Sinatra / Capitol Sound Quality and General Discussion: Songs for Swingin' Lovers - Released 1956*

That is an interesting thing to ponder, isn't it? The master, of course, for this album, consists of spliced together pieces of the raw session tapes. "Intuitively" -- an intuition can certainly be wrong -- it seems that, say, "We'll Be Together Again" should be significantly quieter than, say, "I've Got You Under My Skin," and in terms of the amount of sound energy in the room during the session, I'm sure that was the case, however, it's hard to say 1.) how much (if any) gain riding was done during the session; and 2.) what sort of adjustments could have been made during cutting.

Regarding #1: I virtually never (maybe flat-out "never") detect any "mixing moves" on John Palladino's recordings. (Now, A Swingin' Affair? That thing has mixing moves going on constantly, and it drives me batty.) I suppose it's possible that, knowing there was going to be some very loud stuff on tunes like "I've Got You Under My Skin," he may have dropped levels a bit to play it safe, avoid distortion, etc., OR he may have slightly raised levels somewhat on the quieter tunes on-the-fly at the session. (I don't really think much of that went on, but it's certainly a possibility, and I don't think overall gain riding was that uncommon. Also, I'm sure that John was doing some knob-twiddling as needed, but he was the master of subtlety and making changes that go unnoticed. The guy was good!)

Regarding #2: I have no idea what sort of cutting instructions may have been used on this title. It's possible that some "leveling" may have been noted for LP cutting, i.e., raise track two by 3 dB, drop track six by 2 dB, etc.

My guess?
Side one, as a whole, of the Centenary LP is in the ballpark of the session dynamics for tracks 1-8, and side two is in the ballpark of session dynamics for tracks 9-15, but at an overall lower cutting level. (Maybe cut on a different day or by a different engineer or something? Who knows?!)

The MFSL is likely closer to the "final intent" for the released product?????

Other thoughts??

 

The MFSL LP (1983) used the wrong tapes, so that one's "out."

 

Here are sides one and two from a D cut that I own:

Just for reference, here's the new MFSL that we all seem to agree is the best the album has ever sounded:

And the 1997 Centenary EMI LP:


In the end, waveforms are waveforms, and there are multiple ways to interpret this stuff. The MFSL sounds great! The only smoking gun I see is that side two of the Centenary edition appears to be cut at a lower level than side one.

 

It looks as though this album was available in its original 15-song format in the UK long after it was abridged to 12 songs in the US. Anybody have one of these versions?

 

^^^^^There was also a purple-label variation:

 

I've started to re-build my taken-down webpages for "Songs for Swingin' Lovers," and a few LP clips are posted here: http://www.11fifty.com/Site_108/1956_-_Songs_for_Swingin_Lovers.html

Much more to follow, of course.

If you have any clips you'd like me to post, please let me know, and if you sent files my way back in 2009, I think I still have them all.

Some of these early pressings sound (to my ears) really, really nice.

 

Possibly, yes, but I'm not quite going that far.....yet. Need to really dig into that one. There is definitely some serious non-mono "junk" going on on that CD, though, whatever it may be!

Here's a rundown of the chat from the other thread:

 

Regarding those 15-track UK LPs pictured in posts 260 and 261:

Ah, fake stereo. Thanks.

I see in those photos that the one-box and the rainbow pressings seem to bear the LCT prefix, which I think would indicate mono, with SLCT being stereo.

Anybody able to confirm? Anybody have one of those post-1962 LCT pressings?