Claude

Greg, I mentioned "Portrait in Jazz" because this is a special case. The tapes of this recording seem to be in bad shape. The Fantasy CD releases I have heard (box set, german ZYX 20Bit, US K2 20bit) sound much worse than other Evans Riverside recordings (Village Vanguard, Explorations), but the DCC is very good. There is no comparision. So Steve Hoffman did a remarkable restoration job on that one, which the Fantasy SACD engineers will be measured on.

Sellers that don't accept credit cards through Paypal should clearly state it in their auction, as this is a serious restriction especially for foreign bidders. Non-US bank accounts cannot be used with Paypal, as far as I know. I know the problems that exist with Paypal, but those are mostly difficulties for sellers who receive money. I've made almost 50 Paypal payments and never had a problem. In fact I couldn't use ebay without Paypal, as money orders or bank transfers cost $8-15 and would make buying a single CD too expensive. I have also noticed that CD auctions from sellers that don't accept Paypal have lower end prices. Probably because this almost excludes bids from foreign countries. Today I received great news from my bank: International money transfers to EU countries will cost only 0.75€ from July on. It was 10€ before. Now I can finally bid on CDs on Ebay Germany, where very few sellers accept Paypal.

I've ordered a few times at deepdiscountcd.com and can recommend them. They have a good customer service, and promptly react to emails. However it does not appear from their catalogue if a CD is in stock. I've ordered some CDs that showed as being backordered after I made the order. Most were shipped after some time, but a few CDs (OOP) were canceled.

I have some of those albums on remastered CDs and will wait for reviews on the sound. These are Fantasy releases and not done by Analogue Productions, so it's not sure if the quality will be as good as the first Prestige/Riverside/Contemporary SACDs I will not get "Portrait in Jazz" because I recently got the DCC CD and noticed a vast improvement over the K2-CD. This Steve Hoffman remastering will be extremely hard to beat.

Are these "real" TOCJs (remastered by an anonymous but unintrusive japanese engineer) or JRVGs (sonic reinterpretions by Rudy van Gelder)?

To me the SACD sounds like Rudy is in my house playing with the treble knob and the mono switch on my amp. The sextet returns when I play the MFSL CD

Time Life Spain had a deal with Verve (Universal) too. Check this ebay UK seller´s items: http://cgi6.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...rid=busyjazzman

So we finally managed to have you join the Organissimo board

Here are some SACD reviews that Greg wrote for an online hifi magazine: http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue2/maltzsacd.htm http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/maltzsacd.htm ... and so on.

Hans, is that really a DCC release (I have never heard of such a CD) or is it the Classic Records gold CD?

I have not heard this new reissue. It should not be difficult to beat the french 24bit remaster, as this does not improve on the original mid 90's CD release (only brighter, no gain in clarity or dynamics). Another competitor in term of sound is the Classics gold CD, which sounds much better than the regular CD (warmer, more clarity on the drums)

I think that it is the remastering that really makes the sound. Both the CD and SACD layer have the same tonal balance, narrowness and dynamics. The difference between redbook CD and SACD or DVD-A are marginal compared to the influence of the remastering engineer. The Universal classical SACDs (Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, Decca) with music from the analogue era are made from PCM masters (24bit/96kHz) because it was found the difference between hi-rez PCM and DSD is inaudible.

I'm surprised to hear about these shipping errors. Zweitausenseins is not one of those new stores created during the internet boom. They have 30 years experience in the mailorder business. This spectacular sale only concerns a few jazz box sets, so I don't think they have been overwhelmed by orders.

I just listened to the first half of the new Metheny CD. Hearing him solo on acoustic guitar without any overdub appeared very attractive on paper. These are slow folky tunes. Not much jazz. Reminds me of William Ackerman and other "adult contemporary instrumental" music. At first listen it was just boring. Recognizing "I don't know why" was also off-putting. I have many Metheny CDs (Group, trio, sideman), but I will not get this one.

Watch out for Blue Train MFSL CDs appearing on ebay now. There are always people who blindly "upgrade" their discs to the latest technology. But the Mofi CD is definitely better than the SACD. No, I'm not selling mine

But there can't be that many spanish Blue Note's left. Or did they expect every Time-Life subscriber to be a jazz freak and produce large quantities? I first saw this series in a Munich store, in the form of a 30CD-box (could be more), interestingly priced, but much too big for Time-Life customers. This would explain why it didn't sell, and why the CDs were thrown individually on the grey market.

I received the "Blue Train" and "Black Dahlia" SACDs today. I am only able to listen with headphones right now, so I won't comment on the frequency balance of "Blue Train", but I noticed that on the "Black Dahlia" SACD, the channels are reversed between the CD and SACD stereo layer. The multichannel layer is correct. Looks like another Blue Note quality control issue.

In fact, CDs that are sold in violation of a licensing contract can be considered pirate CDs. They could even be seized and destroyed. But this only concerns commercial sellers and not private persons.

Well Ok, it was not well stated. I meant: - Home users can damage their hearing with headphones, including very good headphones, as these can play very loud. - Home users can hardly damage their hearing with speakers as normal hifi sets cannot play that loud - But Musicians can damage their hearing with speakers on stage or in the rehearsal room, as PA speakers go far above 100 dB. There are enough rock musicians who suffered hearing loss without using headphones. I was at a sports event last weekend, where an amateur rock band gave a concert. I had to walk past the speakers to go to the toilet, and it was so loud it was unbearable for me even for only 5 seconds. But others were listening to the concert at the same distance. My headphones cannot play as loud as this.

Most new SACD releases are hybrid, they can be played on a normal CD player too, without the benefit of the high resolution audio and multi-channel playback of course. Speaking of multi-channel, how about the Charlie Parker Complete Benedetti Recordings remixed to surround?

I hope that Blue Note spends more time in preparing reissues than in going after CD's that left their destined distribution channels

I guess Norah Jones is excluded too?

Joe Zawinul

Crap in, crap out Seriously, is there any good online translation service? They are all useless when it comes to translate complete sentences, but those I have tried also had a very limited vocabulary on single words. I would like something like a real dictionary, which gives several translations of a word if it has more than one meaning. Here is the result of an English-->French-->German-->English translation for this service: http://translation2.paralink.com/ "Four scores and seven years ago have brought our fathers forward, on this continent, a new nation which is designed in the freedom and have dedicated in the suggestion, " all men(husbands) (people(persons), people) is immediately created"

Because I seem to heve been criticizing the sound of the Moncur Mosaic Select the most on the BNBB, I want to repeat what I don't like with the remastering. First of all, the various sessions sound differently, and this seems to be due to the remastering. Strangely, "Some other stuff", "Destination out" and "Bout soul", which were already remastered by Ron McMaster for the Connoisseur series, sound worse than those previous reissues. The problems are: extremely muffled high treble (no "air"), artificial silence in quiet passages, higher distortion on loud passages. The "s"-sounds on the "bout soul" vocals are much too prominent. These flaws were not present on the Conns, which sound more natural. I am well aware of the problems of artificial brilliance (cymbals) on some Connoisseurs, but in this case they are much closer to balanced sound. I suspect that McMaster used SonicSolutions noise reduction processes, which most engineers now avoid because they eliminate too much musical information when reducing tape hiss. The other sessions, that were not available in the Connoisseur series, "One step byond", "Evolution" and "Hipnosis", sound much better, the flaws described above are less noticeable. My only point of reference are the 3 Conns. I have not heard the late 80's CD releases (which probably suffer from other sonic problems) or the TOCJs. My conclusions: - this set is essential for the music, despite the sound problems - the sound is probably better than on the first CD releases - the sound is noticably worse than on the Connoisseur releases. I you have those, keep them Maybe most people will not bother about these problems, but calling the sound "excellent" is certainly not justified. I am aware that most mid-to-late 60's Blue Note sessions have not been as well recorded as the late 50's early 60's sessions, but the Connoisseur CDs show that the Mosaic Select remastering is responsible for a large part of the problems.