Claude

I haven't seen any evidence of degraded sound quality with the protection scheme used by EMI (Cactus Datashield 200). But I won't buy a european RVG to test it.

That´s nice. The jazz DVD market is very small, it would be very optimistic to expect a big 4 DVD collectors set. This does not sell like Star Wars

I just saw the Solal CD in a local store, it has the Copycontrol logo. Maybe you've got an import or prerelease CD.

Thanks a lot!! I have the Penguin Guide, but this Excel file will fit into my pocket (Palm organizer) Edit: No, it's too large, my synchronization software only accepts 700 rows in an Excel file But it works with the txt file.

"Sahara" is one of McCoy Tyner's best Milestone sessions. I like his Koto playing But the one I love the most, for its energy, is Enlightenment, recorded live in 1973.

Yes Hans. $13 for a RVG is not interesting. I just edited my previous post (adding the last sentence) while you were posting. I thought True Blue was having a RVG sale, but in fact it is Blue Note.

Thanks for the tip. I noticed that too on my only order I have made at True Blue, but thought it was an error. Unfortunately, True Blue's RVG prices are not very competitive ($13).

I usually shop at CDuniverse.com, towerrecords.com (during sales) and deepdiscountcd.com . They all charge around $10 for shipping 3 CDs ($50 worth). The customs rules and tariffs in the EU are regulated by the same EU rules, so they must be quite similar in all countries. In Luxembourg I have to pay 19% tax (= 3.5% customs tax + VAT (15%) rounded up) on imports above 22 Euro and below 350 Euro. But on my past 20 overseas orders I only had to pay taxes on 1/5 of them, because the customs administration usually doesn't bother. That of course varies in every country. You should avoid to have something sent by private companies (UPS, FedEx), because they do the customs formalities systematically and charge 7-10 Euro for this "service". Shopping on the Internet (UK Customs)

Yes, that's how it is supposed to be. But don't forget that there are serious compatibility issues with "exotic" devices such as DVD players and car CD players. Many people now use hometheater systems to play music, and those sets usually have a DVD player for CD playback. As the protected CDs are not to be copied, you are supposed to use the original CD in your car, which may not work depending on the player. There are also potential issues with sound quality of copyprotected CDs. I don't have information if the "Cactus Datashield 200" scheme present on the european RVGs affects the sound, but it is not a reassuring thought. Some tests have shown that the protected discs become more easily unplayable with scratches, because they already have more data errors in their original state. I assume that Blue Note did not have anything to say in EMI's decision to protect their releases, but in my view it is especially counterproductive on the reissue market. Collectors are supposed to upgrade their old 80's CDs with the better sounding RVGs, but who wants to replace their CDs with discs that may have playback or durability problems and may sound worse because of the copy protection scheme?

A painting is a unique work of art, whereas an LP is an industrial product, made 1000 and more times. An LP pressing could be compared to a poster reproduction of a painting. You wouldn't pay $2000 for a poster ...

Facts on Pujol and farting in general

To each his own I guess. Personally I think it was his best record in a long time. Trust me. For me, Freedom (1989) is his best late period album.

Do you read japanese, David? Impulse Top 50 list from Google cache

Albums that do not sound very good through headphones are those jazz recordings where instruments are hardpanned to one channel. Headroom uses special circuits in their headphone amplifiers that (optionally) compensate this: Fixing headphones using electronics "So here?s the problem with headphone listening in a nutshell: the sound in the right channel is only heard in the right ear and the sound in the left channel is only heard in the left ear. What?s missing in headphones is the sound going from each channel to the opposite ear, arriving a short time later for the extra distance traveled, and with a bit of high frequency roll-off for the shadowing effect of the head. " There are also some studio recordings, mostly from the 70's or 80's, that sound very dry, without any natural reverb. They tend to sound even boxier when listened through headphones.

Here's what Steve Hoffman said of RVG's recordings : "The Rudy Van Gelder sound recipe? That's easy. Take three or four expensive German mics with a blistering top end boost, put them real close to the instruments, add some extra distortion from a cheap overloading mic preamp through an Army surplus radio console, put some crappy plate reverb on it, and record. Then, immediately (and for no good reason), redub the master onto a Magnatone tape deck at +6, compressing the crap out of it while adding 5 db at 5000 cycles to everything. That's the Van Gelder Sound to me". The Rudy Van Gelder "Sound". Steve, did you really describe it like this Here are some discussions on Blue Note remasterings, with comments from Steve (but he seems to be quite prejudiced on new remasterings generally): Steve: What you can't remaster... Which Blue Train: SACD or DAD? Blue Note SACDs Are Here!

The auction has ended US $1,925.00 (Reserve not met)

Power cut causes chaos ... in London

Thanks for the good news. £64 seems a lot for a 5CD set, I will wait until it is available from Zweitausendeins.de . For comparision, they offer the Blackhawk 2CD sets at 10 Euro each.

According to that calculator, I´m normal in the morning and overweight in the evening. Is this permanent fluctuation dangerous?

Reviewer copies have already been out for two months, so the box set is ready for release. If Sep. 30 is maintained, the set should be available for preorder in the next days.

Yes, that's what is explained in the AAJ post. The PC plays the music from (rather low quality) compressed files, it does not play the audio CD part, which is supposed to be invisible to the PC. It seems that all the latest european Blue Note releases are copyprotected. I found these titles on amazon.de (I stopped searching after a few pages): - The Cover Art of Blue Note (great pop songs performed by great jazz vocalists) - Dianne Reeves - A little Moonlight - "The Essential" samplers (Hancock, Ellington/Armstrong, Rollins, Miles, etc) - Jason Moran - Bandwagon - Martial Solal - Ny-1/Live at the Village Vanguard - Renee Rosnes With the Danish (...) - Willy Bobo - Bobo's Beat - Terence Blanchard - Bounce - Jack Constanzo - Latin Fever - Bobby Hutcherson - Montara - Ron Caerter - The Golden Striker So if the next Connoisseurs are manufactured in Europe too, there is not much hope of getting normal CDs.

I think that in the past, most (maybe all) Connoisseurs were only manufactured in the US. My Connoisseur CDs, ordered from european and US shops, are all "Made in USA". Because the industry considers Europe (and mainly Germany) as test market for copyprotected CDs, I will also refrain from buying those discs. Here is a list and a database of european copyprotected CDs: French consumer magazine +Que choisir? Heise CD-Register As you can see from the french list, very few copyprotected jazz CDs were issued until now. While it seems logical (from the industry point of view) to protect top selling jazz albums such as new releases by Norah Jones, Diana Krall or Pat Metheny, it's ridiculous to do it with reissues such as Dizzy Gillespie "Have trumpet, will excite" or the new RVGs.

No, copy protection prevents the audio CD from being played on a computer. The PC cannot read it, and also cannot copy it. It is not as clever as to allow one copy. Maybe you are confusing this with the digital copy protection that exists on Minidiscs. So one can only make analog copies of such a CD: play it on CD player, record the music with the PC soundcard or a standalone CD recorder and make a CD-R of that. There is software that can circumvent copy protection, but it is illegal under the current EU copyright law. Copies for private use are still allowed, but they are made more difficult when a CD is copyprotected. Some protected CDs (such as the new european RVGs) have compressed music files on a data section of the CD that can be read on the PC. So one can listen to the music, but at a non-hifi sound quality. As a side effect (and this is what bothers music fans), some copy protection schemes affect sound quality, because they rely on data errors that can be corrected almost completely by standard CD player but not by a computer CD drive. Many protected CDs also create playback problems on DVD players or car CD players, because those devices often use the same type of disc drives as computers. So basically, copy protected CDs are crippled products, sold at the same price. Even if one does not intend to make copies, they can create problems.

Copyprotected CD are not new in Europe, in fact most of the topselling CDs are now protected. But it's the first time they do it with jazz CDs. Check the charts page on amazon.de for the "kopiergeschützt" in the description. New copyright legislation has also been passed in Europe recently, which prohibits the cracking of copy protection. 'No more music CDs without copy protection,' claims BMG unit (The Register, June 2002)

Amazon.de indicates copyprotection on CDs, so it is possible to check which new releases are concerned. Most online stores don't give that information. Dexter Gordon - Our man in Paris ------------------------------------------ Erscheinungsdatum: 5. September 2003 Label: Blue Note (EMI) ASIN: B0000A5BSC Format: Audio Audio CD (CD-Anzahl: 1) Kopiergeschützt <-------- Copy protected ----------------------------------------------