Bob Dylan Bootleg Vol. 9 / Mono Box / Best of Mono News (Part 2)

Has anyone compared the sound of these new remasters with the Sundazed issues? I know it's an apples and oranges comparison, but I'd still be interested in anyone's comparisons.

 

"Don't know about the rest of you folks, but $100 represents some serious coin to me"

I dunno ..been collecting records for 45 years .. there have been periods of my life when one dollar bills were not as plentiful as I would have wished .. those were the times when I retreated in on my existing collection and just got into the music only, wrote some poems, read books, and did without frivolous spending .. music collecting is a province of leisure, and true leisure requires the kind of funds that render the leisure activity truly pleasurable ..worry and angst over money negates the pleasure experience ...thats why lately I refuse to drink the 73 -78 year-old $300 bottles of wine I prefer, from a few select vineyards in the Rhone Valley I prefer; I cannot afford them without experiencing angst and frustration over money, and ultimately, absolute displeasure... I drink a little English and Irish beer instead, that's all ... nothing frivolous

I did not think 100 one dollar bills was wasted on the Dylan box, and if I was at a point where that price was too serious an amount of coin to risk, I would never have put it down .. and would seriously consider a moratorium on the leisure activity of music collecting ... it is too self-deprecating to me to want something out of my reach ... I would rather go camping and look at the stars for free, and spend a little money on some bread and cheese, and a little English and Irish beer ...

 

Oh thank you for pointing that out - I guess I had missed that part!

 

That's it, thanks so much for the info!

 

Dean Schambach and David Boyle were Woodstock carpenters initially brought up from New York City by Albert Grossman to work on his buildings. The video on the link doesn't work, but you can read about it in the caption: http://vodpod.com/watch/984686-story-of-a-dylan-photo

 

Perhaps you're a young student, so, sure, $100 might be serious coin. It's actually a really cheap boxset (in the boxset market), especially given the amount of effort and detail put to it. Compare the per disc price to the Beatles Mono box. And it's a much smaller market than the Beatles'.

And perhaps that's also why you feel like you are entitled to "what [you] had for free" -- your bootleg - a pirated, illegal copy of the album (which by all technical/legal accounts is theft). I'm on no high horse there as I perfectly love and sympathize with a fan's desire for bootlegs, but to hold that as the standard of what you are entitled to, and what you can obtain for "free" (nevermind that each vinyl rip would've cost ~$30 per record, and a cartridge costing several grand) -- and claim that you are being ripped off -- well, that's just funny. A bit like complaining that you feel ripped off because your newly bought 2010 Ford Mustang doesn't compare to the customized '67 Mustang you stole (for free!) from someone's garage.

 

I have compared them. My overall impression is they sound pretty similar, except for the Sundazed seem to mostly have a treble boost. It is probably designed to give them more presence at first, but the remasters are less harsh and sound more neutral overall.

 

After the failure of the first download, Sony did send me a new code and I was able to download the set with no trouble the second time. All 320kb... nice. Embedded artwork on them is teeny-weeny, though. I prefer my custom rips with the much larger 900x900 artwork I got online.

 

I had mentioned earlier, but my original Mono of BIABH sounds dead-on with the new CD.

I think this release is a total success, sonics and packaging. My only minor quibble is that I woulda preferred a lossless version of "Positively 4th St" instead of an MP3. But, it's no sonic marvel to start with.

 

Yeah, I have heard it in lossless and noticed little improvement.

 

I agree that a CD of the missing singles tracks would have been a nice extra touch for the set or at least they could have made them available for free download like they did with "Positively 4th St". Sure a download isn't a CD and wouldn't be lossless but it would make them available.

Otherwise, I'm still very happy with the box and the "Best of" disc. To my ears it really sounds like the mastering job that they did captured the original records.

 

where are the unboxing clips @ youtube?

 

Why couldn't they have been lossless?

 

I think it's a total success too. It would have been nice for P4S to be included in the CDs as a bonus, but like you said, the sonics on it are the limiting factor - not the 320k mp3 (and mono at that, which means that the bits are basically only going to the one channel of audio data).

 

So there is confirmation that the file is mono only? I didn't look that closely. 320kbps to one channel is plenty, I think.

 

I downloaded the entire MONO RECORDINGS boxed set plus the bonus "extra" track on Friday using the code I got with my purchase of the boxed set. Been playing the tracks in the car via my iPhone's iPod and they sound just great. Also, the mono CD of JOHN WESLEY HARDING is the shiz-nit.

 

especially for muddy compressed mono

 

Just received the Witmark Demos + Brandeis CD from Amazon UK.

Best of + Breandeis CD is shipped from Amazon DE, but still expected.

Mono Box CDs shipped from Amazon DE, but still expected.

 

Didn't Columbia switch to plastic LP sleeves at some point during the '60s?

 

When I looked at a few of them in Audacity, the files were stereo, with both channels being the same.

 

If the channels are the same, then I understand it to be the equivalent of 320k for one channel.

Something about Bob's voice didn't sound quite right on P4S mp3, but of course it sounded better than my "Biograph" stereo version.

 

Yes, the voice sounded like the tape had probably seen better days. I have old cassettes that sound like that.

 

No, the file is in stereo. I have not had a chance to open in wav editor to see if the file has identical channels. However, I compressed my own wav in mono and stereo, and the file size was the same. From that I can deduce that the codec is detecting the mono file. If so, it will devote the bits to the single channel anyway for the most part. I came up with the exact same size though either way, for what it's worth.

I've always heard that the codecs will detect mono files, and efficiently encode them either way. I've never tried since I encode mono files as single channel on my own rips.

Interestingly, if I use dBpoweramp to do this with my standard Nero AAC encoder, it will allot half of the stereo bitrate to the mono file (256k will be 128k for a mono file). When I do the same with LAME in dBpa, it devotes all 320k to the single channel. Getting the same size whether I encoded in mono or stereo tells me that it's working properly and using the bits for the single channel either way.

 

I think we can safely say this is a 100% forum recommended production (we'll ignore the nutter up thread). Very rare on this forum to get such agreement on anything.