Sinatra / Capitol: General Purpose Sound Quality (and more) Discussion Thread*

Norberg's Close To You sounds okay to me. I haven't listened to the Singles Box in a while but remember it being good. None of this makes up for the hatchet job he did on In The Wee Small Hours and Songs For Swingin' Lovers, which is the single worst remaster I have ever heard. I was absolutely shocked at how bad it sounded when I bought it, and was my first introduction to the idea that "remastered" could = "much worse."

 

I'd be interested to hear that 'Close To You.' I thought (and still think) the Walsh CD is okay. But as is becoming an old refrain, the grey label LP smokes it.

'Where Are You' as mastered by Norberg is on a par with his 'Wee Small Hours' steer well clear of it.

 

Has it ever been established that the British CDs originate from the same digital masters used to produce the LPs, or just from the same analog source tapes? (Or does it not make a difference?) Has anyone ever done an A/B compare of the LPs with the CDs?

AFAIK, the Abbey Road engineer who performed the transfers/mastering has never been identified by name. The late Alan Dell's name gets thrown around in discussions of these sets, but he was just the producer. Whomever did the actual engineering, it was a great job and preferred to the US work of both Walsh and Norberg in most cases.

 

I have done an A/B between the British LP's and the British CD's and they definitely derive from the same tapes. The mastering engineer I believe is credited on the back of the "Swingin' Lovers" LP. I'll type it in when I get home.

Fred

 

From the archives: MMM's review of the EOTC Close to You

 

I don't see why a British tape would be involved.

I guess in a sense you could call the tampered dubs "remixed", but that term would be misleading here. The mix was done live to mono as the sessions were happening. When these processed copies were made, the master would be played back and any added echo & changes in Eq would be dialed in, with the whole printed to the dub "master".

 

I found at the credits on my digital Sinatra LP set. The mastering engineer is none other than a guy whose last name rhymes with "pew" (as in a church) or the sound that a cat makes.

 

I should clarify. The credits for the Sinatra mid-80's mention our favorite Beatles remasterer as "digital transfer from analogue tapes by ..." They don't credit him with being the remastering engineer.

 

...and it's usually beyond the engineer(s) involved, unless the one working on the material goes above and beyond and knows/learns the history of these recordings, and how they've been issued over the years (and how NOT to issue them).

Even when Larry Walsh initially mastered the Sinatra/Capitol material, he made a mistake and misinterpreted notes that were made on the actual master boxes regarding echo as something to be added for release beyond what was mixed live onto the master. The only time material from this album had any U.S. CD release using the correct tapes and without any additional echo added were its few songs compiled on THE CAPITOL YEARS (and its 1 disc distillation) that Ron Furmanek produced, and on CLASSIC SINATRA II, that Charlie Pignone & Frank Collura produced. That's it, 3 songs out of 16. Sad.

 

For people who don't have the disc... :

http://www.4shared.com/file/149893092/1e766aed/End_Love_Affair_Norberg_clip.html

 

Fred, we went back and forth on this a long time ago, but the first decent mix of "High Hopes" was the Ron F./Larry Walsh mix done for the COLLECTORS SERIES disc, which was also used on THE CAPITOL YEARS. You may prefer Bob's mix, and that's fine, but the SINGLES box is not the first time this song came out in a new, better mix.

I've never bashed Bob just to pick on him, in vogue with others or not. No reason for it, and I'm sure Bob personally wouldn't deserve it (by accounts I've heard, he's a very nice man). I agree that the SINGLES box as a whole sounds better than what Bob mastered for the Sinatra/Capitol catalog after that, though I'm not exactly happy with it either. At the same time, while it may not be ideal, I wouldn't be without it.

 

Although Alan Dell supervised the remastering project of the UK Sinatra digital re-issues (LP and CD) in the mid-80s, the individual engineer(s) who actually did the remastering has never been identified. It may have been one or more of the EMI staff engineers.

I believe there is an old thread (at least one) where we tried to identify this mystery person.

 

Look To Your Heart
Come Dance With Me
Swing Easy
Sinatra Sings...Of Love And Things
Close To You
Wee Small Hours
Songs For Young Lovers
Where Are You Only The Lonely
A Swingin' Affair
Swingin' Lovers
Come Swing With Me
Come Fly With Me
Swingin' Session
Nice N' Easy
Point Of No Return
All The Way
No One Cares

All of these are listed on the insert of the 1984 'Wee Small' LP as being digitally remastered LP's. No small project they took on.

I'd be very interested to know how some of them sound, and how well they sold in the mid-eighties.

From those, I only own 'Wee' & 'Swingin' Session.' I saw a nice copy of 'Swingin' Lovers' some months ago that I (regretfully) passed on. Just 'cause I wasn't in the mood.

 

This is probably not as helpful it might be, but I'm pretty sure that a consensus emerged on this board somewhere, sometime that the 98 UK set was made from less than optimal sources. It's an expensive set that I was about to buy, until I stumbled across the reviews written here. I can't seem to find the thread, but maybe someone else can.

 

Here's a thread from 2001: http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=790&highlight=sinatra+emi

 

[ [thread=790]So which Sinatra CD's to get - Concepts or EMI set?[/thread] ]

I disagree with a lot of what was said in that ancient thread, especially the comparisons of the various US Capitol CDs (old vs. new Concepts boxes vs. "Entertainer of the Century" remasters). Some of the statements made there can be absolutely disproved by quantitative digital analysis. (See here.)

Moving forward eight years, some here praise the questionable-provenance European Disky release to high heaven; I find it among the poorer-sounding samples in the bunch. (And it's not a complete set of album tracks nor in the proper order.)

Aren't subjective impressions wonderful?

 

Regarding the UK box set, I read some time ago -- and I may have gotten this completely wrong -- that there were supposedly false track starts, or overlapping songs/track numbers on one or several of the CDs. For owners of this set: Are there any tracking/timing defects?

 

I mentioned this in an [post=4927906]earlier post[/post]:

Just ONE disc—Where Are you?—has bad track index times in its table of contents. This only matters if you try to seek to a track, in which case you will wind up a few seconds past the proper song start. If playing the entire CD sequentially, it sounds fine. If you reburn the disc for yourself, you can correct the TOC errors.

 

Bob, are all the rest of the mono cds in the UK boxset on par with In the Wee Small Hours? That is dry, close to the grey label sound, etc?

 

Thanks, Bob. Seems like an insignificant drawback. Reading about that timing error kept me away from the UK box for years! Maybe I'll take the plunge now.