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...the master tapes for this score have not survived the years.

At the time of the film's release, Aaron Copland and director Jack Garfein produced the score for a soundtrack release and had just a few copies of an LP privately pressed on high quality vinyl... The director's wife recently discovered a still-sealed copy in their attic and, from this never played LP, a transfer was made using the best of today's technology. Further and extensive work was performed to improve the sound as much as possible. Copland's riveting score, in the album presentation he had always hoped for, can finally be heard, sounding better than ever.

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OK, that's fine -- it's the only source available. But I can't see anywhere on the art that warns buyers that this is an LP to CD transfer.

Varese had ample space on the back of the cover to print something like: "The original master tapes for this score have not survived. This CD presents the original recording delicately mastered from a vinyl source for the best sound possible."

But I can't see anywhere on the art that warns buyers that this is an LP to CD transfer.

Is this too much to ask?! The fine print at the bottom of the back cover appears to be the standard legal babble.<HR size=1></BLOCKQUOTE>

Who cares if it's a vinyl source? The vinyl transfer was done by one of the best mastering engineers in the business (from a record that had never been played), and Bob & Co. did a wonderful job with the final mastering. The sound is fantastic. I don't feel that there is a need to "warn" the consumer of what sources the material is taken from, with the exception being archival releases taken from mag or optical tracks.

You'd be surprised how many CD's are mastered from vinyl sources.

I own one or two CDs that are labeled to have come from vinyl sources. They sound like crap, so perhaps I've just formed a prejudice against LP to CD conversions.

I'll try to stop being overly critical of this disc before I hear it.

I'm always interested in these little "how this release came about" tidbits that are written up on Varese's site. I wish stuff like this ended up in the liner notes more often.<HR size=1></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, I am glad that you care. Most people care about the quality of the music, regardless of the source material, and usually wait until they've actually heard the music before they criticize a release.

And FWIW, the entire story of how the release came about is in the liner notes.

Buy the CD. We're lucky that it has survived. It's a great work by one of America's most beloved composers.

This is a common practice for vintage classical recordings. It's no big deal.

We've come a long way from when a German company pulled BANDOLERO off a vinyl source and left many of the worts in and minimized the lead in noise by fading into the first second of each track--BADLY, I might add.

on the other hand, the Silva cleanup on their release of Jarre's THE PROFESSIONALS was just wonderful--it passes "the headphone test" with flying colors. i'm sure they felt obliged to note it's vinyl origins to placate any anal retentive buyers laying in wait.

I've been restoring obscure and hard to find vinyl utilizing Waves Audio's fantastic RESTORATION bundle as a plug-in to ProTools for a few faithful customers for
a year now, and my experience has been that using a truly pristine album copy or good multiple copies of a chosen LP can result in an end product whose vinyl origins are virtually undetectable.

JL, Tim, producers used to include all kinds of information about the source tapes on the outside packaging of CDs, at least for the first 10-15 years. The following might be familiar to a bunch of score fans:

"This compact disc contains programs transferred from analog tape and therefore may contain some tape hiss and other anomalies that exist with analog recordings."

JL already accepted that this one's from vinyl: "OK, that's fine -- it's the only source available."

The more interesting discussions to me is not about how good vinyl (and any other form of) restoration is these days, but just when and what caused labels to forgo little bit of harmless information? Obviously, there is not one answer, nor a specific release date that marks the disappearence of this info. Because of this, conjecture-a-plenty is what interests me the most.

May have these disclosures harmed potential sales?

Are producers so confident with the quality of the recording that they feel consumers wouldn't notice these anomalies? As much as Chris might think people only care about the music itself and not the quality of the recording, there needs to be a few more discussions about this very idea to realize a few things.

Are producers so confident with the quality of the recording that they feel people don't care about this anymore? (a wrong notion, really, otherwise this thread wouldn't exist... but then again, perhaps JL is the Omega Man on the planet of WGARA).

Personally, I am thinking this kind of information disclosure might have hurt sales (not exponentially, no, but still) to a degree that the disclosure was moved to the inside of the package, or removed all together.

Varese's answer in this specific case may very well be "because we didn't even think of it," considering it hasn't been done for a while now.

Have a good weekend everybody.

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Originally posted by PeterK:
The more interesting discussions to me is not about how good vinyl (and any other form of) restoration is these days, but just when and what caused labels to forgo little bit of harmless information? Obviously, there is not one answer, nor a specific release date that marks the disappearence of this info. Because of this, conjecture-a-plenty is what interests me the most.

May have these disclosures harmed potential sales?

Are producers so confident with the quality of the recording that they feel consumers wouldn't notice these anomalies? As much as Chris might think people only care about the music itself and not the quality of the recording, there needs to be a few more discussions about this very idea to realize a few things.

Are producers so confident with the quality of the recording that they feel people don't care about this anymore? (a wrong notion, really, otherwise this thread wouldn't exist... but then again, perhaps JL is the Omega Man on the planet of WGARA).

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The DDD/ADD/AAD probably fell into general disuse because music producers who favor analog equipment (because they like the sound, or whatever) didn't like being stigmatized.

Digital recording and processing was universally adopted in classical recording, and classical releases still use the DDD/ADD/AAD mark.

Well, being a big fan of both Rick Nelson and Glen Campbell, but not knowing or caring who the hell Jerry Fuller and Dave Burgess are, I bought the CD, which had 18 tracks on it. I thought this was very generous from Varese. I couldn't read most of the other credits on the CD because they were about a 5 point font, and I don't have perfect vision.
I get the thing home and put a magnifying glass up to it while I'm hearing some awful music coming out of the speakers and discover that Rick Nelson is a vocalist on only 8 of the 18 tracks, and he sings BACKUP -- can't even tell it's him! Glen Campbell plays guitar on 9 tracks, and it's not like these songs show off his fabulous session work.

The majority of the songs are all sung by Dave Burgess and/or Jerry Fuller, as well as being written by Burgess and/or Fuller, and they're quite insipid. I think maybe there are four listenable songs on the whole $17.98 album, which I will probably never listen to again.

Since Varese mentions this is "one of the best-kept secrets," they know that even many Rick Nelson fans knew little or nothing about these recordings. But they clearly positioned Nelson as a selling-point, putting his photo and name in the most prominent position and mentioning him at the top of the back of the CD. It would have been honest of them to say that Rick Nelson has NOTHING to do with 10 of the 18 tracks, and you can barely hear him on the remaining 8. Of course, then no suckers like me would have bought the abysmal release. And, no, I couldn't read any reviews of the release, since not even Amazon.com had a write-up for it, as it just hit the street.

Varese knew full-well what they were hiding when they designed the write-up on the back cover. If it had truthfully stated: "Contains 8 songs with Rick Nelson as a background vocalist and 10 songs that have nothing to do with him," I wouldn't have purchased the CD, which is why Varese didn't design it that way.

Let's move on with the discussion if we're capable.

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Originally posted by PeterK:
As much as Chris might think people only care about the music itself and not the quality of the recording...

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I should have been more clear. Instead of "the quality of the music", I should have said "how the music sounds". Great "music itself" can sound horrible if the source is poor, thankfully in this case, it is great music thats sounds great. Another thing to realize is that this is a wide release, not a club offering. This record will reach an audience beyond the usual suspects.

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Originally posted by ChrisN:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=1 face=arial>quote:</font><HR size=1>Originally posted by ChrisN:
[b] <BLOCKQUOTE><font size=1 face=arial>quote:</font><HR size=1>Originally posted by PeterK:
[b]As much as Chris might think people only care about the music itself and not the quality of the recording...<HR size=1></BLOCKQUOTE>

I should have been more clear. Instead of "the quality of the music", I should have said "how the music sounds". Great "music itself" can sound horrible if the source is poor, thankfully in this case, it is great music that sounds great. Another thing to realize is that this is a wide release, not a club offering. This record will reach an audience beyond the usual suspects.

I think Peter has hit the nail on the head in regards to the placement of the source element information. [/B]<HR size=1></blockquote>
[/B]

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Originally posted by mtodd:
I am far more interested in hearing about how those who got the disc like the music!
Mark

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IT'S SUPERB!!! Listening to it right now: agitated jazz rhythms, spectacular orchestations, intriguing harmonics.

You can definitely hear that this is from vinyl sources, though. It would have been wonderful to hear this one with the RSNO, but then again: you can't have everything and this CD is still great, IMO.