Gentle Giant

I hear ya Jeff, but the OP said he already had the albums on vinyl and wanted to know what CD editions were the best.

 

My French Vertigo pressing doesn't hiss and has amazing bass. That's how I discovered this album, and has been constantly disppointed by the CD versions.

 

Yep. There's also audible distortion on one track that I don't recall on the vinyl or earlier CD editions as well as the usual issues with brickwalling that tended to follow takiguchi around this time.

 

You could be right about ray being under contract or, perhaps, he just directed what was done (although according to what I heard it didn't sound like it--he was a bit more hands on than that).

I didn't detect any problem with hiss on the remaster and don't suspect that is due to NR. They actually found the mastertapes for "Power and the Glory" while the original LP was from an analog copy. I have no idea how many generations away from the original mastertape.

Either way, I like the mastering job that they did and they did a fair approximation of what the albums sounded like on vinyl but keeping in mind that the goal was to try and capture the feel of the mastertape where possible so it doesn't sound EXACTLY like the original vinyl. I haven't heard the vinyl remasters for the "record" but I do recall that the original vinyl had issues with being fairly "noisy". I seem to also recall that the version I had was noisy vinyl to begin with--(much like my copy of "The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl" which I got later when it came out AND every copy I got was warped for that title) but that may have been an isolated experience. I was fairly pleased with the early CD versions although they lacked the "kick" I expected. The GG Alucard for this title sounds extremely good to my ears.

I should note though that this edition is missing the bonus originally cut as a single of "The Power and the Glory" . The guys always hated this track but since it did fit somewhat with the theme of the original album (and I kind of like it), I do wish they had kept it on and incorporate it into the "offical" version.

I'd disagree with Jeff slightly in that I do think that the latest CD versions from Rep and Alucard are pretty darn good. One could quibble about various decisions in the mastering process but one could also quibble about the same thing with vinyl versions as well back in the day.

 

There is also some compression that was applied. While I certainly couldn't call the CDs audiophile-like they aren't exactly brickwalled and as harsh sounding as most other remasters.

YMMV but I'd suggest maybe checking one out before moving on to the rest of them to see if you like what you hear.

 

The title track to "The Power and the Glory" (not on the original album) is essential imo.

 

I agree. Eroc's work on these is great considering his source (DAT?). These are my go to versions on CD for the first 4 albums.

Frank R.

 

That Japanese Three Friends is TERRIBLE! It is brickwalled for sure with plenty of distortion in Peel The Paint among other tunes. I dropped that in favor of Eroc's mastering of this album.

Frank R.

 

Yes, the Japanese UICY mini duplicates a track ID error that the Columbia CD has - which BTW, Columbia claimed isn't an error! Even the Columbia LP has it!!

I haven't heard the Repertoire which Eroc mastered, but I seem to recall reading in another GG thread here that this track ID error was re-introduced on his master because his boss gave him the Columbia CD for reference!!! Ahem... I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh; I just can't help it. The idea that Columbia changed those two tracks ("Mister Class and Quality" & "Three Friends") in the right spot is obviously ridiculous. Unless, of course, "Three Friends" was supposed to include the last verse of "Mister Class and Quality"! Anyway, apart from this error which refuses to die, the Repertoire is supposed to sound great. That Japanese mini sure *doesn't*. It sounds unpleasant: overdone and wrong.

 

P.S. to my above post:

Please note that I wasn't laughing at Eroc or even at his boss - rather, I was laughing at the absurdity of the whole situation.

 

Leslie Minnear posted on the On Reflection list that Ray remastered IaGH and that Fred Kevorkian did the rest. I wrote Fred at the time asking about the remasters and this is how he responded (this has been posted on the main remasters thread before):

Hey Dok, Fred Kevorkian here.

Thanks for your nice and detailed e-mail.

I was approached by Derek Shulman to remaster seven GG albums.
The idea was to make them sound as modern as possible without loosing the original vibe. Six of the albums were remastered from the original 1/4'" tapes. Those tapes were baked and transferred to digital 24bit / 96kHz files by Capitol Records in LA. Then they were sent to me on DVD's. One master was transferred from a 1630 format onto another DVD.

Some of those masters sounded pretty good as is, some extremely dull, some super bright and some very noisy. Therefore I used a lot of EQ, and selective band compression to get a more balanced sound across all these album. (I'm sorry for the purists! But that's what I was asked to do!)
All the processing was done with outboard gear. First, analog for the overall tonal sound and then digitally for a more precise tweak.
The only plug-in used was a de-hissing program to remove the extra noise during the soft sections.

I am personally pretty happy with the result! I only had a very limited time to remaster all those seven albums.

Thanks for your interest, keep listening,

 

Sorry, but that's definitely NOT the professional way, guys...


- Eroc

 

Eroc, can you please elaborate on that? Do you mean they should have transfered them to a higher resolution?

 

Working on high samplingrates is of course recommendable. Only by that you get an extended and more precise upper frequency-range (due to Nyquist the upper edge of the audio-spectrum is half of the samplingrate). And 24 bits resolution is a must at all...

But - there are hundreds and thousands of "amateurs" among the masterers, engineers and producers around, suffering from so called half-knowledge. In case of samplingrates they just think "the highest is the best". That's true, but not quite. Early digital gear offered usually 96 k as the highest possible rate, so all of these people are doing their A/Ds at 96 k (or 192 k) since years, claiming to get the "best possible" quality. Nearly 2/3 of all studio-mixes landing on my desk are still in 24/96 and I always have to pull out the whip on the producers and engineers for that.

There's one "slight" problem: the normal audio-CD for which most of the productions are aimed for offers a samplingrate of 44.1 k. So the optimum is, to work and A/D on 44.1 k if the final goal is a normal audio-CD. If you ride on higher SR which enables better high-end spectrum only during the work-process, you always have to go down to 44.1 k if it comes to the final masterfile for the pressing plant. To get down from higher SR to 44.1 k is a digital "calculation" which requires tools. Using tools in a digital working chain always affects the signal and means loss. The best result in this case can be expected, if you "divide" the high SR plainly by half. That means you should work and A/D on 88.2 k rsp. 176.4 k rsp. 352.8 k (I'm working with my own tools at 705.6 k) if you wanna have a proper signal for 44.1 k in the end.

The samplingrate 96 k is the plain "double" of 48 k. And 48 k is the industrial format for DVD. So all these "clever" pros doing their A/D on 96 k are working for the DVD format, and NOT for the CD format.

So somebody should tell them the rest of the story. Good day...


- Eroc

 

Alright. I always work with 88.2 or 176.4 myself if the end result is redbook.

But apparently there are some SRC algorythms that sound "transparent" whichever the SR.

 

Ah, maybe I misunderstood Derek (or Derek was referring only to "A Glass House" and I thought he was referring to all of them.

I remember your original post now from the original thread.

While it does use selective band compression and other stuff, over all most of them are improvements to the original CDs in many cases (particularly since he got the chance to work with the original master tapes in most instances IIRC).

 

That's wise. I too have some good sounding algos which take quite a while to convert. On the other hand: I just worked for weeks on the new "Wolverine" album recorded by Hansen in DK on 24/44.1 - The most dissapointing thing is to go down to 16 bits, regardless if UV 22 or UV 22 HR or whatever. Suddenly the soundscape becomes somehow "frozen". I definitely hate CDs, but have talked 'nuff about that years ago here...


- Eroc

 

True. I know when I downsample that the result won't sound like the HiRes master, but I'm disappointed each and every time!

 

I agree, I think these are the best sounding that we have. I'm sure they would have been much better if Eroc had used his own tools at 705.6!
I question whether these are really from the original masters though. Seems to me they would just be copy tapes sent to Capitol from the UK.

 

I too love the Eroc remasters. Just as a side note, I notice that Repertoire no longer lists any of the Gentle Giant albums in the catalogue listings on their website. They do still show 'Octopus' on the page they have dedicated to Roger Dean's artwork and if I click on this cover the details for 'Octopus' come up with a 'Buy Now' link!? Not sure what this means, but given none of Eroc's other G.G. remasters show on the site it looks as though they are no longer available. That said, I do remember some of them being listed originally as 'Limited Edition'. So, if Repertaoire have dropped them, it may pay for those still thinking of buying the Repertoire's to grab them now while a few may still be around.

 

IIRC, some of them were limited to 3000 copies. Possibly AtT and Three Friends?

 

To my ears, the remastering approach of IaGH sounds very very similiar to the Fred's work. The first remaster of IAGH was done by Ray, but i'm pretty sure that the latest version of IAGH was done by Fred, not by Ray.

In a Glass House, The Power And the Glory, Free Hand, Interview, Live - Playing the Fool, Missing piece, Giant for a day = seven albums.

 

I have just listened to my new repertoire remaster of Acquiring The Taste and the beginning of the title track (4) is faulty. The tape speed is slow and builds up to the correct speed after a couple of seconds. Has any one else noticed this?

 

The Vertigo CD has the same annoying defect. However, the 'Edge of Twilight' compilation (also on Vertigo) uses the correct version. Strange...

 

It was fixed on the second Repertoire CD pressing (which i didn't buy).