J.A.W.

...am very new here, but i must support organisimo. could you give your paypal address, please. You can send money through PayPal by using the "donate" button at the top right-hand corner.

Great album, and one of the few with tenor saxophonist Joe Alexander. Recommended!

Thanks for the info, Lon. I must have missed that post. So much for that statement on the 1980s Blue Notes, then...

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that most 1980s Blue Note CDs are just transfers from analog to digital, nothing else/more. This is what it says on many 1980s Blue Note CDs that Ron McMaster transferred: The classic Blue Note albums which span the mid 1950s to late 1960s were recorded directly on to two track analog tape. No multitrack recording was used and consequently no mixing was required. Therefore, this CD was made by transferring the one step analog master to digital and Digital transfer by Ron McMaster.

On the other hand, Steve Hoffman is complaining a lot about CDs that are mastered too bright in his opinion

Ray - great job of restating exactly what I said before (and obviously I don't need you explaining anything to me) - it's the EXCESS of EQ, NR, compression which is bad, not some blind dogma like Hans recites. Exactly what I said earlier. Nice to see you understood and internalized it! I wasn't reciting some blind dogma; like I posted earlier Couw and Ray explained exactly what I meant but wasn't able to describe. Anyway, nice to see some very flattering comments in your posts...

I never noticed anything wrong with the Blue Note 2CD-set. Like Lon I prefer the piano sound on the Mosaic, the whole "sound picture" just sounds a bit better to me. No big deal. The music is brilliant, so anyone who is interested, get the Blue Note set!

Thanks John and Ray, you've explained much better what I mean than I could.

Time for you to tell me what I don't understand. No thanks, I've wasted enough time here.

You may be right, and yes, I do have a big problem with the amount of compression that is applied to a lot of jazz recordings, let alone other kinds of music these days. To my ears it makes the recordings sound horrible. As for noise reduction, Morganized gave a good example of what I mean; the same goes for other 1201 releases, including their Lee Konitz Storyville reissues, which sound NRed to death.

Here we go again... This is exactly what I was afraid of, that this discussion was going to turn into a pro- or anti-Hoffman debate or worse. Again, that is NOT the point, I'm NOT discussing Steve Hoffman and/or his site here, I'm talking about how I feel about "modern" mastering techniques. What is it you people don't understand about that?! By the way, I think Kevin put it very well.

True, so why not leave it alone. No mastering engineer (lp or cd) can afford to "leave it alone" since the recording engineer didn't. Choices are made ALL the time. You seem to be a big fan of Hoffman - he doesn't "leave it alone". Every person in the "illusion" chain has their own needs and agendas. Whether or not I'm a big Hoffman fan is not the point and has got nothing to do with this discussion, and of course I know every mastering engineer is doing something. My point is that they should do as little as possible, at least that's what I prefer; they shouldn't bother others with their "own needs and agendas". To my ears the best sounding CDs are generally the ones that have not or hardly been tampered with.

Happy birthday Alison!

We sure did.

Sigh. Those were the days. Though pressings weren't always OK back then...

My thoughts exactly.

Mastering techniques can manipulate music in such a way that it becomes unlistenable for someone. Oh well, I don't seem to be able to make clear what I mean, so I'll stop trying... True, so why not leave it alone.

Hey, I never heard the Donaldson box - it could be shit. I don't care since I didn't need to buy it. That does not have anything to do with my comments. I was merely using it as an example, to illustrate my point. No need to get defensive. Silly? I said it's unlistenable "at least to me". I think it's up to me, not you to decide whether I find something unlistenable or not. You may find it silly, well, that's your problem. If this is the way you want to discuss this, be my guest, but I'm off to bed.

Please explain. I am simply saying no listener knows what manipulations they are hearing. You don't necessarily know if compression or any number of audio "tricks" are between your ears and the "product". I use compression, No-Noise, Cedar, and a huge array of other processors to deliver music to the "consumer". If is done very well when folks don't notice. I don't think you can say that (people not noticing). Compression and noise reduction alter the sound; apart from reducing dynamics, compression often makes bass and other instruments sound weird, while noise reduction kind of strangles the higher frequencies in a way that I can't describe very well in English. I can assure you that it's noticeable on good systems. I'm not saying that I'm not listening to processed music anymore, I just don't like (OK, I said "hate") what's been done to it. And if music is heavily processed like in the "Caravan" example above, it does make it unlistenable, at least to me.

Please explain.

Sometimes compression is a good thing. Sometimes it is the best way to represent the artist's "vision". All recorded music is "about" illusions. Well, maybe I'm narrow-minded, but compression is never a good thing in my book. To my ears it makes the music sound rotten, whether it's intentional or not. And who decides if it's the best way to represent the artist's vision? The engineer, the producer or the artist?

Pitney didn't quit the music business. He kept performing all those years, mainly in Europe, and he had a hit again in the U.K. in 1989. BBC obit.

Man, if Frank Zappa had produced Freak out in 2006 instead of 1966, something resembling this statement might have been printed on the inside sleeve. Couw's collected works promise to be a great read

I hate compression in all kinds of music, but you're right, classical suffers especially badly from it - jazz too, by the way.

Sad news. He wrote several good pop songs.