🥂 50th A&M 50th Anniversary 3-CD Set

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A few years ago when I first met Randy Alpert I asked him why this loudness war was happening and why don't engineers flat out refuse to do it. He told me if someone did refuse to compress the hell out of it the record company would just find someone else to do it. If you want the work you have to play by the corporate rules these days.

Way too true. One mastering engineer told the story of an album he had mastered, only to find out that the label didn't like it. It wasn't loud enough. He told his assistant to "smash it", and then told the record company to leave his name off the credits for mastering.

How times have changed...
 
Im quite pleased with the selections as a whole i agree they couldnt include everything we wanted like bmb wes montgomery or claudine longet but this is a decent sampler while i have many of the songs in various forms this does have a few im missing i myself plan to purchase this collection all a&m fans should have one as a momento for their collections in my opinion
 
Im quite pleased with the selections as a whole i agree they couldnt include everything we wanted like bmb wes montgomery or claudine longet but this is a decent sampler while i have many of the songs in various forms this does have a few im missing i myself plan to purchase this collection all a&m fans should have one as a momento for their collections in my opinion
I agree with you, bbrmn. I just received my copy, and it is a great collection!
 
As for the most copies of one LP, I have four of Uniquely Mancini, three of those a futile attempt to find a clean playing copy.
I must have been lucky - my original copy was a rubbish pressing (UK Decca I think) but I picked up a German re-pressing around 1972 and it's a lovely job.

Don't think I'll go for this set - quite apart from the lack of anything new or interesting in the packaging, I loathe brickwalled reissues - there's no real reason to destroy the audio in this way. A good mastering engineer - like Bernie Grundman or the marvellous Denis Blackham - can really enhance a recording prior to pressing. A bad one can destroy it. For my sins I'm on the receiving end of a lot of 'digitally remastered' stuff these days and often it's a case of taking a mono vinyl copy that already syffers from groove compression and surface noise; then 'noise reducing' it to knock the stuffing (and the top end) out of it; then (because these kids think they know better than the original producer) adding a wee bit of reverb before compressing it and then normalising it. End result = unlistenable!
 
I must have been lucky - my original copy was a rubbish pressing (UK Decca I think) but I picked up a German re-pressing around 1972 and it's a lovely job.

Don't think I'll go for this set - quite apart from the lack of anything new or interesting in the packaging, I loathe brickwalled reissues - there's no real reason to destroy the audio in this way. A good mastering engineer - like Bernie Grundman or the marvellous Denis Blackham - can really enhance a recording prior to pressing. A bad one can destroy it. For my sins I'm on the receiving end of a lot of 'digitally remastered' stuff these days and often it's a case of taking a mono vinyl copy that already syffers from groove compression and surface noise; then 'noise reducing' it to knock the stuffing (and the top end) out of it; then (because these kids think they know better than the original producer) adding a wee bit of reverb before compressing it and then normalising it. End result = unlistenable!

That is a sad trend. :agree: There are a lot of good engineers out there--Rob LoVerde is doing some nice work for Mobile Fidelity these days, as are his colleagues. Steve Hoffman still does releases for Audio Fidelity and a couple of vinyl boutique labels. Bob Irwin does very well with Sundazed, as has Andrew Sandoval over at Legacy (IIRC). Other labels are variable in quality (Bear Family used to be good for example, but recent releases have suffered). Mosaic has also made some good boxed sets over the years. You tend to start recognizing names after awhile, especially after having been burned.

As an example of disappointing: the remixes Nick Davis did to the entire Genesis catalog. Some remixes actually help (if the mixes remain true to the original), but in this case, the balances are off kilter a bit, but the dynamics are absolutely flattened. Not so much brickwalling, but it seems the mixdown had compression added. Listen to "Mad Man Moon" from Trick Of The Tail and it's blindingly obvious: it loses all of its impact. If I can find a copy, I should post a comparison sample online.

Can't say the A&M SHM CDs from Japan sound any good either. Most recently I've heard releases by Styx and Supertramp, and especially in the later, the dynamics are all sucked out. Not even brickwalling--it's like they decided Crime Of The Century should be as flat and lifeless as the Genesis remixes.
 
You and me both.... :sigh: Nowadays I ask around quite a bit before taking the plunge, or I try to get a sample somewhere and see if it sounds better or worse.

Can't win either--early CDs suffer from two things. First, you have older A/D converters that worked at lower sampling rates and bitrates. And second, many labels just grabbed LP production masters off the shelf rather than go back to the original 2-channel mixdown tape. (They did this during the first rush of CDs to the market--they wanted back catalog out there.) At least with many of the gold CDs and better boutique labels, you can still rest assured you're getting a good-sounding product.
 
I bought this CD set mainly as a way to support the Corner. But I have to admit I haven't listened to any of it yet. Old ears, and I couldn't tell any difference anyway, but I hadda get it for A&M completeness purposes at least! Plus I don't have 80 percent of it in any form to begin with.

Mike A.
 
When visiting Los Angeles last week I picked up a copy of the 50th anniversary collection. I just gave it a spin and I have to say that I am positively surprised by what a good and entertaining collection it is. It appears that both selection and sequencing of tracks have been very consciously done and to me it is a worthy documentation of a great record label.

- greetings from the cold north -
Martin
 
Bell & James - "Livin' It Up" is one of my favorite songs of the 1970's. I can't tell you how many copies of the 45 I wore out.
 
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