You can go to HDTracks whereupon you can sample the various albums in a quality reasonable enough to give you a good idea of the sound: https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=browse_music&type=label&id=187 Note that because the samples are compressed, amongst other things the top end will sound a bit softer and less clear in the samples compared to the actual download or HDAD disks.
I knew of those comments but logic tells me she must have only been talking about the 1/2" tape three track originals - not the 35mm originals. The reason being that the 35mm films only went for about 9 minutes each I believe (I think Robert Eberenz stated this in one of his interviews), therefore making it quite the feat (if not impossible?) to cut a full LP side on a lathe in real time from a 35mm tape. Then again, this does not explain how the Classic Records were done, unless the modified machine could take much larger pancakes.
I suspect that the 10-minute limitation was on the portable recording machine only, not on the in-studio machine. Matt
I'm not trying to equate the two (Cinerama and Mercury), but Cinerama's on-location mag-film recorder could only do 10-minute reels. Their playback machine? Roughly one hour:
It's a bitter pill, ain't it? Sorry. You can't cut from a three-channel tape, doesn't matter what the format. Not enough preview heads, etc. to do an accurate cut. We did for the Nat King Cole projects but it took a redesigning of the entire cutting chain to be able to do it. It's not possible in a working cutting room without taking it apart. I guess Grundman could have redesigned a room to do this but really, I'd like to see a picture of a mag machine and a lacquer in the same shot. Really, and what about recuts? All that again? Please. They did a mix and cut their records from that. What kind of mix? Analog or digital?
it seem very misleading that the covers will so promintely display '''35mm the best qual. in sound''', et al- when it was all mixed down and such, yes. at one point, music was put onto 35mm film. but after that every else goes down the drain, it seems misleading so there is a way to do it, but it is very specialized, and you need to have a lot of space? what would that process be like, how do the three tracks get inputed into the cut?
Well, the recording process is misleading, I guess. Especially in those days. There was no reason to even record with three channels in the first place. Two would have worked fine. The "phantom center" was the final result so the middle channel was just a waste of tape width. All of the RCA-Victor LIVING STEREO recordings that were done in three track were mixed (also called "reduced") to two channel for cutting. Part of the magic of the old RCA sound was in the making of the cutting master which made those old Shaded Dogs sound so magical in the first place. In other words, a lot of the magic of the music of that age was manufactured during the MIX process and not the recording process which (as we've heard on many Classic Shaded Dog reissues) could sound rather clinical without the sonic manipulation during the three to two mixing process and subsequent vintage tube stereo 45/45 system cutting. SO cutting a two channel record from a raw three track tape or 35mm film would render a pretty lame sounding record.. But, as to cutting a lacquer using a three channel tape, please, just read post #1 in this thread: http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=184804
That's really interesting once more and explains a lot of my experiences with the Classic Records Shaded Dog reissues, thanks! I was sceptical long time because of what I heard and the rave reviews on the other hand. It's always good to trust the ears it seems...and insights like this can save some money if available in time. BG I think for sure is a great and qualitywise reliable (re)mastering engineer, but it's not easy to find out in which cases... Generally IMO it's expensive to find out, which vintage classical music reissues are soundwise worth the expense against state of the art CD productions.
Some rumors go around anyway about analog or digital processes within wellknown remasterings (I don't mean yours)...there's not a lot that would really surprise me at the end (like the critical analysis within this thread about 35mm recordings)
Classic Records was known to blow big bucks on particular projects (the Mercury and Everest ones being a case in point), and I would not discount the releases being transfered directly from 35mm on account of it being "too difficult" or "too costly". In any event, the only people who would know the absolute truth of the matter don't post on these forums. That being the case, to my ears, which I completely trust, there is zero sonic evidence of any analogue "traditional" tape "sound" in these Classic Records HDAD transfers and that - in conjunction with the detailed liner notes explaining the direct from 35mm transfer process itself completely convinces me they were indeed made direct from the 35mm masters. They also have three channel layers, so it seems rather rediculous to transfer from 35mm three track to traditional tape 3 track to 24-192 digital. Perhaps the vinyl was not done from 35mm, but as you saw in my post, I already commented that the vinyl sounds different. And that difference is more than I would atribute to the vinyl simply being another format. I even said it sounds subjectively better. This may be because they were indeed cut from a 2 track mixdown of the 35mm or it may be because of the tube cutting system combined with euphony of vinyl. I don't know but as I say, any comments I have made on the sound of these releases are based upon the sound of the 24-192 HDAD disks as I no longer own any of the LPs. In the end, you will believe what you are told to believe, and I will believe in commonsense, a shred of honesty on the part of Classic Records and my own ears. Back in the 90s Wilma Cozart-Fine put out numerous CD releases which involved real-time 3 channel to 2 channel mixes direct from the 35mm source. some of these releases were listed above in my other post. There were even comments at the time about how noisy the machine was in the remastering studio. Given that, it is not such a hard leap to believe that 16 years, later, a similar feat could be replicated for another record label.
I think it makes no sence to further speculate in this or other cases and I dont want to go deeper here. But to be honest, for me it's easy to trust my ears judging natural sounding strings, cymbals etc. and what can be understood by an "overall quality" of a recording, surely also a few deeper detail aspects. What I'm very unsure about is if I could determine a digital process within a mastering, especially when I have no comparison. I think I can't, because 24/192 is good enough to have no obvious shortcomings, especially without direct comparison. Even in the one case I know where it's possible to compare (first track of Music Matters Blue Note Horace Silver Song for my Father compared to the following tracks), what I tried to identify might be more imagination than fact. Some others, especially professionals might have more experience to identify this... Remember, we're not talking about a comparison of a digital with an analog frontend and media here, but of a single (high tech and assumed very well done) digital process within an otherwise analog production.
are we talking about the Tchaikovsky violin concerto with Spivakovsky ? i have the Everest/Omega 1995 cd & just played it.sound seemed OK,but i was playing it on my 2nd system as i fixed & ate breakfast.what should i be listening for ? this edition has a "35 MM Ultra Analog" banner at the top & says "recorded on 35mm three-track magnetic film", but they don't actually say it was transfered from 35mm.
It's the last track that has the problems, maybe the final 2 or 3 minutes, IIRC. Haven't played it in ages. It's an otherwise-lovely disc. Matt EDIT: By the way, this sort of thing happens with good ol' tape-sourced discs, too. The RCA Living Stereo CD of Strauss Family Waltzes by Fiedler has HORRID tape warpage on one of the tracks. (The last one, IIRC.) There, too, I think they would have been miles ahead using a backup tape and putting a small disclaimer in the liner notes, rather than using a bad tape source.
OK, you guys made me do it: I dug through my "archives of old junk" (garage and filing cabinet and boxes -- thanks a lot) to find some detailed correspondence with a "name" from Command Records. (I'm not saying who because it's somebody you would recognize and this was not stuff meant for public consumption. You'll just have to trust me on this one.) Regarding the mag film years, CLASSICAL 35mm protocol (pop was apparently different): •35mm fed directly to cutter -- no dupes. Some foreign-market labels would receive dupe tapes of the tapes made simultaneously while the cutter was running, while others would get a set of US-made stampers. It was inconsistent, but always one of those options. •No preview heads. ("The producer was a 'human preview head.'") Margin control was achieved by producer using hand signals and/or "yelling at" the engineer that a loud passage was on its way. No automated/compressed technique worked well, so none was used. •Film dubbers, due to their inherent mechanical noise, were in the "back of the room," away from the cutter position, and from photos I've seen, the cutting room was large, not closet-like. (I assume a separate "tape op" was on hand to avoid running back and forth between tape machine and cutter.) Now, through sheer coincidence, I happen to know some of the details of how the POP division of Mercury handled the whole compression/dynamics thing where mag film was concerned. Just last Friday, I had lunch with a guy named Charles Bork, who is a total Ampex/Altec nut, more so than I am. (Poor guy!) He recently purchased something from Tom Fine, son of Mercury's Bob and Wilma Cozart Fine. It's an optical compression device -- custom manufactured by Mercury that was used as follows: For Mercury's pop/jazz titles, some compression was applied, but no single device could get them the sound they were after, so they used a Fairchild tube-based device on the high frequencies to keep from blowing out the cutter heads, while using their proprietary optically-based, solid-state device to keep excessive bass levels from causing mistracking. Matt EDIT: Here's an especially interesting tidbit from my notes regarding the jazz/pop release PERSUASIVE PERCUSSION on Command Records:
I think you could do it with automation, but it would take a lot of rehearsals and would be a huge amount of trouble. As long as the console could memorize all the fader positions, it's possible to do, but wouldn't be very practical for most facilities.
Errr Film Dubbing mixers have no preview heads and in the days of optical recording produced stunning results. A friend.
The impression (and that's understating -- it is stated there as fact) that is in my old correspondence with Command Records "person x" is that for the classical stuff, it was all mixed down live "on the fly" from 3-track mag to disc, with the producer and cutting engineer working in tandem to adjust as needed while the side played out, sans preview head, almost like doing a live recording all over again. I know it's a different philosophy than what happens today, but back then, that's what they used to do. Matt
Well, Matt, maybe for the very first cut but as we know, many sets of lacquers were cut for those and the old tapes show that a 1/4" stereo tape was also used for cutting, dating back to the release date. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but probably only for the dash 1....
Could be -- no argument here. Hey, look at the typical pop LP: Want to get a copy mastered by the guy who is credited in the fine print? Better get an original issue! Matt
That's for sure. Think about this. If I needed to do recuts on any of the NAT KING COLE 45's that Kevin and I did for Acoustic Sounds it just couldn't be done from the three-track. That moment has passed. I couldn't match anything from my earlier mixes and the three channel cutting gear has been dismantled. The albums would just go out of print. In the case of Mercury, Command, Everest, etc. they went on for years and years, recut after recut.... Still with the same "35mm RECORDING!" banner! As Porky said when Duck Dodgers claimed the shaving cream planet for the earth: "Eh, b-b-big deal."
Right. I'm just saying it could be done today, provided you used an automated console. Steve had said: "You can't cut from a three-channel tape, doesn't matter what the format. Not enough preview heads, etc. to do an accurate cut." I think the truth is, you can, but it'd be a lot of trouble, you'd have to use an automated console, and it'd probably take more time and money than it'd be worth. Realistically, the best compromise would be to just do a straight-across transfer of the 3-track 35mm mags to high-res digital, and then mix the digital masters. To me, this would be realistic and affordable. I've dealt with old multi-track mags before (the oldest from 1954), and it's possibly to play them back if they're in good shape, you have good equipment, and you clean the heads about every 4 or 5 minutes. But god help you if the mags are falling apart. That's not pleasant.
So true! Here's a true story: In 2000 or so, a team of us was running 1952's THIS IS CINERAMA at the Cinerama Theatre in Seattle, with 7-channel mag sound on a separate mag reel. 4 machines running in sync. The film elements were newly reprinted, but I have no idea what the vintage of the audio reel was, and about 20 minutes before the end of reel one, the high frequency content starts to drop, then: POOF -- there is suddenly zero HF content. JUST BY DUMB LUCK, Peter Haas was in the audience and I knew where he was sitting. (Peter Haas really knows all the ins and outs of the technical end of old-school film sound, and lives in SoCal. He happened to be up from LA for the show and was seated with a friend of mine.) I ran down, found Peter (and mind you, the show is still rolling), yanked him up to the side booth where the sound dubber was, and either he or Gunther Jung (Cinerama, Inc., also in the booth) wound up cutting off a little strip of mag film, and every 10 seconds or so would run it between the running film and the tape head, kind of like they were swiping a debit card through a reader. Each time they swiped, the HF content would return, then gradually drop off again. This continued until that reel ended and intermission (mercifully) was reached. That reel was shedding like crazy and was immediately retired. (Seriously: straight to the garbage can.) Good times.... Matt
