimes we used to add coloured hiss very gently to an electric violin in the mix, to give it more breathing and natural collophonium-feeling. On the other hand e.g. in low piano-tones hiss can be very disturbing. Also on conga-solos (e.g. by Achim Fischer's productions), where we sometimes had a dynamic range of more than 110 dB in the studio which never could be recorded properly on analog tape.

So at the remastering stage we have to listen very carefully what happens to the original signal when removing hiss and noise step by step. There always is a "border" how far you can go - in medications and in remastering.

Adding sparkle not always means harsh sound. It brightens up normally, but depends on the structure of the overtone-spectrum. Decreasing EQ @ 10 or 12 or even 15 k can add more breath to a high spectrum if the original signals are of good quality, concerning recording and processing steps. A properly recorded 30" analog tape normally sounds great up there and can be well enhanced with eq'ing "up there". But if you've got a 16-bits production from a digital homestudio, where maybe someone has tried to get "liveness" by adding THD in the upper regions, you'll only blow up the crap by trying to add more high-end. Then it will sound really harsh and horrible.

The remasterer always must be very careful with eq'ing and de-noising under every circumstance. It always depends on every single sound-parameter on each single track of a production. Sometimes even on each single part of a track.

Regards,

- Eroc

P.S.: Listen to "Locomotive Breath" on Repertoire's "Rock Classics" REP 4765

 

As Conny Plank always used to say: you can add as much sparkle as you've got mids and low-end. I am very careful by doing that if the original material sounds good, you can bet.

No sorry, haven't heard any other GG's stuff so far. I always "hated" that band back then in the old Kraut days. Was "too sophisticated" for us all. But that has changed of course, and today I'm proud to can remaster their stuff...

Will ask REP on monday what else they have in the tube. Gonna hit back on you then.

- Eroc

 

Thanks Eroc. Looking forward to the update on the rest of the GG. I agree with you on the need to keep the overall balance of highs, mids, and low-end. I have no doubt you'll do a great job.

By the way, I'm glad you no longer hate GG. They've always been one of my favorite prog bands.

 

"The kids and their music is where it's at"

That's too bad, though if the initial price Amazon.ca is quoting is accurate ($28.99? CDN) they don't mind charging SACD-like prices! Anyway, looking forward to the release and the inevitable comparisons on this forum to the Vertigo release (Jeff, I trust you'll get those clips ready? )

 

Just talked to REP: the next one will be "Octopus", and more GG to come later.

Caught myself several times listening intensively to the really great performances while working on the sound...

- Eroc

 

I hope you can do wonders with Three Friends should you get to that one - I have the Line edition and it sounds muddy and...compressed ?

 

I used to have the "Edge of Twilight" comp, but not any longer. I'd like to get into some of these remasters, and my local FYE store has a 3 for $25 sale going on right now. Any recs for the best three GG remasters?

 

I have the Columbia and it sounds great! Don't know how the Line compares.

But the Line edition of Octopus is one of the best sounding CDs I have ever heard in my life.

Eroc, please listen to that old Line CD of Octopus just so you will have a better picture of what I find to be a very warm, analog sounding CD.

Line didn't always get things right, but that one they did. Probably just a nicely done, 1/1 transfer.

 

I can imagine - I know for sure that Line used to do "de-noising" just by decreasing the upper frequency range sometimes. But I have to listen to these CDs to can tell, if the compression was done in the studio back then. Many producers were very fond of compressing the stereo signal very hard at that time to get more power out of the mixes.

Maybe that's the reason, because at the time when the Line transfers to CD were done there was no usable digital compression available.

- Eroc

 

That's really an announcement, Jeff...

But somehow it stands totally against what Dobby says about the Line edition. All a matter of taste?

I'll call Uwe Tessnow today. He's the boss of Line and a good friend on mine. I'm sure he can provide me a CD and then I'll have a VERY close listen to it. Uwe once told me they did the transfers at Hardenberg Mastering in Hamburg back then. Maybe he still knows some details about the "Octopus" thing.

- Eroc

 

Definitely agree with you on the Line Octopus, Jeff, although the balance (left/right placement) sounds slightly off.

However can't agree on the Columbia Three Friends. To me it sounds more like what Dobby says about the Line.

 

Eroc,

Dobby was talking about the Line edition of Three Friends. I haven't heard that one so I don't know how it sounds.

And as I say, not all Line CDs are great, but the Line CD of _Octopus_ sounds fantastic to my ears. Very warm and natural. Plenty of hiss, not a hint of tinkering.

The Vertigo CD of _Octopus_ was mastered by Gert van Hoeyen. It's good but he jacked the treble up too much for my taste and it's a bit harsh. Not as warm as the Line. The drums sound crispy and harsh instead of warm like the Line.

The other issues that sound just like the Line are the Korean issue on Si-Wan, and the Universal Japan issue in a mini lp sleeve. These all sound great. For some reason, I thought there was a bit more breath in the Line over the Universal Japan, but they are very similar. The Si-Wan also seems to have been a simple 1/1 transfer and is excellent!

 

Well, I can tell you that a friend of mine spoke with the mastering engineer who did _Three Friends_ for Columbia on CD at the time. He can't recall his name, but he says he was totally committed to doing a nice transfer and not using noise reduction. I believe it was a flat transfer from the tape that Columbia had. It sounds very warm and nice to me.

 

Just talked to Uwe Tessnow from Line. As far as he remembers "Octopus" was done at PolyGram (today it's Universal) from the o-tapes back then. So it seems to be a 1:1 transfer without any manipulations over the A/D technology they had at that time. He will send me a copy tomorrow. I think I'll give it a "private" spin and then tell you more ASAP, because I don't know when REP will finally hit on me with the job.

I'll see if I can get that one for comparison, too.

Haven't seen or heard any of these, yet. Maybe they copied the Line CD? It would be easy for me to tell, if I would have got them here.

- Eroc

 

Very excited about Octopus. It's one of my favorite GG albums.

 

Line still in Bussisness? They issued a lot cds and lp of good albums and many are OOP now. Isotope 3 albums, Peter Bardens-Answer, Carmen 3 albums, Annette Peacock, Hardstuff, Mark-Almond , ian Matthews and hundred more.

 

Yes, I suspect they just used the Line CD.

 

Line's still in biz, but only with classic stuff like old operas at the moment. But some exceptions occur: did a six-CD set of the "Best of Britsh 60's Pop" and a complete 20-CD set of "The Swingin' Forties" for them recently, and still am standing on their feet to push them a little into the old rock stuff again. Mitch Ryder for instance - Uwe T. has all the o-tapes somewhere, he told me.

Would be awesome, or...?

- Eroc