Forums

I think "Now" is a beautiful album and the previously unissued additional material perhaps even a hair better. I get why it would be excluded here (especially adding another disc to the set) but I would welcome a remastered return to the catalog.

Always room for some new blues in the morning. Joel Ross “nublues” Blue Note cd  

I believe this to be the case, based on a "DIY" re-eq'ing of the 1927-1934 Victor singles and 1940-1942 Victor & Bluebird singles from the Centennial box that was done by an unknown member of the Hoffman forum. He claimed that the box had employed some of the strangest EQ decisions he had ever heard, including an extreme "smiley-faced" EQ, and set out to remedy this, using an Ellington collection mastered by John R. T. Davies for a British label as a reference baseline for his re-eq'ing. I'm pretty far removed from having either "golden ears" or high-end listening equipment, but the results he achieved were readily apparent even over a set of computer speakers when A-Bing his versions against the corresponding discs in the Centennial box.   

I have an acceptable version of every album on this, so it's a 'no' from me.  I have about half of the BN Hutch that's not on this, might rectify that given the chance.  Favs are Dialog and Head On, least fav is hard to say since I find much of the '70s stuff is kind of forgettable to me, although I own and am keeping both Montara and Natural Illusions even though I don't think either is very good.  I should get Now just for comparison to other weird use of vocals on BN.  I'd buy the still not issued in full funk date in a flash, I like the 3 cuts I've heard.

I've had a listen to the set again, my 3 CD bootleg set at least. Again, I don't know what the Resonance set sounds like or what they might have done with the sound.  As far as I can hear from this set, there seems to be two radio/TV shows (one of each I think) that do have what sounds like reverb added in the studio, The Stockholm (radio show I believe) has a little reverb added but it's not so bad to me. The levels are certainly acceptable. The other Stockholm show seems to be the TV show? That one also has added reverb and while a little more prevalent, it's still within what I think are acceptable levels of reverb. This is a matter of taste certainly but to me, it's not so bad. The one concert that seems to suffer from excessive concert hall reverb is the Zurich show but this just sounds like it is all the concert hall with nothing added. All the other shows, reverb wise at least, all seem to be OK to me. I really don't hear that any of the live recordings having any post production reverb added unless it was added on this new set. The most egregious example to me is still the radio show from the Sonny Rollins in Holland set. That is really excessive to me and it was done in the studio. I've actually heard another show from that archive that we were considering for release but again, the reverb was overwhelming the music. Listening to all this again, it sounds like there is a lot to work with on some of these shows to improve the sound or make it more consistent from show to show. Some of this will depend on how much of the original source material they were able to acquire and how much they probably just transferred from the already available CDs. I wonder how much more information about the recordings is in the booklet. Still, it's great music and I'm happy it's out here in a more legitimate medium.   I guess it depends what you think of Orrin Keepnews.