Steppin' Out - it's out!
- Thread starter martin
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Hi Rudy-
Surprising to me was that most of the 3 track and 2 track tapes from the 60's were in fabulous condition. The tape was made like steel. High quality. There were some bent reel issues, mold, problems with splicing tape melting onto the oxide of the recording tape. Some of the tapes were so dry that they had to spend many weeks in the rehydration chamber which pumped some moisture back into them as they were becoming brittle. In the mid 70's onward tape, for the most part, was made not to last. Oxide falling off the tape, the backing coming off, more tape splicing issues, etc. Some tapes had to be baked several times and re-cleaned after baking. Lots and lots of problems at the intro to the opening track of each side of albums as they are deteriorating quickly. Same with the ends of the last track on each album side. Some tapes were just over-played throughout the years so sonic quality had deteriorated. Lots and lots of issues as I go along tape by tape. Some are perfect and some....
I came across a freebie reel of Ampex 456 from the mid to late 70s and tried to play it back (it was an Armed Forces radio broadcast): it played OK for the first minute, then the sound gradually became more muffled until about 10 minutes later, there was almost no sound at all coming out of the deck! I'd read about the oxide issues in the past but, having witnessed it firsthand, it really becomes a wakeup call! I know a lot of tapes are good, durable stock, but to think of the tens of thousands of albums recorded to the faulty tape is definitely scary!
It was no big deal. I needed that blank metal reel anyway.
I hated to do it, but I unscrewed the hub, pulled off the pancake of tape, and discarded it. In hindsight, I threw away a couple thousand feet of audiophile nerd party streamers. 
It was no big deal. I needed that blank metal reel anyway.
I hated to do it, but I unscrewed the hub, pulled off the pancake of tape, and discarded it. In hindsight, I threw away a couple thousand feet of audiophile nerd party streamers. 
In 1977 some friends and I were starting a mobile DJ business. So to test the mixer and practice a little, we made a mix-tape of favorite songs and I would "deejay" inbetween the songs. We had such a good time doing that that we continued to make new tapes every time a lot of good new songs would come out. We would get a couple of six-packs and "go make a tape." It was basically a party with me DJing and recording at the same time. Eventually the collection grew to over fifty 90-minute cassettes. As technology allowed, I decided to try to convert those tapes to CD. I'd heard all the horror stories about tape damage, and figured those old cassette tapes (which had spent a lot of time in cars) would have deteriorated. I was pretty amazed at how good most of them still sounded, and some of those tapes were played a lot!
Back on topic, I'll be looking forward to getting Herb's new CD. I'm not averse to buying digital tracks -- I've bought a lot of iTunes the past few years -- but what I miss the most is the packaging, as other posters have noted. True, it's possible to read about as much information as you want to on the Web, but it's just not the same listening to tunes while staring at a computer screen.
CD sales are definitely falling off -- down some 13% last year -- but it's not quite as "dead" as the media would have you believe. Billboard says 193 MILLION CDs were sold in 2012, vs. about 5 million units of vinyl. (CD's peak was in around 2000, with over 800 million units sold that year.) What's changed is where they're sold....not in stores so much anymore, mostly online. Sad as that is.
Back on topic, I'll be looking forward to getting Herb's new CD. I'm not averse to buying digital tracks -- I've bought a lot of iTunes the past few years -- but what I miss the most is the packaging, as other posters have noted. True, it's possible to read about as much information as you want to on the Web, but it's just not the same listening to tunes while staring at a computer screen.
CD sales are definitely falling off -- down some 13% last year -- but it's not quite as "dead" as the media would have you believe. Billboard says 193 MILLION CDs were sold in 2012, vs. about 5 million units of vinyl. (CD's peak was in around 2000, with over 800 million units sold that year.) What's changed is where they're sold....not in stores so much anymore, mostly online. Sad as that is.
Cassette tape stock was stable although, as I'm sure you found over the years, quality of the tape itself could vary quite a bit. Even some of the consumer grade reel tape from that era is still good--I have a couple reels of Maxell UD35-90 (the smaller 7-1/2" reels) that sound great even as old as they are. I also have some Ampex consumer reels I bought at surplus, sealed, that are amazingly durable.
The pro tape even looks different--I noticed it is more grey in appearance. I forget what the explanation was for the pro Ampex tape stock, but I think it was a change in the adhesive used to bond the oxide coding to the plastic tape backing, which failed over the years. And unfortunately it would take all those years before it deteriorated and engineers began to notice it. Ampex 456 wasn't their only series that was affected either: there were likely a few others (perhaps the 491?). Today, the Ampex tape is marketed under the Quantegy name. And I'm pretty sure they have cured the "sticky shed" problem!
The pro tape even looks different--I noticed it is more grey in appearance. I forget what the explanation was for the pro Ampex tape stock, but I think it was a change in the adhesive used to bond the oxide coding to the plastic tape backing, which failed over the years. And unfortunately it would take all those years before it deteriorated and engineers began to notice it. Ampex 456 wasn't their only series that was affected either: there were likely a few others (perhaps the 491?). Today, the Ampex tape is marketed under the Quantegy name. And I'm pretty sure they have cured the "sticky shed" problem!
Yeah -- one thing I had in my favor was I always insisted on using the "best" tapes we had available. Usually Maxell UD-XLII, or occasionally the Maxell "metal" tapes. Occasionally we would have a LOT of music stacked up, so we would use 120 minute tapes -- which Maxell only sold in their cheapo "UD" configuration --- and even they held up well. So hats off to Maxell for making a durable long-lasting product.
I did well with TDK over the years--there are probably dozens of my D-90 cassettes still out there somewhere. For home use, strictly metal--usually TDK MA or MA-X, or Sony Metal ES. For awhile I was also buying Sony UCX-S chrome tapes for use in the car, and they wore like iron also. I still have a handful of dance track compilations I made that were complete with crossfades--if you goofed up just once, you had to rewind and start over.
For home use, strictly metal--usually TDK MA or MA-X, or Sony Metal ES. For awhile I was also buying Sony UCX-S chrome tapes for use in the car, and they wore like iron also. I still have a handful of dance track compilations I made that were complete with crossfades--if you goofed up just once, you had to rewind and start over.
CherryStreet
Member
Thank you sooo much for taking time out of your busy day to get back to us! Looking forward to the FLAC files finally being for sale on Herb's site! Just like you I will listen to ANYTHING at least once. And Robin Thicke's CD and The Daft Punk CD are my 2 faves so far this summer!
Hope you and your family are enjoying your summer!
toeknee4bz
Well-Known Member
I'm a bit of a purist. I still buy music exclusively in tangible form, be it CD, vinyl, etc.. It's not even just the sound quality, though, that's the reason I do it. [I'll have to admit to listening to music quite frequently in digital form, i.e. on my iPod when I travel. (I know, I know, but hey, it's more compact than taking along a Discman and several dozen CDs!
So I like knowing I actually have hard copies I can always fall back on.
And, for another thing, I think that people who only buy music in digital form are missing a big part of the experience, and not just in the fact that the sound is usually inferior. There's a lot to be said for the visual element of enjoying a record, too, be it taking in the album art, reading the liner notes, etc. I'll often pull LPs or CDs off of my shelves just to admire the packaging or read the liner notes to find out the writers and players behind each song. Album packaging became an art form in and of itself back in the '60s and 70s, and it's always interesting, too, to see all the different kinds of goodies (i.e. posters, stickers, bonus 45s, iron-on decals, etc.) that used to be included in LPs back then. I've got some albums that must have at least half a dozen different inserts inside!
I've always been a big Herb Alpert fan - and of A&M in general; I always knew when I saw that A&M logo on a record that I wouldn't be disappointed by it (such amazing quality control!!) - and, before I ever even started collecting the TJB albums, I was into his solo albums like Rise, Beyond, Magic Man, etc., so I became familiar with your songs very early on in life, and I can't begin to tell you how awestruck and spellbound I was once I heard "The Factory." I still think that one's got to be my favorite instrumental song of all-time, actually!
- Jeff F.
Jeff, you and I are in the same boat in two aspects:
1) We both prefer a tangible form of music, because all-too-often computer files can vanish. Oh, sure... I still have a portable hard drive with over 9620 songs on it. But it's my SECOND portable hard drive. The first one CRASHED! Good thing I copied my music collection to my brother's hard drive so I could easily copy it back! So there's no way in the world, short of the house burning down, that I'm going to give up my CD collection (I stopped counting at well over 700...) or my vinyl lp collection (around 500). I've had three iPod Classics since 2005, and they're all dead now. Meanwhile, my Rise CD sounds as good today as it did when I bought it way back in June of 1986! What... 27 years? Yeah. Nuff said.
2) We also both seem to be cut from the same cloth where Herb's 80s work is concerned. I may have initially heard my mom's copies of Going Places and Whipped Cream & Other Delights when I was a kid, but it wasn't until Rise and Beyond both piqued my interest that I started collecting Herb's albums. I wouldn't go so far to say that "The Factory" was an all-time favorite (no offense, Randy), but the rest of those early solo tracks are still some of my favorite tracks of my entire music collection.
With the obsolescence of the tangible CD, sadly, there won't be anything in the future to 'collect'. I can't see someone your age in the year... say, 2035... going to a music website browsing for 'vintage files'!
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@badazz , if you're still reading this, I wonder if you have any information regarding two Herb Alpert tracks that surfaced on the Spanish AyM Discos version of BLOW YOUR OWN HORN. The Spanish title was NOCHE DE AMOR and had two different songs, "Sueño PreColombino" and "Noche De Amor". Both are killer tracks in my humble estimation and should be made available to fans at least through the website.
I just hope these don't get lost to time - they deserve to be heard.
Harry
I just hope these don't get lost to time - they deserve to be heard.
Harry
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It's strange how different people have different experiences with the same product. I've had the same iPod Classic since about 2005 or 2006, somewhere in there....it spends most of its time in the glove box of my pickup. It lives in there through the 100-degree summer days and also in the -30-degree winter nights. It gets daily use, LOTS of stop/go action because I take a lot of short trips. Plus I've hauled it with me on lots of plane trips and it's gone through the "rigors" of security many times. It still works as good as new.
But I'm like you.....you can't beat having a tangible product. Between the iPod, my phone, and using my CDs to make compilations, plus copying stuff to different computers, I've probably got 10 or 15 copies of most of my A&M music floating around here...but the base-line will always be the rack of CDs.
Congratulations on the correct use of the word "piqued." All over the internet I see people writing that something "peaked" their interest and it makes me want to throttle them! Not to be a language snob but that one really sets me off for some reason.
Captain Bacardi
Well-Known Member
I had asked about these on Herb's site and Adjani said that right now only the original albums were being released, with additional tunes as these to come out later.
Capt. Bacardi
I was guilty on two occasions here (now fixed!)- but I also got it right with "piqued" a number of times, too. We all get brain cramps once in awhile.
Captain Bacardi
Well-Known Member
Well, NOCHE DE AMOR *was* an original album, wasn't it?
For us die-hards, yes!
Capt. Bacardi
Stephen Vakil
Well-Known Member
Hi Martin
Can't see that y0u can stream the whole album on Spotify (maybe just a UK restriction?) - just POTR. Have I missed it?
Best
Stephen
Captain Bacardi
Well-Known Member
Stephen Vakil
Well-Known Member
Then it should work here too! Still can't find it and searched on a couple of the album tracks too in case I could find it that way....
Stephen
Stephen Vakil
Well-Known Member
Hi Captain!
Good streaming service to check out other music and genres to see whether you like them. Would also be useful for a preview of the new album, if only I could find it!
Stephen
Spotify is indeed available in the US, but there are ongoing disputes over artist royalties that do not sit well with me: many artists never see a penny of what Spotify claims to collect. On top of it, the commercials they insert are obnoxiously loud, and for my tastes in music, they do not have much of anything I'd like to hear. One board I am active on likes to make Spotify playlist of their favorite selections of the month. I had tried to do that, but it only had about one third of the songs I wanted to use. Audio quality was also poor, even for streaming (although you get an improvement if you are a paid subscriber). If it is outside the mainstream, you will often not find it on Spotify.
The deal killer for me is that they require you to have a facebook account to sign up. I am not on fb anymore, nor do I want to be. (It is an information security and privacy nightmare.) I lucked out in that someone sent me an early invitation before they hopped into the deal with fb, who uses that tie-in to generate even more revenue for them. The partnership had 99.9% to do with "more money for fb" and 0.1% to do with improving the listener experience. (And sorry, but everyone I know does not need to see what I'm listening to 24/7.) I have a feeling that a lot of what Spotify collects monetarily goes straight to fb rather than the recording artists and composers.
To each his own, though. My listening habits and Spotify do not fit well together. For others, it suits the purpose. The premise is that you can listen to songs or entire albums via streaming, on demand. There are similar services out there that do the same, with a similar selection. Spotify just happens to be the most popular.
Pandora is far and away more flexible for my needs (you actually "train" your own station to play the type of music you'd like, once you have selected your "seed" artists). And it has introduced me to a lot more music I'd never heard of. But, it is a different type of listening experience than Spotify, both technically and in how it works. And I'll save that for a separate thread. I'd say many who have used Pandora are not aware of how it actually works and what it does; it is not the "click my favorite artist and hear all of their songs" experience that many users expect it to be. It is far more sophisticated than that. I'd be happy to explain it elsewhere.
The deal killer for me is that they require you to have a facebook account to sign up. I am not on fb anymore, nor do I want to be. (It is an information security and privacy nightmare.) I lucked out in that someone sent me an early invitation before they hopped into the deal with fb, who uses that tie-in to generate even more revenue for them. The partnership had 99.9% to do with "more money for fb" and 0.1% to do with improving the listener experience. (And sorry, but everyone I know does not need to see what I'm listening to 24/7.) I have a feeling that a lot of what Spotify collects monetarily goes straight to fb rather than the recording artists and composers.
To each his own, though. My listening habits and Spotify do not fit well together. For others, it suits the purpose. The premise is that you can listen to songs or entire albums via streaming, on demand. There are similar services out there that do the same, with a similar selection. Spotify just happens to be the most popular.
Pandora is far and away more flexible for my needs (you actually "train" your own station to play the type of music you'd like, once you have selected your "seed" artists). And it has introduced me to a lot more music I'd never heard of. But, it is a different type of listening experience than Spotify, both technically and in how it works. And I'll save that for a separate thread. I'd say many who have used Pandora are not aware of how it actually works and what it does; it is not the "click my favorite artist and hear all of their songs" experience that many users expect it to be. It is far more sophisticated than that. I'd be happy to explain it elsewhere.
My problem with the streaming services is, I'm just too picky about what I listen to. If it's just for background music at work they're OK, but if I'm actively listening then I don't necessarily want to sample new stuff I might like....because half the time I don't like it all that well, it seems. I much prefer to put my iPod on "shuffle" if I want a radio-like experience. That way I know I'm going to like almost everything that comes up.
I've never tried Spotify but the idea of the loud commercials is a turnoff right there. (I know, I know, you have to give something to get something.) Pandora is OK but everytime I've used it, it would play one "familiar" song followed by about 12 songs I'd never heard before, so it didn't grab me as much as it has others. I guess I don't really want to hear artists that "sound like" a Sergio or a Herb, I would just as soon play the real thing.
I've never tried Spotify but the idea of the loud commercials is a turnoff right there. (I know, I know, you have to give something to get something.) Pandora is OK but everytime I've used it, it would play one "familiar" song followed by about 12 songs I'd never heard before, so it didn't grab me as much as it has others. I guess I don't really want to hear artists that "sound like" a Sergio or a Herb, I would just as soon play the real thing.
You can lose the commercials with a paid subscription, and create your own playlists. But thing is, a lot of us already own the music we like to play, so other than using Spotify on a mobile device, it really doesn't serve any purpose for me. In regard to Herb's album, I don't need to hear it as a poor sounding streaming version with loud commercials interjected constantly. I'm not that desperate--I'll wait for a CD or FLAC download.
Pandora indeed works on the "similarity" concept, but that is what I need when I'm listening to background music in a "radio" context, where I expect to hear a variety of songs. In that sense, it is similar to terrestrial radio in that they usually play one song I might like followed by three others I may not. With Pandora, though, it takes months and a lot of listening hours to truly mold a station the way you like it--even three or more years after I created my "Fusion Mashup" station (which was originally a Jean-Luc Ponty station), I am still giving a thumbs up or thumbs down so it knows what to play. (Enough "thumbs down" votes on one particular artist will ban that artist from your channel.) Every so often, it throws in a $mooth jazz song and I have to run to hit that thumbs down. The real beauty of it, though, is that I've found a lot more music I like that I can listen to now, and discovered other artists I had overlooked for decades. Just one song on Pandora ignited my whole Return To Forever phase a few years ago...and that's just one example!
I did try programming an A&M-related channel, but it threw in a bunch of shlock that I couldn't stomach. I realized that the diversity is too broad to really do a successful channel. TJB sounds different from Sandpipers; neither sound like Caprenters; none of those sound like Procol Harum; none of them relate to Edu Lobo or Supertramp, Brothers Johnson or Janet Jackson. In this case, I'd rather throw together a playlist myself and play it back via my music server or over the Zune if I'm out on the road.
Pandora is the only one I'd ever pay for, quite frankly...it is the only one I've used that has really ever offered me anything of value.
Pandora indeed works on the "similarity" concept, but that is what I need when I'm listening to background music in a "radio" context, where I expect to hear a variety of songs. In that sense, it is similar to terrestrial radio in that they usually play one song I might like followed by three others I may not. With Pandora, though, it takes months and a lot of listening hours to truly mold a station the way you like it--even three or more years after I created my "Fusion Mashup" station (which was originally a Jean-Luc Ponty station), I am still giving a thumbs up or thumbs down so it knows what to play. (Enough "thumbs down" votes on one particular artist will ban that artist from your channel.) Every so often, it throws in a $mooth jazz song and I have to run to hit that thumbs down.
The real beauty of it, though, is that I've found a lot more music I like that I can listen to now, and discovered other artists I had overlooked for decades. Just one song on Pandora ignited my whole Return To Forever phase a few years ago...and that's just one example! I did try programming an A&M-related channel, but it threw in a bunch of shlock that I couldn't stomach. I realized that the diversity is too broad to really do a successful channel. TJB sounds different from Sandpipers; neither sound like Caprenters; none of those sound like Procol Harum; none of them relate to Edu Lobo or Supertramp, Brothers Johnson or Janet Jackson. In this case, I'd rather throw together a playlist myself and play it back via my music server or over the Zune if I'm out on the road.
Pandora is the only one I'd ever pay for, quite frankly...it is the only one I've used that has really ever offered me anything of value.
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