Sam Cooke coming to Super Audio... (1 Viewer)

[Lee Scoggins]

ABKCO fresh from the Rolling Stones SACD success if releasing four of his albums in hybrid format.

http://www.highfidelityreview.com/ne...umber=17746227

 

[John Watson]

Almost any original Sam Cooke album release on CD would be good news.

I was recently listening to his A CHANGE IS GONNA COME, and was thinking it would have been a good entry in the protest song thread of a few months ago.

For years I have looked for a track called A COUSIN OF MINE, from about '64, which to my knowledge has never been on CD.

And while ABKO gets mentioned, can we ask again, where are the Cameo-Parkway records

 

[Lee Scoggins]

John,

I agree. I think ABKCO is sitting on some other "gold" that should be released.

I'm just glad to have more quality music being released in hirez.

 

[John Watson]

I see on upcoming DVD releases at Amazon that "Sam Cooke - Legend" is to come out 17 June.

I think this may be a different product than the audio CD, but there is (as often the case) no useful info about the DVD contents. :frowning:

 

[Leo]

Found Sam Cooke's Portraits of A Legend 1951-1964 at Best Buy for $14.99 in the regular CD section (but none of the other SACD titles were available in the store). Listening to the CD layer (at work system Panasonic SL-S320 -> Grado RA-1 amp (via Straightwire mini to RCA) -> Grado SR225 Headphones) and love it. Can't wait to get home to check out this disc on my Sony 222ES player. They included a nice liner notes book for each song on the disc. Nice disc so far.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Maybe they'll remaster them from the original tapes instead of recent PCM transfers.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Maybe they'll remaster them from the original tapes instead of recent PCM transfers.

That's what they did for the Stones discs.

Either way it will be an improvement.

 

[Phil A]

Can't wait to get my copy which circuitcity.com has shipped and hopefully I'll have Thurs. or Fri. I have a greatest hits compilation on CD from RCA so I will have something to compare it to.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

That's what they did for the Stones discs.

Not according to Bob Ludwig!

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

MusicTAP: Why did you choose the controversial option of converting The Rolling Stones master tapes to PCM for editing before transferring them to DSD? What were the benefits and the drawbacks?

Bob Ludwig: I did not choose a thing, I had zero to do with that decision.

ABKCO had embarked on an archiving program of their master tapes to DSD. When they decided to do the Stones re-mastered set they decided to send me masters that were already quality controlled for no drop-outs, no sticky splices, best source, etc. etc. It took about 4 months of fitting it into my schedule as it was, if I had be given the analog sources, which I would have been glad to work with, it would have been intolerably expensive and much longer. I was pleased to work with the SACD tapes, it kept me much more fresh for the important creative work and not bog me down with the physical decisions. With the Meitner converters on the most high resolution monitoring system one can not reliably pick the master vs. the copy.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Ken,

We may be getting into matters of sematics or grammar. I have meant all along that the Rolling Stones SACDs were analog->PCM->DSD.

In fact, that is why I made my original post - hoping that the Cooke discs were fresh transfers.

When Lee said "That's what they did for the Stones discs.", I thought that he meant "remastered them from the original tapes".

Gee, is Bob Ludwig implying that PCM conversion can be transparent?

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Aha! Pronoun trouble.

I suspect (based on the number of people given credit for "digital transfers" in addition to Ludwig) that the Sam Cooke stuff was done just like the Stones stuff. The good news based on what I have heard so far (just the PCM layer of "Portrait of a Legend") is that the tracks seem to have appropriate amounts of tape hiss and no signs of digital limiting/compression.

I got a kick out of the Ludwig interview as he indicated that the high-res PCM would be transparent and then indicated that for The Police stuff, for which he was left to his own devices, "Universal asked me if I would prefer working from the original tapes and of course I said yes." He is definitely a pragmatist.

Regards,

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Michael and Ken,

My understanding was that some of the Stones tapes were analog to DSD. There may have been some hirez PCM conversion since Bob had an older workstation at that time, but these workstations are generally around 350Khz so you would not hear it anyway unless you have really good ears and a stellar stereo.

The team worked with the original analog master tapes from vaults in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles and used the masters for analog to DSD tape transfers.

From the HFR story, so on Sam Cooke we have no PCM. I will buy some and review.

See full story at:

http://www.highfidelityreview.com/ne...umber=19472587

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Just out of curiosity, if the tapes have been transferred to DSD already, what exactly does a mastering engineer do after that?

Regards,

 

[Lee Scoggins]

what exactly does a mastering engineer do after that?

There can be editing and track selection, some fiddling with EQ which I frown upon, some level adjustments, track sequencing, etc. Sometimes different takes of same piece are spliced together for a best of performance which has seamless editing - I prefer my jazz to be the same take usually though. The end result is usually to record the final product to a UMatic tape for shipping to JVC or some disc replicator. They also can be integral in the multi-channel creation on the SACD or DVDA.

Check out the Mastering Board site by Glenn Meadows for more details...

Also see Bob Katz' site at www.digido.com

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Since the "fiddling with eq" piece is usually the step in mastering that separates the pretenders from the contenders, it just seems strange to me that a mastering engineer on an audiophile release would not be involved with the original transfer. Any subsequent eq would have to be either in the digital domain (eww!) or involve another D-A-D conversion process.

Regards,