Wow and flutter, etc. Tape Speed Issues - Tone Poet / Blue Note 80th anniversary vinyl LP problems.

It's very fun to watch all these AAA fetishists discover that, when you go back to master tapes that are 40-60 years old, you encounter (brace yourself) wear, decay, and damage that has occurred over time!

 

Are we still talking about vinyl records, or have we moved onto day-to-day supports?

 

Pretty much nothing of what is being discussed in this thread has anything to do with tape damage.

 

For people new to this thread, please read this post carefully first before commenting. We have been through this so many times...

Steve Hoffman writes:

"Folks, you've been filling up my PM box with questions about these tapes and what is wrong with them.

I'm staying out of this after this statement:

Rudy Van Gelder recorded the best jazz ever put on tape. He was an ahead-of-his-time engineer, sensitive to the needs and issues of the artists and he used great professional gear..

Other than (my pet peeve) his intentional (or otherwise) overloading distortion sometimes on trumpets and other brass, his work is fantastic. There isn't anything wrong with his tapes, nothing that I ever heard. A few titles had known issues from way back, mainly when the catalog was in the hands of the infidels but just a few. Some of his reels have that funny high-pitched tone that fine mastering engineers like Kevin and Bernie easily filter out, but that's all.

Never has his work for Prestige or Blue Note suffered from wow/flutter or anything like that. The master tapes and copies made from them have aged well, they have not been hurt or damaged by careless use over the years. In fact, even if a reel had been stored poorly, it would take 20 years for that to take its toll and even then, the result would never be fluttering piano.

Some people don't like his piano sound (including sometimes Rudy himself) but the boxy sound he got out of the instrument was always flutter free.

So I felt I had to stick up for Van Gelder. He was an artiste at his craft and his work is timeless.

I'm outtahere."

 

Thank you for clarifying. I will do my appropriate audiophile penance and listen to nothing but AAA-mastered vinyl for the next 30 days.

 

Alligator Bogaloo, you really have to wonder why something more couldn't have been done to hide the drop off of treble frequencies on "One Cylinder".

Seems like a better fix could have been applied. There is a small amount of phasing but it's mostly just that the treble drops WAY off for a couple of minutes. Why not just EQ it as best as could be done to match things up a bit better?

Otherwise a great reissue, but man oh man that is a tape damage that certainly would seem at least more fixable in the analog domain.

If this had been a Beatles album, this forum would have imploded.

 

I can check my original to see if it is there too, how many minutes in? Original pressings are still pretty cheap, especially by Blue Note standards, so that's always an option if this problem is only on the BN80.

 

I think it is about one minute in.

Pretty sure it’s been checked and confirmed that the problem doesn’t exist until the BN80 so your original should be good. I think Joe Harley confirmed the tape on this one had a problem.

 

I think you’re right Tim. I have an original or at least a Liberty pressing so I can check on that when I get a a minute. Although it was the cleanest copy I ever found it’s still got a lot of a noise so I bought the 80 too.

 

If one of you gets a minute to check it, that would be cool. I’m pretty sure it won’t be there.

What is weird to me is that this would just be left the way it was. Some EQ could have been expertly dropped in for those few minutes lacking top end and the difference would have been very minor or possibly not even noticed.

 

Definitely no tape issue on One Cylinder on my Liberty pressing of Alligator Boogaloo. Rather obvious on the 80, enters on during the head and lasts through Benson’s solo. I prefer the RVG mastered pressing overall too, unfortunately my copy was not treated so well.

 

Thanks for confirming.

Guess I need a vintage pressing of this one. Such a great album. I don't always go for the long jamming type of soul-jazz, but this one is just so in the pocket plus Benson and Smith are just crazy good on it.

 

Not a TP or BN80, but the Bill Evans Trio '64 from the Verve Classic series has some piano flutter.

 

Alligator Booga Lou is a wonderfully groovy date and it's worth having a copy at least good enuff to not distract you from gettin' fully into it. I wish Leo/Idris had done even more of this ilk for the label and with some of the other artists, including those not really known as groove players.

 

Interesting! That was was Sterling Sound, not Cohearant, right?

 

Correct. Of course, some of these pitch issues are no doubt a product of the tapes. While there was definitely something else at play for the releases that spurned this thread, I hear pitch instability on many records.

I recently picked up Bill Evans Behind the Dikes RSD release. I grabbed two copies in case one was faulty. Side E in particular had crazy amounts of flutter, but the disc was warped so I cleaned and played my second copy. Unfortunately - just as bad as the first and this one was flat and centered. Honestly it might be worse than any of the Blue Note offenders. It sounds like my turntable is sitting on my neighbors trampoline. And it’s a massive shame because the music is exquisite. But the pitch is so unstable that it ruins the music completely IMO.

I’m not sure if the other discs in the set suffer from the same issue - but they certainly don’t to this degree. But the third disc is from a different show, so a different tape, which I’m going to assume is the culprit.

 

Yes, that is a great groove album. My reissue sounds terrific. Great break as well for a classic hip hop record by MC Solaar.

 

I know that in a sense this sort of thing goes back to what the Romans did with the Greek classics, but it's also why many folks skip right over the Romans to get to the Greek source.

 

I contacted Elemental Records about both disc 1 and 3 having a severe ripple warp. Interestingly, I got two different responses (one from an email I sent, and the other from the contact form on their company page). One representative said that they wanted photo evidence (of a ripple warp?). The other just apologized and asked for my address. I got a shipment from Europe, to my surprise, containing the outer cover with two replacement discs. Unfortunately, my amp is on the fritz and at the repair shop, so no can play.

 

I'm waiting for my copie of Solaar from Amazon.ca first week of October. Then Nouveau Western. Is your copie is all right?

 

For those who bought the new Acoustic Sounds Verve LP Mingus X5, I can hear piano and saxophone sour notes on Mood Indigo, the last track on Side A. I can confirm that my copy is perfectly flat and centered.

As a note, the album was cut by Ryan K Smith at Sterling Sound.

 

I'm supposed to get this next week. Curious what other people think as well. It's possible the flutter is just on the tape.

 

Apart from that, how do you rate the SQ? Mine won't arrive until next week...

 

Comparing to the track on YouTube () and on the LP, the flutter is more egregious on the latter.

The mastering on that album is very good to my ears, but take my words with a grain of salt as I don't own other pressings of Mingus X5.

 

I'm curious to see if an individuals sensitivity to these wow and flutter issues is also related to their preferred format.

If interested I started a simple survey:

Does you preference for Vinyl over CD mean your more or less sensitive to Wow and Flutter