SH Spotlight A few angry (but sort of funny) notes people sent me about my mastering work, imagined defects.....

Return: There's a 10-minute gap in track #12 and then suddenly all hell breaks loose. I expect a copy without such a glitch.

 

I'm glad you don't work for Criterion.

 

I dealt with that all of the time, usually by crazed audiophile types who have no knowledge about musical instruments of their mechanics.

One guy returned a CD of Gerry Mulligan's "What Did I Say?" Complaining of some garbled sound on track 2 (My Funny Vallentine).
I played the disc only to hear the sound of spit gurgling in the bottom of his horn.

A stoner kid came in with a copy of Led Zeppelin IV complaining (in a Jeff Spicolli voice) "man, like this music sucks. They sound like a bunch of ______
(insert name of some undesirables). Man will you take this back". It turns out that side one of the Zoso LP had side one of of "Loaded" by the Velvets pressed by accident. I wish I could have kept it.

I used to get MFSL returns time after time.
The typical barely audible click during a fade out or lead-in groove, or a split seam.

One guy returned a copy of Louis & Ella again because "it was in mono", it said so on the cover.
Another returned a copy of Gerry Mulligan meets Paul Desmond for the same thing.
Another returned a copy of Nevermind because it was "too distorted".

Somebody returned a "Lovesexy" CD because "it was one long 40 minute track".
Nevermind due to the disc "playing on and on with nothing coming out, somebody erased the CD".

Those were the days.

 

I returned the first Dylan album I ever bought for this same reason but it wasn't because of the mastering.

 

Agree. Obviously no one wants to see a movie with grain that's there because the image came from a substandard source, but if the grain was there on top-notch original presentations, then it should be there on the Blu-ray or DVD.

I used to think of grain as a "flaw" but learned the error of my ways years ago!

 

Reminds me of Amazon's customer review sections where you constantly see complaints about the sound of old CD's because they're not "remastered". If only they knew...

 

"Constructive" feedback never fails to astound me.

 

I heard "The Stake" on the radio the other day-Sirius Deep Tracks, I think. I hadn't cracked open my Steve Millers in ages, and really enjoyed hearing the song again.

 

DCC didn't charge extra for that, so whadda bargain!

 

Ah, now I am (unfortunately) recalling buying some Focus import CD, and "Hocus Pocus" was cut short. Maybe it WAS the single version-if so, REALLY short. Or something like that. I was really annoyed, and did return the thing as I recall.

 

Well sure, the aliens told her so when they had her up in their invisible craft in orbit...

 

Er, you never heard of masters being off-speed?* Though I'd be pretty shocked if Steve let that slip by.

*OK, they might come to the mastering engineer mixed that way

 

That customer must be pretty happy these days

 

I've yet to find a Agents Of Fortune release that has the right amount of cowbell.

I agree that some BDs are too grainy though.
Sure, film is grain but Bluray is enhancing it to levels not seen before unless you sat in the first row in the theater.

 

It's a very important album and needs to be heard in the best possible sound.

 

I got a copy of the Box Tops Soul Deep comp that actually had a tiny bubble in the plastic. What part of the track I was able to play sounded nothing like Don Ho. Only other ones I ever returned were because the contents were wrong. Santana Caravanserai turned out to be Ricky Martin GH.

 

Wow, this may be the most obnoxious post I have read on this site in 13 years. Congratulations, you win the prize.

 

Shoe poop. Shoe-poo-pee-do.

 

Yeah the surround mix on the SACD of Agents Of Fortune could have used a channel for nothing but cowbell it was an opportunity missed.

 

I just found this thread and Steve's OP cracked me up.

 

I returned A Space Oddity single three times, because it had a pressing defect at 3.02. This of course was the intended overdriven/fuzzy bass. I must have been around 9 years old.

 

...or the fool who reviewed a film recently, despite stating that they had fallen asleep during it...

 

My first Beatles' album.

 

And this is why he/she will always remain average; I hope that person gets run over...

Love this thread.

 

Too bad you missed it two years ago when it was originally posted.