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Topics - High and Outside

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46
Tape Project Albums - general / New title added to Series Three!
« on: March 07, 2011, 09:17:16 PM »
We are very pleased to announce that we will be releasing Nat King Cole Sings/George Shearing Plays in Series Three.

We have long wanted to include something from Nat King Cole, one of the all time great singers in American musical history. The difficulty is not just to choose from such an iconic body of work. It's also complicated by the fact that much of his defining work was recorded before the stereo era, in fact most of it before the HiFi era. We give a grateful tip of the cap to subscriber Philip O'Hanlon, who pointed us toward this gem. In 1961 someone had the great idea of putting these two together. Cole loved Shearing's piano playing (and since Cole was a great pianist himself that's no small compliment.) And of course everyone loved Cole's singing, including Shearing. The joy they had in collaborating clearly made it on to the tape.

It's beautifully recorded in the pop studio style of the day. The vocal is mixed out front, but if you were going to choose a vocal to spotlight... 

47
Events / HiFi Hawaii Grand Opening August 19
« on: July 27, 2010, 03:09:16 PM »
Our dealer in Honolulu, HiFi Hawaii, has been working diligently on building a new larger store. The owner, Shane Drew, has set August 19 as the day he plans to cut the ribbon. I'm going to be there, talking about the Tape Project and spinning a few reels. There will also be factory guys from Wilson, B&W, MacIntosh, Linn and Avielo.

If you're in town, please come on by and say hello. 5PM to 10PM. (Actually Shane would prefer that you RSVP.)

http://www.hifihawaii.com/home.php

48
Heart Like a Wheel / Breaking our own rule
« on: January 26, 2010, 07:20:21 PM »
You all know the rules about what titles we do: we have to love the music, the master has to exist on analog tape, and we have to be able to get our hands on the original tape. The Linda Ronstadt title meets the first criterion, but there turned out to be a problem relative to the third.

Once we had concluded the deal and I got home with the tape, I couldn't help noticing that it sounded pretty crummy. Upon close inspection, I determined that they had given me an EQ copy that they used for LP cutting. I immediately got on the phone to their vault guy, and thus began a very long and interesting journey. In brief, they didn't have the original mix reels in their vault. So I started trying to find them. I checked in with everyone I could find who may have had anything to do with the tapes. Eventually I had pestered the producer, the main engineer, one of the other engineers, Linda's manager, vault guys in three record companies, the original mastering engineer (Bernie Grundman,) two tape librarians who had been at his mastering facility in 1974, Doug Sax (who had mastered a greatest hits package in 1975 that used a couple of the tunes,) the manager of the studio where the record was mixed, a guy at a third-party storage company in the LA area, and several other people whose connection to the tapes is just too hard to describe. I went over ground that other people had plowed before me, and ran down some leads that no one had pursued before. This whole process took months. The upshot is that the original tapes went missing some time late in 1974 or early in 1975, and they are still missing.

However, in the course of all this I did find (with a little help from Steve Hoffman. Thanks, Steve!) a flat copy that had been made direct from the mixes, with no processing. It was reputed to sound pretty good, so I got hold of it and brought it up to the studio. We were faced with the choice of using the copy or blowing off the title. We had to hear it for ourselves first, of course. We took our time, listening to the tape and talking it over among ourselves. We still love the music, and it still as a lot of that direct connection to the original event. So we eventually decided to put it out from the safety copy. That's what will be showing up on your doorsteps over the next couple of weeks. We have been enjoying it in our living rooms for a while now, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

49
General Discussion / T-shirts and mousepads and coffee mugs, oh my!
« on: November 20, 2009, 03:49:25 PM »
There is a new source for that Tape Project logo merchandise you've been craving:

http://www.zazzle.com/TheTapeProject

We used to have it at Cafe Press, but no more. Zazzle is the same basic idea: they'll slap a logo on just about anything you can think of. We haven't listed aprons or refrigerator magnets yet, but if there's a demand we will be happy to.

50
Tape Project Albums - general / Why only two classical in Series Two?
« on: August 12, 2009, 12:42:09 AM »
Some of the classical music listeners among our subscribers have been asking if any of the remaining four titles for Series Two would be classical music. Now that we are announcing the balance of the titles, I'd like to address directly the place of classical music in our release schedule.

The reason that there are classical titles in both Series One and Series Two is that we, the three principals who make the A&R decisions, love classical music. At the same time, we love lots of other kinds of music.

Looking at the feedback we receive from our subscribers, we see that there are a lot of people who listen primarily to other genres, but enjoy classical too, and appreciate having some classsical in our mix if it's well chosen. There are also some who indicate that they only are interested in classical. However committed that group of classical listeners may be, the group is small. If we ran a classical-only label, that group would not be large enough to keep the operation afloat.

By the way, Series One had four classical titles, which may have set an expectation that our norm would be something like four out of each ten titles to be classical. It was not our intention to have that ratio. It just worked out that there were some irrestistible titles that happened to become available in the first year. Our original thinking had been more like two out of each ten. But lately our thinking has added another direction. Without going into too much detail (because the details aren't set yet) we are working on a plan to make more classical titles available.

My own feeling is that the benefits of the tape format work particularly well for large orchestral works, so that's where my interest is focused. As always, your thoughts on specific titles are welcome in the Suggestion Box, and I invite them there. In this thread, I welcome your perspectives on the place you'd like to see for classical music in The Tape Project.

51
We had wanted to make the subscriber special price effective until all ten titles had been announced. It took a lot longer than we had hoped--long story--but finally here we are. So, in order to head off any confusion, here is the actual deal:

Starting back when we announced it in January, the new price per album is $300 plus shipping. We still offer both selective (six out of the ten, your choice) for $1800 plus shipping, or full subscription (all ten in the series) for $3000 plus shipping. Single tapes are available for $500 plus shipping.

Since we appreciate our subscribers so much, we are offering a substantial discount for anyone who has already subscribed to Series One, or who subscribes to Series One by September 10, 2009. For any of these subscribers, the following prices are available: selective subscriptions for $1500 plus shipping, or a full subscription for $2500 plus shipping.

The window is open for thirty days on the special pricing. Until September 10, anyone who is a subscriber to Series One can get Series Two at the discounted price. And people who hadn't already subscribed to Series One and who want to subscribe to Series Two may do both at the at the discounted price. After that, everything is at the new price.

Again, thanks to all our subscribers, especially the early ones who subscribed with the knowledge that we didn't yet have a product to ship, and who showed extreme patience, waiting up to 11 months to receive their first tape. We haven't forgotten that your early support made this venture possible.

52
Tape Project Albums - general / Lots of tapes shipping
« on: March 09, 2009, 04:23:21 PM »
We weren't shipping for a while--waiting for some parts in the supply chain--but duping was still going full steam ahead. Now we are able to ship again, and I am seeing very large piles of tapes going out the door today. This includes lots of catch-up of earlier titles for people who subscribed more recently as well as some TP009's. More will be shipped over the next few days.

Many subscribers will see shipping notices in their email inboxes over the next couple of days. If you just can't contain your curiosity you can email romo at tapeproject dot com and he'll look up your orders--but BE PATIENT. He's super busy right now supervising this big batch of shipping, and it might take him a week to recover.


53
Suggestion Box / Tape Project Alignment Tones
« on: May 27, 2007, 01:20:02 PM »
This is a continuation of the discussion started under the title "Test tones on ALL tape releases??" but I'm starting a new thread that is concerned solely with the alignment tone reels that we will be making to go with our releases.

First of all, the parts that have already been decided: it'll have 1KHz for level setting, 10K for HF EQ, 15K for azimuth, and some tones for LF EQ setting (discussion below.) All tones will be at zero level. (How many nanoWebers/meter will that zero correspond to? That's still under consideration.) It will have two signals for polarity: an asymmetrically clipped sine wave and pops. The clipped sine is useful, but needs a scope. The pops will be useful only if you have a polarity popper set (which I highly recommend anyway*) but has the advantage of being able to confirm polarity all the way through your chain to the speaker output.

The LF EQ has been brought up in the previous thread, and we've been thinking a lot about it too. Our current thinking is three tones: 30, 60 and 90. We are interested in input from others on this as well.

Is there anything else that people would like to see included? We have considered frequency sweeps, but are currently leaning against including them.

The tone reels will be available for purchase. They are not a replacement for a test tape from MRL if you have the instrumentation and skill to use one--or you have a tech who does. They will be valuable for making sure your machine is set up to get the best out of The Tape Project albums. We don't have  a price yet, obviously, if we still haven't finalized what will be on them. All first year subscribers will get one gratis.

*These used to be hard to find, but now Galaxy Audio makes one that's perfectly good, easily available and cheap--about a hundred bucks. http://www.galaxyaudio.com/CRICKET.html

54
General Discussion / Tales from the trenches
« on: April 17, 2007, 08:31:17 PM »
We have discussed alignment in a couple of different places on this forum. It's fundamentally imortant that the playback machine match the curve used by the recorder, otherwise the frequencies won't come back in the proper balance.

Now Doc has reminded me I was going to post some tales from the trenches, and there's a good one concerning that old audiophile chestnut "Jazz At The Pawnshop," so here goes.

I have remastered that title twice, and this story concerns the first time. The owner of the tapes was flying around with them personally, first from Sweden to Japan, where they were remastered for XRCD, then to San Francisco where I remastered them in HDCD. The label was FIM, run by my good friend Winston Ma.

Before the session even began I got a call from an associate in Sweden, Diedrik de Geer, who is a friend of the engineer who did the original recording, Gert Palmcrantz. Diedrik wanted to be sure I was aware that the tapes were recorded with the CCIR curve (now known as the IEC curve.) He was obviously afraid that I would just align to the NAB curve, since that's the most common in the US. But I had been forewarned that the tapes were CCIR (and they were clearly labeled) and assured Diedrik that all was well.

But it really wasn't all well. The machine was properly set up to the CCIR test tape, but playing the tapes back the sound just wasn't right. We all agreed, it just didn't sound balanced. As we were talking about it, and the owner of the tapes mentioned that they had been recorded on Nagra machines, I wondered whether there was any possibility that they had been recorded with the Nagra Master curve, which is several dB different in the high end. I decided to experiment, and dialed the repro curve in by ear. Once I had it sounding right, I put up the Nagra Master test tape to see how close my "earballing" had come, and it matched within a fraction of a dB.

At this point I got another call from Diedrik--he was obviously really concerned. I explained what we had been finding, and asked whether there was any chance that the tapes had been recorded with the Nagra Master curve. He had been told for sure that they were CCIR, but it worried him enough that he drove out to Gert's place--he lives out in the boonies and doesn't have a phone. Couple hours later we get another call from Diedrik. Bottom line: Gert had recorded with the machines in the Nagra Master setting, but mistakenly believed that was the same as CCIR, so that's how the boxes were labeled. I put my Nagra Master test tape back on, fine trimmed the alignment, and got on with the session. And we changed the labeling on the boxes.

There's another twist to this which may not be obvious at first glance. These tapes were recorded with Dolby A. Anyone who had been mastering them previously might have noticed the frequency balance being askew and tried to compensate with EQ. But if the frequency balance wasn't corrected at the tape machine, before the Dolby unit, then the Dolby encoding could never have been decoded properly...it depends on having  the original frequency balance for the decoding to work right.

I have a nice postcard from Diedrik saying that Gert told him my transfer sounds more like what he heard in the club that night than any other version he's heard.

55
Suggestion Box / Thanks for the suggestions-keep 'em coming
« on: January 16, 2007, 07:13:40 PM »
I love getting turned on to new music, and I look forward to getting some good leads from y'all.

You may not see much action on them right away...it can be a long term process. But rest assured, we take them all seriously.

Paul Stubblebine

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