Sinatra / Capitol Sound Quality etc.: "This is Sinatra" - (rec. '53-'55, released 1956)

Now see, that's why I post clips! I agree that there's maybe a little too much top end on the '84, but I totally dig the brass (they sound like blaring brass, after all), and the 2014 brass sounds completely uninvolving to me.

Different strokes! Glad you listened and commented, @DaleH ! Thanks!

 

Yeah, one of my LP copies is a circa 1968 STAR LINE pressing, a D36 or something like that, and it's compressed to heck, but it sounds more consistent from song-to-song than other copies. Every track's about a 7. No 10s to be had, but no real duds, either. It's actually a pretty nice listen, partially because of that!

 

Interesting chat that some of us have likely forgotten about from another thread. I've bolded a couple of highlights:

A few things:
•The new Capitol/UMe LP does not have the dropout at the beginning, so either the A master was repaired, or the dub was used.
•1985's Legendary Singers LP had no dropout (dub used?), while 1989's Collectors Series had the dropout (master). The 1989 disc sounds better, dropout aside.
•My 1968 Hollywood-cut mono This is Sinatra LP does not have the dropout, so we can pin the damage to "post-1968."
•I have opined in the past that the 1984/1985 UK "Dell" LPs were mastered from digital copies of the USA (not UK) masters. The Dell This is Sinatra includes the dropout, which would seem to be one more piece to reinforce the idea of the digital dubs being USA-sourced.
•Touching on Steve's final comment in that quote, I, too, have been not too thrilled with the sound of original This is Sinatra LP releases. Oddly, This is Sinatra, Volume Two was cut from dub tapes, and I think it sounds very nice on my original D pressing. Weird.

 

Good info, thanks. I must say that a Capitol dub can sound as good (or better) than another studio's master. If something is issued from a known dub and doesn't sound good it's the mastering..

 

That Legendary Singers LP doesn't sound bad; just a small notch down from Collectors Series. Point well taken, though!

 

Just to clarify: I never said (that I recall) that the 2-CD set was excellent per se. Rather, it's the (IMO) best source for the THIS IS SINATRA album (but not necessarily for each song individually).

The THIS IS SINATRA tracks on that set are very nice, although a few can be found "better" in other places. My recommendation* is SPECIFICALLY for somebody insisting on having all twelve This is Sinatra tracks in order on one disc/disk. (In other words, somebody who is after THIS IS SINATRA as a set piece unto itself.) For those who fall in that category, I think this is as good as it gets! (I still don't see the need to have these twelve tracks running in compilation order, but we all have our little quirks, so...no problem!) The LOOK TO YOUR HEART tracks sound like LOOK TO YOUR HEART tracks. In other words....they suck. I don't recall much about the TIS v2 tracks one way or the other.

*Exact wording:
<<
Personally, I don’t view any of these compilations LPs to be sacrosanct in any fashion, as they are merely collections of non-LP tunes made available on LP, so I, personally, feel no need to gather these 12 songs together in a single mastering any more than I feel a need to rigidly gather, say, the tracks from The Beatles’ Hey Jude as a collection unto itself, and since these justly-famous songs have been issued and reissued so many times through the years, the odds that any single release will contain the absolute best-sounding version of all twelve tunes are slim to none, with slim not truly a factor.

These are merely collections of previously released material, assembled largely in the names of convenience and commerce. That said, there are many who do feel that these collections have significant merit as collections, and that the songs contained here do, in fact, belong together as a set package, and this album was in print, in true, original mono sound, with all 12 songs, on LP domestically from something like 1956-1968, again on LP by Toshiba/EMI in Japan in the 1980s and EMI in England and The Netherlands in 1984, appearing on CD twice, both times in the UK during the 1990s. As I write this, it’s also about to be officially reissued on LP by Universal, hopefully with good results.
>>

The CD did score a "top choice" rating on 8 of the 12 tracks, more than any other version, so it's (in my book) the best shot you have at a good sounding "complete mono 12-song" This is Sinatra, and it's miles ahead of the new HD download and LP.

 

Regarding the 1953-1957 UK CD set:

See this post: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...rec-53-55-released-1959.348387/#post-11242893

 

I've added several more clips. See this link in the ongoing Sinatra Singles thread, please: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...racks-etc-part-2.349892/page-10#post-11283096

 

I've spent the last couple of days going track-by-track through the new HD download versions, placing them within the singles pages, and assigning each track a score according to the system outlined in the quoted post. Here's the updated score, FWIW:



Details/links here, of course: http://www.11fifty.com/Site_108/This_is_Sinatra.html, and in the singles thread starting with this post: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...tracks-etc-part-2.349892/page-9#post-11194063.

 

Attention label police!

I got this sort of thing wrong over in the In the Wee Small Hours thread, but, undeterred, I'm going to try this again, and hopefully I won't screw this one up.

As far as I know, this is the original label for This is Sinatra:


...and here's the new one, which I think is actually recreating the second label style for this title, not the original:


(I think these photos were sent by @stevelucille and @AxeD -- thank you! My apologies if they came from somebody else!)

 

While perhaps not 100% accurate, some excellent information can be gleaned from this document:

Information on T-Rim (from my early WHERE ARE YOU mono inner sleeves):

Information on FDS: http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/music/0604/classical/monocapitol.htm
Too much information on FDS: http://www.fds.info/faq/index.php

 

Following up on FDS, I've always thought that this was Capitol's most awkward label design of the era:

 

OK, kids, get out the headphones if you're bored, and listen away (and share your thoughts, please)!

At the bottom of this page: http://www.11fifty.com/Site_108/This_is_Sinatra.html
...there is a series of song titles and links for EVERY SONG on This is Sinatra. The links take you to audio-clip comparison pages. Those comparisons (thanks, in large part, to @AxeD -- thank you for your help) take you to clips of ALL TWELVE SONGS in many, many, many released versions, now including both the 2014 HD and 2014 LP versions. Listen away! That's why they are there! And share your thoughts here so we can politely yack about it, please!

Also, I have some housekeeping issues to share:

1. You may recall that I worked out a sort of numerical system to rank assorted 12-song mono releases of This is Sinatra. I have revised/updated that to not only include the 2014 LP version, but also to do some minor tinkering with at least two versions that are already ranked there. Nothing earth shattering, but after doing (literally) hours of listening to these tracks today, I've had some SLIGHT change of heart on a couple of tracks. Here's the new ranking, and please note the asterisk:



2. Even *I* was surprised to find that a track or two really turned out (in head-to-head listening) quite well on the new 2014 LP. At least one track reached a tie for the coveted(?) "top choice" spot. I didn't see that coming, but when I went in the trenches and seriously compared things, I couldn't find a justifiable reason for knocking the new LP version, so, in the end, I didn't.
3. (This gets a little "words, words, words, blah, blah," so forgive me.) One thing that is really hard to convey in a 30- or 45-second clip is how the dynamics impact a release over the course of a song or an album side, especially when I take the time to level-match every clip. The troubling aspects of SOME dynamic variances can hide pretty well in small serving sizes. That being the case, I think there is some degree of "you'll have to take my word for it that something is compressed sounding," and I don't like just saying that, so I ran these things through level checks just so I have some sort of backup to confirm what I hear over the course or a track. Now, THAT SAID, there or forms of compression that sound really offensive (like on UK Capitol LPs of the early 60s), and some that are far less bothersome (that "friendly" compression on virtually all USA Captiol cuts of the 1950s). (Also, I can't say that in the case of the 2014 LP, for instance, things are deliberately compressed, but they are absolutely "less dynamic," and we can argue over how to label that.) In other words, even when we have numbers to look at, not all numbers mean the same thing in terms of what is or is not bothersome, so please don't conflate dynamics with overall sound quality. (I'll again point out that on many Capitol releases, the most dynamic releases EVER are the Norberg masterings. Stick that in your DR pipe and smoke it, number lovers! I kid, but, in the end....numbers ≠ sound quality.)

To give you some idea of how the LP and HD versions of the 12 THIS IS SINATRA tracks fit into the spectrum of (what I would term) "OK sounding releases," I compiled this information for each track:
•Dynamics for my "go to" versions (Note that these are NOT necessarily the most dynamic versions out there, just the ones that have, to my ears, the best overall sound, regardless of dynamics)
•Dynamics for the least-dynamic "decent sounding" This is Sinatra mono release that I know of: my circa 1969 mono Star Line budget-level LP. (It's something like a D34 cut -- I forget. Very, very late in the mono LP run for this title, and more compressed even than the original D LPs, but with good tone. It's a pleasant listen on its own terms, but it's definitely compressed.)
•Dynamics for the 2014 LP tracks
•Dynamics for the 2014 HD tracks

Typically, the results will rank like this, from most-dynamic to least-dynamic:
•Top choice
•2014 LP: 1 or 2 -dB RMS or down down from there (my guideline: 3 dB difference is usually clearly audible, all else equal)
•2014 HD: Below that
•Star Line LP: Below that

So, here we go:
World on a String
Top 19.7
LP 17.2
Star Line 16.5
HD = 15.7

Don't Worry 'Bout Me
Top 21.2
LP 17.4
HD 17.1
Star Line (I did not record a measurement for this track. Sorry.)

South of the Border
Top 18.8
LP 17.4
Star Line 15.9
HD 15.7

My One and Only Love
Top 17.1
LP 16.3
HD 15.8
Star Line 14.0

From Here to Eternity
LP 18.0
Top 17.8 - very little dynamic reduction, and it scored very well in comparative listening. (This is a common occurrence, which is why I whine so much about reduced dynamics.)
HD 17.5 - ditto
Star Line 15.9

Rain
Top 19.5
LP 17.4
HD 16.3
Star Line 15.4

Young-at-Heart
Top 18.3
LP 17.8 - another high scorer
HD 17.1 - ditto
Star Line 14.8

Three Coins in the Fountain
Top 18.5
LP 16.4
Star Line 16.2
HD 16.1

The Gal that Got Away
Top 20.1
Star Line 18.1
LP 17.5
HD 15.9

Learnin' the Blues
Top 19.9
LP 17.8
HD 16.6
Star Line 16.5

Love and Marriage
Top 19.1
LP 18.6 -- no surprise, this one also scored quite high in my comparative listening
HD 16.5
Starline 15.5

Tender Trap
Top 20.7
LP 18.7
Star Line 16.3
HD 15.1

I'll add here that, dynamics aside, something just struck me as "fishy" about TENDER TRAP and MY ONE AND ONLY LOVE. I don't feel qualified to say "these tracks have been noise-reduced," but there's something about the muffle-y quality that makes me wonder if perhaps they were.

Also, there are some odd gurgly sounds in the beginning of Young-at-Heart on both of the 2014 versions. It's subtle, but once you spot it, I think it'll bother you.

That's all for now. To quote Woody Allen talking to Christopher Walken, "If you'll forgive me, I'm due back on planet Earth."