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

Nah; not noticeable.
Let's say a wave looks like this:

If it's flipped/inverted, it will look like this:

In a nutshell, up is down, and down is up.

 

Come Fly with Me bears Ron McMaster's initials in the deadwax. He had mastered the same title in 2009, also with the initials there, and I see no reason to doubt that he was able to have the tape librarian pull the correct reels in 2009, then cut the LP all-analog, and I see no reason to doubt that this was repeated last year, especially since the LPs apparently sound nearly identical.

As for Wee Small Hours, call me highly skeptical.

 

I still sleep during class on a daily basis. Not to worry!

 

Somebody e-mailed me about the new LP, and since it's somebody who reads the forum, I thought I'd just post my thoughts here. The question was about the new LP being cut from the MFSL hybrid disc. Just to reiterate: My initial comment on the topic, before I had the LP, was:

and I'll repeat the obvious disclaimer that I typed in response to a question from @paulmock a few days ago:

The visual evidence is back in post #461. To my knowledge, only two releases of this album have ever had waveforms that look like the MFSL release, and that's the MFSL release and the new LP. As far as sound differences between the two releases are concerned, I'll stand by this:

To follow that up, here are two new clips (both from within the freely available "iTunes window" -- no free music being given away here).

Clip #1: https://app.box.com/s/9s52po2rhev9x0n85uwk0de4u9l524by - A 60-second clip from the opening track, alternating four times (roughly every 15 seconds) between the two sources (MFSL and UMe).

Clip #2: https://app.box.com/s/c2aaytuyaiz27q9au1srzk7g2fn19xlg - A bunch of very brief clips that repeat themselves: Once from one source, once from the other.

To me, as I said before, these sure sound like they are "cut from the same cloth," and I'll leave it at that.

Finally, I'll repeat the two other things that lead me to say that the new LP uses the new master.
One:

To clarify: I'm not saying (necessarily) that MFSL brought about the missing "phew" or the clipped off opening. It's very possible that these are tape issues that MFSL inherited. All that I'm saying is that both of these quirks appear on the MFSL hybrid disc and the new LP, and, to my knowledge, there are no earlier 16-song LP releases that had both of these characteristics, so it's certainly odd that it would appear on the MFSL and then appear on the new LP by mere coincidence.

Two:

Also, I don't own every single new UMe reissue, but I'm pretty sure that this title and September of My Years are unique insofar as the dates that appear on the sleeves and labels. Here's a post from the A Jolly Christmas thread:

The new LP of September of My Years reads: "Originally released in 1965 (P) 2010 (C) 2015." It definitely uses the 2010 Concord CD remix.
The new Songs for Swingin' Lovers LP reads: "Originally released in 1956 (P) 2014 (C) 2015." It appears to use the 2014 remastering.
(The recent Swing Easy LP, by comparison, merely reads: "Originally released in 1954......(C)2015.....")

An ex-girlfriend of mine used to say, "Unless you actually see the baby shooting out, never ever ask a woman if she is pregnant." I'm not in a position to say that the new Swingin' Lovers LP is pregnant, but she seems to be.

Have a listen to the audio clips if you're bored!

EDIT: I've also added a clip to the comparison pages, if interested: Songs for Swingin’ Lovers - 1956 »

 

"MFSL masterings?" What does that mean?

For Come Fly with Me, I'd be shocked if the intact, original side one and side two master mono reels do not exist and are not in good shape. For LP, then, MFSL would assumedly thread up that tape, listen to it, make some decisions on what EQ they'd like to use and how to set the mechanical settings on the lathe, and their LP would be cut on their lathe from those Capitol-supplied tapes. Their LP "mastering" would only exist on paper and lacquer. After they've cut the LP, they'd send the tapes back to Capitol, no different than when Capitol shipped them out. If they were doing an SACD along with the LP, then I suppose that Capitol could cut their new LP from MFSL's SACD mastering, but how would that be advantageous to cutting from the master tape, assuming the analog master exists and is in good shape? (For the record, in this day and age, I would never rule out an LP being cut digitally, but I see no reason to just assume that MFSL would do this for a given title.)

Wee Small Hours? That could be a situation of things having to be re-assembled to create a 16-song version, but who knows? (I flat-out do not.) From 1962-1998, the album was routinely hacked to death, both in terms of track count and sound quality, but in 1998 there was a well-sourced, 16-song release in the UK. Does that mean that the 16-song, dry US master tape was found and used? Re-assembled on tape? Re-assembled digitally? I think the jury's out, and things are muddied considerably by the fact that things have happened in this order:

•1960s US LP: abridged and wet (reverb-added tapes used)
•1970s UK LP: full-length and dry - analog-cut in the UK by Harry Moss, assumedly from a high-quality analog dub tape
•1980s US LP: abridged and dry - cut from a sliced-and-diced set of "master" reels, or from high-quality tape dubs? (Probably the former?)
•1983 MFSL LP - total screw up (wrong tapes, etc., etc., etc.)
•1986/1991 USA CD - Dry tapes used, but reverb newly and erroneously added -- so the dry tapes existed in some form, but no LP was cut, so who know what sort of "reels" existed at this point.
•Australian unabridged CD that followed the 1986 USA CD: Some dry tapes, some 1962 wet tapes, some tracks dubbed from the 1986/91 US CD!
•1998 UK CD: full-length and dry - sounds great! Digital copy of US masters? Or UK dubs? (Does it matter much, sonically?) Again, no LP issued.
•2009(?) US LP: "full-length" (sort of) and wet, with one song being the wrong song! I think that this is only likely to happen if the LP were being cut from digital files with somebody goofing during the "drag and drop" process of lining the songs up in running order, but that's speculation. (I remain shocked that somebody would not notice this.)
•2014 HD and LP: full length and dry, almost certainly from a digital source (for LP)

The "correct tape" masters for Wee Small Hours certainly seemed to disappear for years and years, possibly (I lean slightly toward "probably") resurrected in the early '80s for the USA mono LP reissue (abridged) and in 1998 for that (unabridged) UK CD. To resurrect the 16-song, dry version may have been something as simple as re-arranging the songs in the right order, i.e., I wouldn't rule out that in the early '80s the 8-song side one reel was re-spliced to be a 5-song side one reel (for purposes of cutting the abridged LP sides), with the 3 excised songs simply being attached to the end of the reel following a bunch of leader tape for easy abridged LP cutting and for easy storage. Same for side two. It may, then, have been something as simple as having to re-splice the songs together in proper running order to re-create the 8-song (per side) "dry" master reels. Then again, it could have been a heck of a challenging hunt to cobble together dry tapes for all 16 songs from dry sources. Who knows? (I certainly do not, duh.)

 

Listened to the new reissue last night. WOW! It was amazing.

 

For Wee Small Hours? The 1984 Dell LPs (UK and Netherlands versions) use wet tapes. The 1998 UK Dell CD uses correct, dry tapes.

Capitol Scorecard »

 

The 1984 LPs use the early 60s reverb-added tapes. The 1991 CD (on all but "Last Night When We were Young") used the correct tapes but added new stereo reverb, so they are similar.....but different. (The 1991 CD uses the 1986 abridged CD for 15 of its 16 tracks, with "Last Night" newly added, and from the correct tapes.)