SH Spotlight Hey gang, guess what? Some of your most favorite albums in the world use tape dubs as masters..

Solidarity in damage control?

 

The "faders up" version of side two has the track transitions missing, I assume because they edited the transitions out to work on them separately.

 

The takeaway is to just sit back and enjoy the music.

 

So based on Mr. Steve’s experience and assertion, Dark Side and other albums with cross fades between songs presumably are second generation masters, unless, per Mr. Jamie, the cross fade is spliced in.

However, one would think it fair to extrapolate that remixes, (stereo, mono & surround) at least those done since the advent of digital audio multitrack tech, being from original multitrack session tapes are superior sources.

No?

 

It's well documented that engineers working at EMI (later renamed Abbey Road) Studios were trained to splice in only the crossfaded sections and to save the splices of the clean beginning/ending versions. This is witnessed by the fact that we've gotten a clean beginning of A Day In The Life (I'm pretty sure Back In The USSR just fades out early on 1967-1970).

 

To educate people.

 

One more reason for me to dislike them!

EG.

 

Stereo Blue Jay Way - which has the chorus played backwards in breaks in the verses. Gotta be a third tape.

 

Was every analog compilation album constructed in this manner as well? Not with the overlapping tracks but copying the individual tracks from the original master to a dupe in the desired track listing of the compilation so just the dupe had to be run while cutting?

 

As others have said… DSOTM… I’m now intrigued…

 

Man, if people are upset about this, hearing about how Portishead recorded Dummy would make their heads explode.

 

Thinking about all of those Miles of tapes...Teo had fun.

 

As long as the final result is good, I'm happy.

 

Now you’ve got me considering trying to compare the sound quality of my Supremes 70s comps with some of the original pressings…I’m not sure I want to open this particular Pandora’s box.

 

The album In A Silent Way has loads of tape hiss, one theory being that it is from all of the work Teo did with the tapes.

Zappa's We're Only In It For The Money is another one that ended up a bit washed out sounding from all of the overdubs and edits.

 

A start: DCC Archive - Original Master Tape for Dark Side of the Moon

 

The amount of editing on In a Silent Way has been a bit overestimated. Essentially Teo just repeated a couple of long sections. There isn't really any more editing on Silent Way than on Round About Midnight, for example. The thing about it that's "radical" is the way it uses the limited number of edits to create a structure where there wasn't one in the original performances.

He didn't start experimenting with crossfades and such until Jack Johnson, and even then it was in a modest way. Even on Bitches Brew it is just little loops and things that he was playing with, and the reverb chamber, no fades.

On the Corner is when Teo's editing and mixing practices got really complicated.

 

Since we do have an "A Day In The Life" with a clean intro in stereo, can we assume that is from the master before being the duped master? Or was it remixed? I forget.

 

Do we really need education in minutiae here...put it in the equipment forum or somewhere it will receive the visibility it deserves?!?!?

 

Don’t blame me. Go after the OP, if you’ve a
problem, dude!

 

Are you really complaining about a thread that Steve himself started on his own forum?

 

Now didn't Geoff Emrick (sorry for spelling) reveal that most if not all Beatles (and by implication, most albums) albums, especially the domestic USA pressings, were pressed using far sub-master level master tapes that were sent to Capitol from EMI? So that would mean the dubbing of the master to sub master to sub sub master etc happened before the stamper was made, lowering the sound quality each time? So in reality by the time we hear it on a normal commercial LP, it has been duplicated and dubbed down to a level far removed from the actual master master tape. And I understand record companies used this technique pretty much universally, resulting in some pretty dire sounding final products, which you might not notice if not paying attention and/or never being familiar with the process that results in the records we listen to. Part of it presumably is to protect the true master from overuse, especially since that master will be hung together with splicing tape from the editing process, making it too fragile to truly use for a master, other than as a master to make a usable sub-master from, and then the sub-master is duplicated for actual use in either making other sub-masters for actually cutting the stampers, or in just making safety copies to prevent having to go back to the actual master-master.

So, in fact, we rarely if ever actually get a cut from the real master, just sub-masters, and those sub-masters can be many gens down from the actual master tapes.

Please correct me if I am wrong in thinking this.

jb

 

From what I found on Losin's site, Round About Midnight only has editing on "Ah Leu Cha" where they combined two takes. Miles Ahead was a very edit-heavy record, more so than a lot of the electric Miles records.

I agree though that there may be other reasons In A Silent Way has a lot of hiss.