DCC Archive Question for Steve Hoffman on Nat King Cole

I've been asked this a bunch of times, but I don't mind going over it again.


Love Is The Thing" was recorded in mono and 1/2" binaural at Capitol Studio A in December 1956.

The MONO version, mixed live to Ampex 300 full track tape was assembled on 1/8/57, and the LP cut a short time later, by John Kraus.

The binaural version sat on the shelf for a while.

The stereo open reel tape and stereo LP versions were prepared about two years later, in haste, with about 10 other "soon to be stereo" releases.

Therefore, the stereo "LP Master" really stinks: Muted, compressed, way too much echo, dropouts, and generally sounding nothing like the amazing sounding mono version, which was mixed "live" as it was happening.

So, in 1987 when the Capitol CD was being readied for release, Larry Walsh checked out the two-track tape, went "Uggh", and went back to the three-track "binaural" version instead. Heck, I would have done the same.

He "mixed" this down to two-track, while adding (IMO) too much echo, too much compression, too much filtering, and way too much thinning out of the stereo image.

So, when it was my turn to do it, I also went back to the three-track version, and did a mix to two-track analog tape (1/2 inch, 15 ips, non-dolby).

I just chose to add a little echo, and NO signal processing of any kind.

Now, after the last bonus song is finished on the DCC CD, let the CD play and you will hear the "hidden" bonus track of "Stardust", without ANY echo whatsoever, straight off of the three track.

How did that bonus track get on there? Well, it was an accident actually.

CNN was filming me mastering "Love Is The Thing"at Future Disc for a news story that they were doing, and I did a version for them that had no echo, on the end of the DCC CD master.

Forgot about it, and it showed up on the first run of the Gold CD. Sheesh.

Check and see if you have it.

There is about a minute pause at the end of the last bonus track on the CD, and then you will hear the voice of producer Lee Gillette, giving the take number.

Neat, eh?

 

Mikey,

I call it a binaural tape, because that is what Capitol called it in the old days. Kind of neat.

It's a three channel tape:

Channel 1: Orchestra left
Channel 2: Vocal
Channel 3: Orchestra right

The reason that Capitol called the process Binaural, is that they used two mics on the orchestra, up in the air, fairly close together.

The mono version, used 8 microphones, its own console, outboard gear and different engineer than the binaural version.

Therefore, the mono mix has more detail in the orchestra.

The first two songs that they recorded for the album, (Love Letters & Maybe It's Because I Love You Too Much), were recorded in mono only, because the Ampex three-track setup wasn't working right.

These are also on the DCC Gold disc, so you can compare the "sound" of the mono versions to the sound of the "binaural" versions, just by changing tracks on the CD.