From: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2010 #183 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk Unsubscribe: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe Website: http://jonimitchell.com JMDL Digest Monday, June 21 2010 Volume 2010 : Number 183 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: Tech stuff re: remastered Blue njc ["Randy Remote" ] RE: Joni Mitchell Jazz Radio Special [M C ] Over the new remastered and improved and so and so versions of an old recording ["Miguel Arrondo" ] Re: Is Tom Petty singing worse than Dylan? njc [T Peckham Subject: Re: Tech stuff re: remastered Blue njc From: "Mark Scott" > It seems to me that a lot of older recordings really sounded inferior in > their first CD pressings. Yes, alot of those first CDs were rushed to the market using whatever master they could find, with little or no care to use the best version. Corporate greed. Also, CD technology has improved since then. A well made CD, like a well made LP can sound quite good. On the other hand, how many versions of "Are You Experienced" by Jimi Hendrix have there been? Yes, they milked the consumer, but the record industry is sputtering towards it's demise anyway, partly, at least, due to a lack of trust/faith from the music buying public (but mostly because of the internet). RR ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 07:29:26 -0400 From: Gerald Notaro Subject: New Herbie Hancock out this week - VLJC No new Joni, but close! The Imagine Project 1. Imagine (feat. P!nk, Seal, India.Arie, Jeff Beck, Konono #1 & Omou Sangare) Herbie Hancock;P!nk;Seal;India Arie;Jeff Beck;Konono No 1;Oumou Sangari 7:18 2. Don't Give Up (feat. P!nk & John Legend) Herbie Hancock;John Legend;P!nk 7:26 3. Tempo de Amor (feat. Ciu) Herbie Hancock;Ciu 4:41 Not Available 4. Space Captain (feat. Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks) Herbie Hancock;Derek Trucks;Susan Tedeschi 6:54 Not Available 5. The Times They Are A-Changin' (feat. The Chieftains, Toumani Diabete, Lisa Hannigan) Herbie Hancock;Lisa Hannigan;Toumani Diabate;The Chieftains 8:04 Not Available 6. La Tierra (feat. Juanes) Herbie Hancock;Juanes 4:50 Not Available 7. Tamatant Tilay/ Exodus (Feat. Tinariwen, K'Naan, Los Lobos) Herbie Hancock;Tinariwen;K'naan;Los Lobos 4:45 Not Available 8. Tomorrow Never Knows (feat. Dave Matthews) Herbie Hancock;Dave Matthews 5:21 Not Available 9. A Change Is Gonna Come (feat. James Morrison) Herbie Hancock;James Morrison 8:46 Not Available 10. The Song Goes On (feat. K.S. Chithra, Chaka Khan, Anoushka Shankar and Wayne Shorter) Herbie Hancock;K.S. Chithra;Chaka Khan;Anoushka Shankar;Wayne Shorter Jerry ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 07:46:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Em Subject: Re: Tech stuff re: remastered Blue njc, Primo versions of Steely Dan, njc Jim, wow, thanks for that link! I can't believe they mention Katy Lied! See, there is an issue with it! That is extremely gratifying to read that - just so I know I'm not a crazy person. Although I'm not sure the issues I have with it are what they're talking about. Hopefully it IS related. One huge wart, I feel is that when they build a wall of harmony vocals, as in "Any World that I'm Welcome To", that wall train wrecks...I believe it distorts. Almost as badly as JOTMAS! only it messes with your mind, cuz you think its your equipment that's bad. On JOTMAS its pretty obviously in the recording. When the vocal is just one voice its alright. Too bad because some of those vocals are pretty amazing. Anyway, thanks again! Wishing you all a fun and Sunday. :) Em ps: also, your idea that the mentioning of all the equipment, etc is basically aping early hi-fi albums....huh! inna-resting. I didn't "get" that, at all. thanks for pointing that out. - --- On Sat, 6/19/10, Jim L'Hommedieu wrote: From: Jim L'Hommedieu Subject: Tech stuff re: remastered Blue njc, Primo versions of Steely Dan, njc To: beatntrack@sbcglobal.net, joni@smoe.org, "Em Alvarez" , "Randy Remote" Date: Saturday, June 19, 2010, 3:40 PM When Steely Dan goes on about what board they use, employing a long-neglected toy piano, etc, I think they are often just kidding. I think they are making fun of people who did that back in the 50's while simultaneously, saying it themselves with a straight face. It's one of those Becker and Fagen paradoxes. Here is a list of primo versions of Steely Dan albums. http://www.granatino.com/sdresource/5audio.htm There was a Mobile Fidelity version of "Katy Lied", Em, but Katy Lied wasn't one of my favorites. Not like "Aja" or "Gaucho". I think one reason that Blue sounds good no matter how poorly it was mastered and pressed in the old days, is because there are so few things "on" it. If I recall correctly, there are one or two instruments on most songs. When you start adding a bunch of layers, the sound can "muddy up". I'm interested to see what Dave Blackburn says about this. What I mean is that "California" sounds great because it's JT's guitar, Joni's dulcimer, and not much else. Compare the clean sound of that to almost anything on "Court And Spark" where she used a bunch of layers and the sound got kinda muddy and screechy. Maybe the sound blocks up if you have to use a big board. Beatle Paul said that he got a clear sound on "McCartney" because he was using very simple equipment. Jim L'Hommedieu Em said in part, > mean when Steely Dan goes on and on in the liner notes about the equipment they used to record this thing, and the board used, etc etc, I expect to be able to realize that excellence when I hear it!> ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:56:04 -0400 From: "Jim L'Hommedieu" Subject: Re: Tech stuff re: remastered Blue njc Catherine wrote: >if they CAN make the music sound so much better, why don't they do that to begin with?> Great question. I think the answer is "Because they could get away with it." Back then, Warner-Electra-Asylum-Reprise was so big it had 4 names. Most people were happy to get the latest thing and didn't care about the sound too much. My first record player had a plastic tone arm- plastic! My parents had a metal tonearm and it sounded better. In the 70s, when the price of oil went up, so did the price of vinyl because (I think) it is derived from oil. The major companies just used cheaper vinyl, and mixed in the trimmings. Literally. One step of mastering a record is the process of playing the master tape and copying it onto a "production master" which typically involves a host of minor sins like compressing the signal, and using tone controls to lop off the bass and treble. After they adjust the sound for 20 albums, they get lazy and try to apply one set of corrections to everything, so it's all homogenized. With settings like that you lose tiny pieces like hearing the singer breath, or hearing the foot pedals on the piano, or hearing the various decays properly. I believe that those decays are important to the illusion that you're hearing the real thing. Since "Paprika Plains" was made in different places at different times, for example, they 'adjusted' the tone controls to make it sound like it was all made at one time. That is good for most listeners but to some, they feel they lose clarity when you "monkey around" with the EQ. so the masses are happy and the picky listeners started buying Japanese versions. Dave said, >Though I agree with Russ' gripe that re-issues of old material are often a marketing ploy, especially when it's only a format change, and costs the company nothing except a little reformatting of the packaging, there are times when a remastered version of an old classic is a revelation.> The "Dog Eat Dog" CD in the Geffen box gets my vote. Jim L'Hommedieu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 11:21:52 -0700 From: Dave Blackburn Subject: Re: Tech stuff re: remastered Blue njc A brief history of audio fidelity... The question of audio fidelity in recorded music has a long and winding history. First of all, the available technology is always changing (not always improving but usually so), tastes change, and playback systems owned by most consumers also change hugely. When the AM radio was the way people heard music there was no point in having lush bass or sparkling treble because the bandwidth of the broadcast medium was so limited and the signal was hugely degraded to boot in the transmission process. Records were mixed and mastered to sound good in mono over the AM radio. FM radio introduced stereo and much better bandwidth of sonic spectrum and consequently people mixed and mastered records for that improved medium. 70's music (at least pop/ rock) had better sound than 60's music simply because of this. On the home playback front the LP was a big improvement over the 45 and, by the early 70's, the average person had a "stereo" system instead of the old mono "gramophone". So far so good. No digital technology. However, plenty of compression and EQ usually being applied at the mix and mastering stage, especially in pop/rock, less so in jazz records and probably no compression in classical. Compression meaning dynamic range squashing not "lossy" compression as we have in mp3s. It is a misconception that compression and EQ are bad things. If you want your music to have "presence" and leap out of the speakers with excitement and vitality, those are the tools you use. As with any tools, in the wrong hands bad things happen; over compression produces the opposite effect: lifeless, flat sound or strident highs and mids caused by over zealous engineers trying to get brightness but introducing harshness instead. You have to remember how noisy the playback media were. LPs, when brand new on a fabulous cartridge had acceptable noise floors but cassettes were monsters. The only way you could fool the ear that a cassette sounded okay was through lots of compression so the audio signal never dropped below a certain threshold where the inherent noise of the 1/8" tape became overpowering. You learn to adjust to what you are used to. When LPs and cassettes were the norm you learned to tune out the noise and hear the music. Once we became used to CDs with no self noise you could play a cassette or worn LP anymore without laughing at how damn noisy it was. Okay, along comes the CD in 1983. "Perfect sound forever" was the slogan. No wear and tear, no hiss, no crackle and pops. Well, not quite. In order to get your analog tape master to be reproduced on a CD it had to be converted, using an analog to digital converter (ADC). The first crop of these for the first several years of the CD's existence, were AWFUL. Harsh, brittle, unmusical, cold, everything the audiophiles raged about. Digital is cold and harsh, they said, analog, warm and good. It turns out that digital itself has no sound at all; it is nothing but a storage medium for 1's and 0's. The "sound" of digital is the sound of the ADC AND the reverse conversion going on inside your CD player (the DAC). Most people assumed a CD player was a CD player and paid as little as possible for theirs. But as you guessed, the cheaper the CD player the worse quality the DAC. So the first ten years or so of digital audio got characterized as poor because the technology behind the converters was so inadequate. By the mid 90's converters were much better, and continue to improve. But what didn't improve were the playback systems that most people used. The "hi'fi" of the 70's (turntable, cassette deck, receiver, speakers) was now a boutique item and the boombox and Discman took over; cheap DACs still in evidence. Features such as enhanced stereo width and graphic eq appeared on boomboxes, letting the user get further and further away from how the record was intended to be heard. People left the "smiley face" eq left on permanently with bass and treble boosted. Now it was getting really hard for a mastering engineer to know what kind of playback systems to prepare for. At the same time, the "loudness wars" began. This is probably the most loathed aspect of the modern recording biz by the pros who make the records. Record companies, now subsidiaries of vast corporate media empires were told from the top brass to make all the records as loud as technically possible. No one wants their song to sound wimpy or too quiet next to all the others on the radio or MTV so the race was on to see who could flatten out their records the most so there were no quiet bits, not even bits slightly quieter than maximum. With all this crushing going on comes a lot of distortion, in a medium that originally had very little. Today, records are about 12db louder in perceived volume than they were twenty years ago (the volume is twice as loud every 6db). The latest slide downhill is the mp3 or AAC file. It exists because a CD track, typically around 50 megabytes in size, is too big to either send/receive over the internet and uses too much space on your media player. It was discovered by a German firm that if two sounds at the same frequency are heard where one is louder then the other, the human brain pays more attention to the louder one. Aha someone thought; why not discard the quieter sound? So "lossy compression" was introduced. 80-90% of the digital data (depending on the resolution of mp3 encoding used) is literally thrown away. When you listen to an mp3 you are listening to the audio equivalent of a newspaper photo made up of dots. And, as with the newspaper photo, you can make out the image okay, but it's not what you would call lovely or rich looking. And the DACs in your ipod? As cheap as Apple can get away with. Earbuds are the new low in audio playback systems so you wouldn't even hear it if the DACs were better. As bulky and passi as they now seem, CDs through a decent stereo were hugely better. Factor into all of this an almost complete abandonment of music education in schools and you have a perfect storm: ultra compressed audio masters>mp3 conversion where up to 90% of the data is thrown away>cheap DACs>earbuds> ignorant consumers unaware that there was ever anything better. Ironically our visual senses are pretty well catered to. Blu-Ray IS better than DVD, 3D already looks cool and will look better and better in the coming months. But our poor ears have been short-changed in stages over the last thirty years and most people don't know or care. I could go on but this looks awfully long. If anyone's still reading, thanks for indulging me. Dave On Jun 20, 2010, at 9:56 AM, Jim L'Hommedieu wrote: > Catherine wrote: >if they CAN make the music sound so much better, > why don't they do that to begin with?> > > Great question. I think the answer is "Because they could get away > with > it." Back then, Warner-Electra-Asylum-Reprise was so big it had 4 > names. Most people were happy to get the latest thing and didn't care > about the sound too much. My first record player had a plastic tone > arm- > plastic! My parents had a metal tonearm and it sounded better. In > the > 70s, when the price of oil went up, so did the price of vinyl > because (I > think) it is derived from oil. The major companies just used cheaper > vinyl, and mixed in the trimmings. Literally. > > One step of mastering a record is the process of playing the master > tape > and copying it onto a "production master" which typically involves a > host > of minor sins like compressing the signal, and using tone controls > to lop > off the bass and treble. After they adjust the sound for 20 albums, > they > get lazy and try to apply one set of corrections to everything, so > it's > all homogenized. With settings like that you lose tiny pieces like > hearing the singer breath, or hearing the foot pedals on the piano, or > hearing the various decays properly. I believe that those decays are > important to the illusion that you're hearing the real thing. > > Since "Paprika Plains" was made in different places at different > times, > for example, they 'adjusted' the tone controls to make it sound like > it > was all made at one time. That is good for most listeners but to > some, > they feel they lose clarity when you "monkey around" with the EQ. > so the > masses are happy and the picky listeners started buying Japanese > versions. > > Dave said, >> Though I agree with Russ' gripe that re-issues of old material are > often a marketing ploy, especially when it's only a format change, and > costs the company nothing except a little reformatting of the > packaging, there are times when a remastered version of an old classic > is a revelation.> > > The "Dog Eat Dog" CD in the Geffen box gets my vote. > > Jim L'Hommedieu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 11:32:24 -0700 (PDT) From: Em Subject: Re: Tech stuff re: remastered Blue njc thanks for that, Dave, a great read. Em - --- On Sun, 6/20/10, Dave Blackburn wrote: A brief history of audio fidelity... ....snip ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 11:50:20 -0700 (PDT) From: M C Subject: RE: Joni Mitchell Jazz Radio Special Hi David, Just curious, for those of us in different time zones, will there be any way to hear this show after it airs? Thanks. mc ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:01:48 -0300 From: "Miguel Arrondo" Subject: Over the new remastered and improved and so and so versions of an old recording Hi to everyone in the list. I'm not a proliific contributor to this discussions here, but I use to read them all. Most of the times I catch up with them very late, that's because I live way down south from the places where things happens. I've just got a copy of "Will you take me as I am" today, for father's day, while I didn't finished yet "Girls like us", which I grabbed a couple of weeks ago. Here we live six or twelve months in the past, when it comes to original stuff of that kind. But that edition of Blue on vinyl is already hanging around in some record stores... and I 'm tempted, and I'll tell you why. For the last 30 years, I found almost nothing in the music and rock bussines that could persuade me to explore something new. I kept relistening to the same old artists, singers, songwriters, over and over again, because most of the new "stars" look very cheap and unoriginal to me. I found some quality (IMHO) in certain specific Suzzanne Vega, Eddie Brickell tracks... I'm thinking hard but I can't find much more (a little Natalie Merchant, maybe...) And I think that only Leonard Cohen had matched his 70's work with the 90's one. So I replay hundreds and hundreds of times the same stuff from my Joni, Dylan, Cohen, Genesis (old ones), R.Lee Jones, Paul Simon, Beatles, Jacques Brel, etc. etc. collections, at home, in the car, ipod, everywhere. And it's fine for me, live is so short, and the records and books are so many... That's why I welcome any new edition, remastered, etc., 'cause it gives me (in partnership with new and better hardware) the opportunity to listen the music and poetry I like with some new sounds, subtle changes, barely heared variations on it. But for me, the old fashioned square that keeps knotted to the past, it becomes SOMETHING NEW! And I love it... for a while. I often end up turning to the original versions. The main subject for me is I don't see anything as good as the old ones coming up... It's a decaying process of the culture (Dog eat Dog dixit 25 years ago), or am I becoming old? Maybe both altogether, but the second is a fact! Saludos a todos, Miguel ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 13:48:12 -0700 (PDT) From: Bob Muller Subject: Re: Joni Mitchell Jazz Radio Special I believe that David's going to send me the recorded shows on CD - when I get them I'll convert tham to mp3's and put them out there for anyone who is interested. I'm very anxious to hear them myself, David's shows are always great great stuff. Bob NP: Porcupine Tree, "Time Flies" - ----- Original Message ---- From: M C To: davidgizara@epud.net; JONI@smoe.org Sent: Sun, June 20, 2010 2:50:20 PM Subject: RE: Joni Mitchell Jazz Radio Special Hi David, Just curious, for those of us in different time zones, will there be any way to hear this show after it airs? Thanks. mc ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:06:26 -0500 From: T Peckham Subject: Re: Is Tom Petty singing worse than Dylan? njc Mark wrote: As Joni put it 'Good or bad we think we know as if thinking makes things so!' As usual, there's a perfect Joni line for every argument . . . er, occasion. Ha ha! Thanks for chiming in, Mark, so I know I'm not completely alone on the list in this matter, and also for reminding me of Rickie Lee's *Flying Cowboys*, which I haven't heard since I bought the original album. (I just finally got around to acquiring *Rickie Lee Jones*,* Pirates*, and *The Magazine* on cd. I also loved *Girl At Her Volcano* at the time. Unfortunately, she lost me with *Pop Pop*, and I haven't had the $$ til recently to catch up with her more recent stuff.) I saw her live and up close in the early 80s, and was blown away by how much stronger her voice was than what I was hearing on the records. Whether I end up liking her later catalog as much as her earlier one, she has my heart and my respect for the song "Company" alone. :-) T On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Mark Scott wrote: > > -------------------------------------------------- > > From: "T Peckham" > > >> So that said, I'm floored by the fact that someone who lives both Dylan >> and >> Joni's voices and singing styles ALSO loves . . . Steely Dan?? (laughing) >> I >> HATE Donald Fagen's voice! With a passion! I also hated their snotty, >> we're-so-cool-aren't-our-lyrics-obscure attitude, and the fact that they >> really weren't a band so much as a duo backed by a bunch of high-priced >> session players, cutting together sterile little pieces of perfection in >> the >> studio that they could rarely tour behind. >> > > You will get no argument or flames from me. I completely agree with > everything you say. I've felt for a long time that Steely Dan is all gloss > with no substance. And Fagen's voice grates on me too. > > > >> . And of course, my opinion isn't > >> meant to in any way diminish anyone else's experience of the music. I just >> think it's funny about people's tastes. >> > > I will agree with this too since I have been known to be way off in my > aesthetic perception before. I've been reading some of my writing out of > the archives circa 1998-99 and I'm embarrassed by some of what I wrote about > Rickie Lee Jones. Then I saw her perform live and I finally 'got it'. I'm > a passionate RLJ fan now. > > As Joni put it 'Good or bad we think we know as if thinking makes things > so!' > > Mark in Seattle > wondering if summer is ever going to come to the PNW. > - -- Curiosity is my religion. David Ryan Adams ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:59:54 -0400 From: "Jim L'Hommedieu" Subject: Re: Tech stuff re: remastered Blue njc Awesome. Great post! Thanks for taking the time to write about this... Jim L'Hommedieu Dave Blackburn wrote: > A brief history of audio fidelity... > > The question of audio fidelity in recorded music has a long and > winding history. First of all, the available technology is always > changing (not always improving but usually so), tastes change, and > playback systems owned by most consumers also change hugely. When the > AM radio was the way people heard music there was no point in having > lush bass or sparkling treble because the bandwidth of the broadcast > medium was so limited and the signal was hugely degraded to boot in > the transmission process... ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2010 #183 ***************************** ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe -------