Sound Quality on "Duke Ellington"-Centennial Edition
Daniel Nagel
I am curious what experience jazz fans have made with the Centennial
Edition, the 24 CD Set released by RCA in 1999. I heard that it suffers from
too much noise reduction especially on the earliest recordings. I have the
Blanton-Webster 3 CD Set that presumably has the same sound, and I am happy
with it - though I have no comparison. Any comments?
Thanks!
Daniel
Michael Laprarie
remastering has left unnecessary noise and artifacts. "Jack The Bear" on
the Blanton-Webster set, with its high-end distortion that is almost
overbearing, is a good example.
There is a 40 (?) CD set by a European bootleg label that seems to cover
everything recorded by Duke from 1926 to ca. 1950. That set was recently
posted in alt.binaries.sounds.78rpm-era, and it DOES suffer from very
amaterishly over-applied digital NR that renders the music pretty much
worthless.
Mike
"Daniel Nagel" <nai...@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:c73r6n$1ur$07$1...@news.t-online.com...
Mitchell Kaufman
> The criticisms that I have come across usually seem to suggest that RCA's
> remastering has left unnecessary noise and artifacts. "Jack The Bear" on
> the Blanton-Webster set, with its high-end distortion that is almost
> overbearing, is a good example.
RCA obviously had the choice of using whatever master materials they had
access to, or else resort to commercially-pressed 78s. There was a
tradeoff involved here in that some of the pressings made using
surviving metal parts have a spitty distortion at peaks. This is more
pronounced on some cuts (most notably "Jack the Bear") than others.
I feel the huge advantages of usiing such vivid-sounding source material
outweighed the disadvantages. These are to my ears not only the
best-sounding reissues of this material in my experience, they're the
best-sounding reissues of *any* kind from 78-era sources that I've ever
heard.
At the time of the issuance of the Centennial set, I wrote several
lengthy pieces in this forum about the sound. Here's a start:
Subsequently, I posted regarding the mid-'40s material, which I felt was
not as well-transferred:
Incidentally, as an update to the latter posting, I now believe the
mid-'40s material was given a touch of artificial ambience and a slight
"stereo" spread--actually a left-right difference signal--which helped
create that odd sound I referred to (albeit nothing as odious as the
"rechanneled stereo" of the '60s). I also feel too much noise reduction
was applied here, making the highs sound duller than in the earlier
material (though this is still to my ears the best any of this stuff has
sounded by a longshot).
> There is a 40 (?) CD set by a European bootleg label that seems to cover
> everything recorded by Duke from 1926 to ca. 1950. That set was recently
> posted in alt.binaries.sounds.78rpm-era, and it DOES suffer from very
> amaterishly over-applied digital NR that renders the music pretty much
> worthless.
I own this monstrosity, and it's as Michael describes it. With discount
coupons and a gift certificate, the 40 discs cost me $8--and I feel I
overpaid.
MK
Mitchell Kaufman
Band" in my old postings refers to the older, obsolete, heavily
noise-reduced set, *not* the recently-released set with the subtitle
"Never No Lament," which apparently uses the same transfers as the
Centennial box (as the original poster observed).
To directly respond to the original inquiry, I don't hear a heavier
application of noise reduction in the earlier sides vis-a-vis the
early-'40s sides.
As a matter of fact, the engineers chose to leave in the high-frequency
whistle that appears in the closing minute or so of Victor 78s of the
late-'20s and early-'30s, obviously in the interest of *avoiding*
over-application of noise reduction. (I actually once gave the technical
explanation for this in another forum; what I mostly recall is that it
related to an anomaly in the creation of the master discs--many of
Victor's opera 78s of the era [such as those of Ponselle and Gigli]
exhibit the same whistle.)
Believe me, the last thing anyone would criticize the 1927-42 transfers
for would be overuse of noise reduction.
MK