Bowie R2R on SACD

[citysoundman]

Hey group,
I've just noticed that there's a collection of Bowie albums with R2R in the title, that are mastered to SACD. I'm really curious about these. How do they sound? What's the source of the reel to reels? Are they copied directly from Reels that were at one time for sale...or are they from studio master tapes?
citysoundman

[Timbre4]

They are bin masters for duplicating tapes. They sound quite good because they are low generation; they are archived to SACD-R so you need to be able to play those.

[Sam Edwards]

I'm not currently connected. Which records are they? I ripped all of the Bowie that's on SACD and DVD-A. Are there more tittles here? Worth reconnecting?

[ROBERT]

Hunky Dory sounds pretty good to me

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[Lokkerman]

The SACD versions were lifted from the Bin masters and these were released on the old Mojave site. The genuine bin masters are actually in PCM – a flat transfer from the original tapes. All of the Bowie’s are at 96/24 and are not even cue split; i.e. they are the full album length. Those who know where to look will find:

 

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane 96-24

David Bowie - Diamond Dogs 96-24

David Bowie - Heroes 96-24

David Bowie - Hunky Dory 96-24

David Bowie - Let's Dance 96-24

David Bowie - Lodger 96-24

David Bowie - Low 96-24

David Bowie - Pin-Ups 96-24

David Bowie - Scary Monsters 96-24

David Bowie - Space Oddity 96-24

David Bowie - Station To Station 96-24

David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World 96-24

David Bowie - Young Americans 96-24

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust 96-24

 

I know of the provenance and they are genuine.  Undoubtedly some appear to be slightly different mixes but I cannot remember which ones are.

[Bob Kirschner]

Hey Lokks,

Thanks for the reply. Instead of guessing, I'll ask - what exactly is a bin master?

citysoundman

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[Lokkerman]

Usually a studio copy used in the final duplication process.  I doubt these were for cassettes as this equipment would not play on a standard reel to reel. My guess possibly cutting master.

[Bob Kirschner]

Thanks!

[Sam Edwards]

I think I've been checking out the ones that have been round tripped to SACD. I'm finding a lot of 88.2 bin masters. Who's share are these versions under? Frankly the sound damn good. It's probably not worth downloading twice. Tons of low end details. Wow!

thanks,

Sam

[Sam Edwards]

I would really like to find those original 96/24 files. PM me if you can point me in the right direction on the HB or elsewhere...

[Kevin Fischer]

Heroes (and Iggy Pop's Lust for Life) is on what.cd, I'd love to find the rest if they are out there.

[citysoundman]

The Heroes and Lust for Life on What appear, from the waveforms, to be from a redbook CD. Waveforms go up to 20KHz and then get cut off. But the user who uploaded those also uploaded Hey Jude from R2R and this is the real thing :) Waveforms go up to 40K! Sounds amazing!

[Andrej Falout]

It seems that a lot of people "diagnose" the source to be Redbook CD, whenever they don’t see any sound above 20Khz.

As an mastering (and recording) engineer, I made at least 200 cut/bin/distro master tapes where I intentionally cut anything above 20Khz and below 40Hz or so, to make it cutter-friendly. I have seen many master recorders in studios with hi/lo pass filters permanently patched in. Not to mention Dolby A/SR units with lo-pass filters turned on with a jumper.

Take a bunch of 70's & 80's vinyl records and put them trough your waveform thingy, see how many have anything over 20Khz.

A reminder that until about 1990, I never heard about anyone complaining, or wanting to "hear" audio above 20Khz. FM radio was limited to 15Khz and FM radio was a king - if it did not sound good on FM, you just did not care. Around that time, I first saw what was called a "super-tweeter" for the first time, and thought those folks a bonkers... as did anyone with engineering degree at the time.

It took me at least 5 years to fully understand the impact of this frequencies. But the point is - a lot, if not most, MASTERED tapes, and a lot of studio masters too, will have anything over 20KHz snipped. Just FYI.

Andrej Falout

[Sam Edwards]

I think I found them. Thanks Lokerman...

[citysoundman]

Andrej thanks for your input, this is a great explanation as to why the reel to reel waveforms are cut above 20K.
I'm curious to know if reel to reel bin masters destined for different outputs (e.g. vinyl master vs cassette masters) were filtered differently.
Also what do you think of the Hey Jude recording that's not filtered at all? It does sound pretty amazing, no low pass filter means all those upper harmonics are all there.

citysoundman

[Andrej Falout]

Hi, citysoundman,

To understand this better, there are two processes that need to be explained:

1) The voyage of the music from the recording studio to the pressing/manufacturing plant

2) What is "mastering", what was "mastering" and why was it introduced in the first place.

First just briefly, simplified, on the #1:

From perspective of what you want to hear about, there where two kinds of recording studios: ones owned by record company, and independent ones. (Both now replaced by bedroom studios, but that is a different conversation altogether)

First kind was more often then not (almost always AFAIK, with exception for very small companies) integrated fully in manufacturing processes of a company that owned it. That meant that making distribution (global) masters, bin/safety  masters, cutting masters, cassette/8track/r2r/promo/whatever masters - was done in the studio where music was recorded, often at least with supervision, if not by the hand of the recording engineer that made the recording in the first place. Say hello :)

What naturally follows in that scenario, is that the engineer (as I did many times) was in advance thinking about this as part of his job, and EQing and compressing to the studio master accordingly.

(The concept of "mastering" as a separate step as we know it today, that would happen somewhere down the track, using the tapes we made... was unheard of. Telling someone that you want to send tapes for "mastering", and get "mastered" recording back, would give you blank stares at best. More on that in part 2.)

That studio master would then be copied to distro and safety masters (unless one was already made in parallel during mixdown), and then studio and safety masters sent to record company main office for safekeeping.

(If you are wondering what would the artist/manager take to the office for execs to hear, that would be a copy of studio master, and in most cases, unfinished or working studio master at that)

All the "mastering" was done, in a lot of cases, directly on the studio master. Additionally, I would sometimes write short notes to the cutting engineer, like "you may want to add a bit of compression on tracks 1 and 5" or "watch out for the phase on 3" - because I did not know which cutter he will use and how much groove space will he have, etc. Not to mention that cutting 7" and 12" is a different story altogether.

For cassettes, I would sometimes cut a bit of slope over 15khz, as most early Dolby B "encoding" units would choke on saturation there (or rather, a BIAS would choke it). But only if source material required it.

That was about it. The tapes would go there merry way directly to manufacturing from studios (of mid to large companies).  However, there where always few propeller-heads in manufacturing too, that loved tweaking the EQ. Which shall rename nameless, to protect the innocent LOL

Outside of US & UK, however, all bets where off. I've heard, and heard, some shocking horror stories about what happened to masters in places like Australia, USSR, Chile and New Zealand. In NZ I recently had a chat with a fellow that spent most of his life working in record stores, and on top of his head named some 20 records that where cut in NZ by using imported vinyl records borrowed from his store. "What's selling? OK, let's make some more"...

It was highly company dependent. It seems that most agree, that Japanese showed most understanding for science of how-to-not-fix-things-that-are-not-broken. Therefore, the SHM SACD. God bless.

In lots of countries there would be an independent company servicing distribution for many US/UK companies, like in Yugoslavia and Australia. They had there own ways of doing things, which could vary substantially depending on year, artist, and so it seems, price of recycled vinyl on international markets.

Also, not all cutting masters, internationally, where created equal. Some where second, and some even third generations of the cutting master(s) - and therefore 3rd/4th generation of studio master.

All of the above, does not apply AT ALL, in case of independent studios. They would usually make 2 studio masters in parallel, label one "safety" and send them with two different courier services to the client that was paying for the recording - which was in 9 out of 10 cases the record company.

From that point on, from the stories I heard and witnessed, almost every company managed to invent a different way to get those recordings down to the pressing plant/manufacturing. Even in UK/US, and globally, you could write a novel about it. Some serious detective work would be needed to understand what happened to those tapes, and why did some end up sounding so good, and others... shall we say, not so much.

(I was once called by a cutting engineer that wanted to know if I really want him to cut the record from tape with 20db drop between 500hz and 3Khz.... we found out that somewhere along the way, there was an graphics EQ, with a smiley face, just as it was fashionable at the time. Ah - that's what Klark Teknik is for! )

As a general rule, assume that when a passionate young sound engineer of any kind, meets a shiny device with a lots of buttons of any kind - buttons will get tweaked. Period.

End of part 1. :)

Let me know if anyone wants part 2...

So you see from the above, there can be many reasons why Hey Jude was not low-passed... Who was the engineer & studio? (Producer did not matter for this kind of things in those days) Which company owned the tape? (that's not necessary the publisher)

Andrej Falout

[Lokkerman]

Dead right there. I have a lot of knowledge about these tapes and just like you say some are cut at 20/22/24kHz yet they are from analogue.  Also they still sound damn good which is the benefit of a flat transfer. Some sound DBX’d – do you know of a plug-in for DBX?  as I have ultimately toyed with recording them flat to analogue R2R and them playing them back with a DBX decoder to see how they should sound?

[ROBERT]

Google tells me an expander is required.

 

I have lots of VST plugins including expanders in my VST* folders.

 

One that definitely works in Foobar is Bt Expander Gate by Nomad Factory.

 

Feel free to have a look as I have linked the VST  folders to the h*b.

[Stephen Disney]

I know a lot of this stuff, but really enjoyed the concise reading.  Feel free to go on.
S

[Andrej Falout]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 12:06 PM, Lokkerman <phil.s...@gmail.com> wrote:

Some sound DBX’d – do you know of a plug-in for DBX?  as I have ultimately toyed with recording them flat to analogue R2R and them playing them back with a DBX decoder to see how they should sound?

DBX (Type 1) applies (a lot of) HF preemphasis first, then 2:1 full-band compression. It is extremely sensitive to level and frequency response anomalies, and exact calibration or medium is a must. To make matters worse, DBX is not a multi-band compander, but compands the whole spectrum uniformly (Even Dolby A used 4 bands for this) so replicating algorithms used on compression more or less exactly is mandatory. Which would in digital domain require a FIR filter.

Therefore, trying to "de-DBX" a digital recording of a signal, is very tricky. To start with, RMS measurement should be 32bit, and very fast (floating point, etc)

If indeed this recordings are DBXed. You should hear extreme high frequency content, combined with 1:2 (extreme) compression, constant and sharp volume changes, all sounding very harsh, practically unplayable. Is that what you are hearing?

Try applying -0.5 (de)compression, with 1200ms release and 50ms attack, 40db floor, then do some low-pass sloping from 800Hz upwards, ending with -15db at 15kHz. If the result sounds dramatically better (but still "pumping" and harsh) you may have a DBXed recording :)

In which case, if the recording is valuable, I suggest a visit to eBay, and finding an used DBX Type 1 unit (100-200$)

Andrej

[Sam Edwards]

I've heard a few of the raw 96/24 raw transfers now and I'm blown away. It's such a pleasure to listen to something you've heard over a hundred times and hear something new. I am so grateful to this group. Would anybody be interested in these cut into individual tracks with metadata and artwork added? I'll probably do it for my own pleasure, but I'd be happy to share. 

Maybe the Pono store will outdo these. I'll certainly compare. But as someone who's bought and re-bought Mr Bowie's records on various formats and editions this is the best I've ever heard. I can't wait for Low!

Thanks again!

Sam

[ROBERT]

I do not understand your comments Stephen, do you have helpful information?

[ROBERT]

My email was in response to Lokks query about plugins for DBX.

 

I don’t profess to be an expert, but I have provided a link to some VST plugins I have already found and downloaded.

 

My earlier email points to an expander I have used before in Foobar.

 

The advantage of Foobar is that you can employ the plugin “realtime” via the DSP Manager. The Plugins having first been added to Foobar using:

Components/VST-Plugins first.

 

Just trying to be helpful, if anyone professes to be more knowledgeable and wants to help Lokks then please share this information.

[Lokkerman]

Andrej

I have a TEAC X1000M reel to reel master deck which is DBX 1 but it won’t to DBX monitoring, only playback, so hence why I toyed with the idea of recording the transfer flat at 15IPS, then playing it back through the DBX to confirm my suspicions, I have a couple of studio masters recorded DBX so I am familiar with the companded sound. The problem with this recorder is that it needs to have the DBX recalibrated so it is not ideal and I haven’t the time to set all my audio test gear up to do the calibration so the results would only confirm my suspicions.

My recollection is that I think there are only a couple of masters like this.

[Bob Kirschner]

Andrej thanks for the wonderful explanation, and a look back at the history of recording. Much appreciated :)

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[Stephen Disney]

Andrej asked... "Let me know if anyone wants part 2..."

I was giving him the go ahead.
S

[ROBERT]

Oh I see, apologies, I thought your comments were in reply to my email.

[Andrej Falout]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Lokkerman <phil.s...@gmail.com> wrote:

Andrej

I have a TEAC X1000M reel to reel master deck which is DBX 1 but it won’t to DBX monitoring, only playback,

I assume by "DBX monitoring" you mean monitoring recorded signal while recording?

 

so hence why I toyed with the idea of recording the transfer flat at 15IPS, then playing it back through the DBX to confirm my suspicions

Assuming source is DBX'd then this would definitely work. Obviously, it would also add one tape generation to the result, so i't less desirable then having this passed trough outboard DBX processor. Which will "only" add one generation of DA/AD :)

But it will definitely confirm if DBX was used while recording.

 

, I have a couple of studio masters recorded DBX

Interesting... in all my career, I never came across a studio master with DBX. Is it from an US studio(s)? Years?

 

so I am familiar with the companded sound. The problem with this recorder is that it needs to have the DBX recalibrated so it is not ideal and I haven’t the time to set all my audio test gear up to do the calibration so the results would only confirm my suspicions.

True. And lets not forget that before calibrating DBX, the machine itself has to be very well calibrated, and for that exact tape that you intend to play back.

 

My recollection is that I think there are only a couple of masters like this.

Yup :) Funny enough, after DBX started making a version that could be insterted in Dolby A chasis, and clients "inspired" by digital "no tape hiss" possibility started pressuring old analogue recording studios, I've seen a few replace Dolby A cards with DBX instead of Dolby SR (which was far cheaper, and on paper have greater S/N). But NEVER on master recorders, as downstream nobody had DBX (in pressing plants, etc)

Andrej

[Lokkerman]

Small UK studios for the DBX masters

[Surrhead]

I would be very interested having them cut into individual tracks with metadata.

[thierry]

Hi all,

I've found the iso files for bowie sacds but now I'd like to convert them to individual flac files. Googling has leaded me to find this : http://sacddecoder.sourceforge.net/

My question is : How can I do it with Foobar ?

Thanks in advance.

thierry

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[Peter Cawthron]

Hello Thierry,

 

If you have the foo_input_sacd component (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sacddecoder/files/foo_input_sacd/) you should be able to play the ISO in foobar. Select all the tracks in the play list that you want to convert and right-click, Convert, then select ‘…’. Select Output Format as FLAC. The sampling frequency used here is  - I think – determined by the setting in File/Preferences/Tools/SACD/PCM Samplerate. I set this to 88200 and the converted FLACs are then 24/88.2 for both Stereo and Multichannel.

 

P.

 

From: surrou...@googlegroups.com [mailto:surrou...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of thierry
Sent: 24 February 2015 12:35
To: surrou...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [SurroundSound] Re: Bowie R2R on SACD

 

Hi all,

Thanks in advance.

thierry

[Lokkerman]

Just to add to this you will need to put this plugin into the Foobar directory; then it works a treat.

[thierry]

Many thanks to P and L, it works great !!!