Sinatra / Capitol Sound Quality and General Discussion: Songs for Young Lovers, rel. 1954*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by MLutthans, Nov 21, 2009.

  1. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    It wasn't just for the Sinatra. My son wanted a Phish box set ($160 !), and I decided to be a good dad... I should be getting a nice Father's Day card this year. ;)
     
  2. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    Do we allow Biblical references on this forum????? ;)
     
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  3. redmetalmoose

    redmetalmoose Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England
    You should make yourself a large drink,sit back and play that thing,Bob.
    You earned it.
     
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  4. dayday

    dayday Senior Member

    Location:
    Michigan, USA
    paulmock likes this.
  5. TeacFan

    TeacFan Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    Arcadia, Ca.
    Canterbury Records in Pasadena,CA had four or five copies as of 2PM on Saturday. Purchased mine, opened & spun. Groovy !
     
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  6. paulmock

    paulmock Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hollywood, CA
    Man, I could sit for hours an flip back and forth between clips and get confused as to which was which that I liked or didn't. But it is really clearly evident to me that MFSL on the LP and MFP on the CD (as we have happily beaten to death here) are the winners. But I am very impressed with the RSD reissue. On a purely cosmetic level, I am sure the fact that it is a 10" LP will really be attractive to newbies.
     
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  7. paulmock

    paulmock Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hollywood, CA
    Good to hear SoCal represented in the hunt today! Enjoy.
     
  8. Marc Bessette

    Marc Bessette The King of Somewhere Cold

    Geez. I am a Sinatra fan from the age of about 6 when my Dad let me use his old 78 record player and his collection of mostly 40's platters. I sure wish I had that record player an 78's. Do they still make the needles for those things?. If I recall, all of the Sinatra stuff was on Columbia. Anyways, I am not a recoding engineer or anything but boy this guy Norberg sure gets slammed here a lot. I hope that he doesn't read this stuff. I must do a search and see why all the fuss about Norberg. Did he ever do any Beach Boys stuff?
     
  9. autodidact

    autodidact Forum Resident

    Norberg is a curse word around here. It's verb too -- if something has been "Norberged" then it has been subjected to noise reduction and excess processing that sucks the life out of it. I suppose some of the extreme dislike for his work on the Sinatra masters is hyperbole, but some of them really do sound horrible IMO, worse than the original CD issues mastered by Walsh. In a sense, Norberg earned his reputation by doing a mediocre to awful job on some of the most beloved and popular albums of the prime era of a great great pop singer.
     
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  10. Bob Belvedere

    Bob Belvedere Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England
    To pick-up on AutoDidact's comments ^^^: Norberg has a grand talent for making some of the recordings of Francis Albert un-listenable or, if you're hearing one of the albums for the first time, rendering one unable to appreciate the Artistry to it's full measure. This has happened to me a number of times and it is only in coming to this Forum that I have, not rediscovered, but discovered some of The Chairman's best Works.

    It's worth the denarii to hunt down different masters/mixes, if you are . Matt Lutthans, with help from the Gang here of Sinatra Connoisseurs, has done, and is doing, yeoman's work in finding the best masterings/mixes of Sinatra's Works.
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2015
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  11. Bob Belvedere

    Bob Belvedere Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England
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  12. autodidact

    autodidact Forum Resident

    Or one can just get the Walsh masters, which are mostly cheap, cheap, cheap, and definitely not horrible, sometimes near the top. I did get some of the MoFi ones, but not all. I'm not a fan of Sinatra's ballad singing too much, but his swinging stuff is worth the MoFi price. It depends on one's level of dedication to Sinatra. I will second the motion to look at Lutthans' site and his Capitol scorecard page. That's why I decided to just go with the Walsh CD masters for the most part -- easy to find, cheap, and very good, if not necessarily the "best."
     
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  13. colormesinatra

    colormesinatra Forum Resident

    Location:
    Malverne, NY
    Im playing the new RSD version and it is thrilling to hear Frank on this LP! It is twice as exciting because like Matt has said earlier... THEY GOT THIS ONE RIGHT!
     
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  14. DLant

    DLant The Upstate Gort Staff

    Location:
    Albany, NY
    Damn it. Now, I'm gonna have to find a copy.
     
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  15. colormesinatra

    colormesinatra Forum Resident

    Location:
    Malverne, NY
    The LP seems very dynamic and it has a great presence, Frank and the instruments.
     
  16. TLMusic

    TLMusic Musician & record collector

    I managed to find a RSD 10" online, hopefully it will arrive soon (in one piece and free of defects--fingers crossed).

    Looking forward to it, as Songs For Young Lovers one of Frank's great miniature masterpieces.
     
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  17. mikrt17

    mikrt17 Life has surface noise.

    Location:
    BROADSTAIRS UK
    I bought this 10" for the novelty value and for a touch of nostalgia but I was totally amazed at the sound, rich present vocal
    open staging and warm rich bass, sounds like it was recorded yesterday and the pressing is real quiet
    a must buy in my opinion but they are difficult to find and I had to pay double the original RSD price
    but it was worth it
     
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  18. mick_sh

    mick_sh Hackney diamond

    Location:
    Madrid, Spain
    Wonderful, wonderful edition. The sound, the label, the lovely packaging (with Capitol inner sleeve!) Excellent!

    The inner sleeve:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
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  19. Ere

    Ere Senior Member

    Location:
    The Silver Spring
    Mine arrived yesterday but I couldn't bring myself to break the shrink wrap. So I listened to my needle drop of the original. Maybe tonight...
     
  20. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    These DR readings and peak levels were posted a few posts back:
    [​IMG]
    Thanks to @mick_sh , we now have numbers for the mp3 download that accompanies the LP in some markets:
    Screen shot 2015-04-24 at 11.07.10 AM.png
    Looking at the peak levels, this is almost certainly derived from the HD version, no? (I'd be shocked if they'd do a full-on new transfer and mastering for an mp3 voucher that accompanies a one-day LP release in Europe.)
     
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  21. Tom Campbell

    Tom Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA
    It is outstanding. Sinatra's voice comes through with tremendous presence and detail and dynamics.

    I almost passed this up at $24 -- I have other copies on both LP and CD -- but boy am I glad I bought it now.
     
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  22. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    That listing has the tracks in alphabetical order by song title. Here they are in album order, to compare with the earlier listings. (I had to convert the 320K MP3 files to WAV files, because TT DR Offline Meter barfed on some of the MP3 formats. This may affect the RMS values slightly, but the peak levels are accurate.)
    Code:
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Analyzed folder: Frank-Sinatra_Songs-For-Young-Lovers\
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    DR      Peak         RMS         Filename
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    DR12    -0.21 dB    -15.09 dB    01 My Funny Valentine.wav
    DR10    -0.64 dB    -14.03 dB    02 The Girl Next Door.wav
    DR11    over        -14.02 dB    03 A Foggy Day.wav
    DR11    -0.24 dB    -14.26 dB    04 Like Someone in Love.wav
    DR12    over        -14.39 dB    05 I Get a Kick Out of You.wav
    DR11    -0.83 dB    -14.59 dB    06 Little Girl Blue.wav
    DR11    -0.08 dB    -13.61 dB    07 They Can't Take That Away from Me.wav
    DR11    -0.15 dB    -13.46 dB    08 Violets for Your Furs.wav
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    Number of files:  8
    Official DR value:  DR11
    
    =========================================================================================
    
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2015
  23. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    That was my fault, Bob. Thanks for the fix-up.
     
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  24. TLMusic

    TLMusic Musician & record collector

    Spinning the Record Store Day 10" reissue right now. Very enjoyable...

    I haven't done any comparisons with the other "preferred" pressings, but would describe the audio of the reissue as rich and pleasant.

    A sticker on the jacket says "Made in Holland". Pressing quality is high. My copy played back with a bit of static at first, but that was solved by a quick cleaning on the VPI record vacuum machine (luckily, I have the VPI 10" adapter). The vinyl now plays very, very cleanly.

    Interestingly, they reproduced the graphics of the original inner sleeve. It looks very attractive, but the reissue has an inner sleeve made of heavy card, unlike the original paper. In my experience, those heavy card inners will quickly damage the vinyl surfaces. Unless extreme care is exercised, the vinyl gets scratched by the razor sharp opening edges every time the record is pulled out or inserted. So, I put my new record in a new 10" poly lined inner, and will save the heavy card inner for posterity.

    :thumbsup: I highly recommend this reissue!

    [​IMG]
     
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  25. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    As are all of the recent UMe vinyl reissues (i.e., made in Holland). There is only one pressing plant there, and its capacity problems have been the cause of the production delays in new vinyl releases.

    This sticker is much larger than the "Made in The Netherlands" sticker on previous LPs. Also, the stickers appear only on the back covers of copies distributed in the US (not in the EU).
     
    Last edited: Apr 28, 2015
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