Pristine Classics

[jostber]

Has anyone heard this reissue series?

http://www.pristineclassical.com/LargeWork...ral/PAJZ001.php

Reportedly the sound on these are great. They release mostly titles with classical music, but also some jazz and blues.

Edited January 8, 2008 by jostber

[AllenLowe]

if those are the Verves, they should not really give credit to someone for restoration, as the Verves are pristine - unless it's something else -

[jostber]

Other great new releases:

[paul secor]

Why don't all of these remastering geniuses record some new music?

[AllenLowe]

in truth, they are not remastering, just making dupes - the Robert Johnson cuts on Sony are sonically pristine, as are the Bird/Verve's - and if the Tampa Red stuff comes from the RCAs, those are also in very nice shape on old LPs -

[RDK]

Notes on the restoration

Charlie Parker's three studio sessions with strings came at a time of great ongoing improvements in recording quality, with the innovations of both tape recording and the commercial vinyl record both being contemporary developments.

Hence the first six tracks here were cut directly to disc, in the traditional manner, and with the traditional problems for a restorater to contend with! By contrast I'm pretty certain that both the 1950 and 1952 sessions were taped.

This was a time where recordings were being issued on both the 78rpm shellac and new 33/45rpm vinyl microgroove formats. Each of these performances is timed to fit a single 78rpm side, though the first ten-inch LP, consisting of tracks 1-14, was released in the USA as early as 1950. The four tracks which complete this release found their initial vinyl issue on a 7" 45rpm EP.

So why go back and remaster these recordings, when there's a perfectly well-loved Verve CD on the market? Well personally I've never been 100% happy with the sound - and I've always felt that it's one of those recordings which is tantalisingly close to sounding so much better. Therefore I was fascinated to find out how it would respond to my continuing experimentation in widening the application of XR remastering beyond the realm of classical music.

The effect of the remastering for the listener is to remove what is at times quite a heavy veil over the music, as well as greatly improving on what was at times a pretty poor tonal balance. What the remastering revealed to me, especially with the earlier cuts, was in some instances some really quite flawed originals, which then required a considerable degree of pretty advanced further restoration. Some of damage this is still just about audible in Summertime - you may just notice a slight 'waa-waa' effect in the upper treble at times, a problem previously buried under the murk and one that's particularly time-consuming and tricky to correct. Elsewhere, on I Didn't Know What Time It Was, a small amount of occasional disc-surface noise may be apparent if you're listening closely for it.

Those earliest tracks were also the most unruly with regard to the overall sound balance, with the strings tending to get quite shrieky if given too much free rein in the upper treble registers. I think I've managed to contain them effectively, and it's been a real delight to hear these recordings as if for the first time. I hope you'll enjoy listening to them as much as I've enjoyed working on them!

Call me crazy, but I believe that's a long way of saying noise-reduction, EQ-shaping, and general digital futzing. And I'd suspect that he does the work from the official CDs rather than the master tapes or original parts.

[AllenLowe]

yes, you're right - and who knows, maybe he did improve them? I've found that I'm virtually always able to improve on the originals, even when they are transferred by a major label - mostly because mastering engineers are terrible when it comes to EQ, or since they will often use eq to mask noise or other problems, or they have lousy monitors - it would be interesting to a-b these - though I'm always nervous when they start apologizing for surface noise. What's the big deal? Sometimes it's just part of the listening experience, and eliminating it entirely can be very destructive -

[John L]

And I'd suspect that he does the work from the official CDs rather than the master tapes or original parts.

You suspect correctly. This guy is based in Europe and uses the 50-year public domain law to remaster official CDs. He has some strange program that allows him to do most of this work without even listening to the music. In certain cases, the results are interesting.

[PristineAudio]

It's interesting to stumble on a topic where you're being discussed - especially by some who've apparently not listened to your work! Anyway, perhaps I can interest some of you in taking a moment to listen to the following:

The Quintet - The Trio - Massey Hall 1953

"XR Remastered by Andrew Rose, January 2008"

Considered by many to be the greatest recorded jazz concert in history, I'm delighted to announce a 'new' issue which achieves a previously unheard sound quality, and includes all of the numbers recorded by both 'The Quintet' (Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Mingus, Roach) and 'The Trio' (Powell, Mingus, Roach) as well as Roach's solo spot:

1. Perdido

2. Salt Peanuts

3. All The Things You Are

4. Wee (Allen's Alley)

5. Hot House

6. A Night In Tunisia

7. Drum Conversation

8. Cherokee

9. Embraceable You

10. Hallelujah (Jubilee)

11. Sure Thing

12. Bassically Speaking

13. Lullaby of Birdland

14. I've Got You Under My Skin

1-6: The Quintet

7: Max Roach

8-14: The Trio

Notes on this issue

In assembling this release I've tried to bring together all of the available tracks of this historic concert, which has resulted, in the case of the Trio section, in some variation in sound quality. On this recording you will hear only the original recordings, with the bass part as originally played and restored to something closer to an appropriate level by the XR remastering process.

One may ask as to why this concert needs another release? My answer is that, for such a historic recording, all of the previous issues have failed to convey, through their sonic flaws, the full impact of the playing and overall sound. That five men - who'd never rehearsed together or played together as a group, could arrive at a two-thirds-empty hall, missing a saxophone (so playing a plastic one bought that day), half drunk (and more drunk after the interval) with one member on release from a psychiatric hospital, with the two lead players apparently not speaking to each other - can conjure up such magic is incredible. To finally hear it in this quality of sound more than justifies the hours of painstaking work it's taken me to bring this project to fruition. Despite owning copies of this recording for many years, I've heard it anew over the last few weeks, and since its completion it has rarely left my CD player. I hope you'll find similar inspiration from it!

Additional notes

Editing: It became clear when working on the restoration of these tracks that a small amount of editing had taken place in at least two tracks. It seems that the opening of the very first track was not properly recorded - we hear the opening theme twice but it is clear from the applause in the background that at least one of these is a direct copy of the other. Likewise that applause is heard a short time later when the theme returns. After a degree of experimentation I decided to leave these repeats in place and tidy up the slightly rough edges of the original cuts. Likewise, applause has been lifted and reinserted elsewhere, and some announcements show clear signs of editing. In each case I opted to tidy up and smooth the joins to provide a believable continuity for the listener.

Track order: The original LP release of this set featured only the Quintet recordings. Other issues have inserted the Trio between the two halves of the Quintet sets (as per the original running order, though not necessarily with all tracks present). I have opted to present the music as two separate sets, joining the two halves of the Quintet's set together and separating it from the smaller group's set, which begins with Roach's solo piece before the announcer brings on the two other members of the Trio. This provides a more comfortable continuinty for the home listener to what was essentially two overlapping concerts.

Content: This issue contains all of the material performed by The Quintet and all of the material performed by The Trio. Also present at the evening's concert was The Graham Topping Band, who preceded The Quintet with an set running to eleven pieces, and closed the night with a further four titles after the return ot The Quintet in the second half. The final number featured all of the evening's musicians and is not included in this recording - as far as I can tell it was never recorded.

Overdubs: None of the material presented here contains any of Charles Mingus' somewhat notorious double bass overdubs. What you hear is the original material as played and recorded on the night.

Available on our website: Complete free MP3 download of "Wee (Allen's Alley)", plus 1-minute samples of all fourteen tracks. The album can be purchased as a high-quality LAME-encoded VBR MP3, or lossless FLAC download or on CD. PDF covers are available to download and print.

Best regards

Andrew Rose

[Bluerein]

Thanks Andrew for you comments. Always nice to get some more inside information on these kind of things....I'll listen to the free download and let you know what I think.

[AllenLowe]

what is the XR remastering process?

[PristineAudio]

what is the XR remastering process?

Not a simple question to answer! Perhaps I'll come at it from an unusual angle:

Right now we're used to recordings being cleaned up - clicks and crackles removed, noise reduced; thereafter though maybe in some cases some pretty basic enhancement of treble response, mild use of artificial regeneration of harmonics, in some cases the use of digital hard compression, to make a recording somehow sound more 'alive'. A lot of this is perhaps more sophisticated but no less artificial than the old 'slap a bit of reverb on it and fake some stereo' approach.

What XR aims to achieve is rather different, and takes place post-restoration. So I deal with the clicks, crackles and some of the hiss first using regular restoration techniques. Then we turn to XR, which I believe is necessary due to specific flaws in just about every 'vintage' recording I've come across - the tonal deficiencies in the recording equipment of the day.

The standard approach to this is to wheel in a graphic equaliser or similar, and keep tweaking until it sounds better. Subjective, dependent on the whims of the person in control, and a pretty blunt instrument at best.

The XR approach is to analyse the overall tonal characteristics of a flawed recording, compare this to a modern recording of preferably identical, or if not, very similar material, and use this as the basis to correct the tonal imbalances of the original. At its crudest it offers little more than giving the chap with the graphic equaliser some sort of visual clue. At its best it can operate with microtonal precision and completely transform an old recording, to the extent that it has been shown to more than double the accepted frequency range of 78rpm-source material, pinpointing harmonics otherwise buried within noise.

It's been applied to EMI metal masters from 1930/1 and lifted the upper frequency limit from ~6kHz to >13kHz. Even more surprising was the application to a 1925 acoustic transfer of Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong, where the accepted upper limits of acoustic recording of about 3kHz were shattered by the discovery of usable Armstrong cornet harmonics at 9kHz. This is currently work in progress, due to see issue later this year.

The XR technique was developed for classical music. Here the reference material is straightforward to find - a number of modern recordings of a specific symphony, for example, can be digitally averaged out and provide an excellent guide to a 1930's or 1940's recording of the same. Similar orchestral forces playing the same score will provide excellent accurate information for XR to work.

Where I've diverged into Blues and Jazz I've been aiming to expand the already highly critically acclaimed classical application of the concept into more difficult territory, with some success as well as a lot of (unseen) hard work and experimentation. For example, the 1928 blues recordings of Mississippi John Hurt were in many cases re-recorded by him in the 1960s, providing an excellent resource of reference material. But for those he transposed a considerable amount, or never played again, a modified approach is required.

When it comes to the Quintet concert material at Massey Hall there's clearly never been anything quite like it since, so again, a further modification of the process is required, as well as a good deal of careful adjustment, tweaking, call it what you like, it's professional judgement derived from many years of professional experience (I may appear to have popped up from nowhere on some folks' radars but I do have what I think is a reasonably impressive track record in the audio engineering profession).

So going back to the start of this ramble - we effectively identify the problems by defining scientifically (if sometimes relatively roughly) what the sonic outcome should be, and then apply whatever is required to achieve that outcome. In the case of the Massey Hall recordings, which I've known for years, the end result is as much a pleasant surprise to me as I hope it will be to you. Just because I know how something should look on a graph, doesn't mean we can get it all the way to that sound. But when it is possible to make that difference - and it works as a listener - for me it's magic!

FWIW I've also been working on the Miles Davis/Tadd Dameron Quintet 1949 Paris Festival recordings, which are really dire in their commonly-known release. Because of the nature of the original source they're never going to be anywhere near as good as the Massey Hall material, but I do think there's a significant advance to be made. Nobody else seems to be really bothered about trying it - least of all Columbia - so watch this space. Meanwhile, here's a small excerpt of the first number - it's work in progress, so is still rough around the edges. You'll here the original start, then crossfade into the ongoing remastering, and then back again. The aim is to bring out Miles' stunning trumpet playing - see what you think:

Rifftide - Davis/Dameron Quintet, Paris '49

[mikeweil]

Sounds pretty good, that MP3 - will try the FLAC tomorrow.

[PristineAudio]

I've just updated the online notes with regard to what XR is - which may be a little clearer than the explanation above:

Pristine Audio XR remastering explained

[AllenLowe]

thanks - it does, however, sound very similar to the precision notches that can be cut with digital eq - not to beat a dead horse here, and to take too much of your time, but it sounds as though you analyze an equivalent recording, come up with an eq curve, and than apply that eq curve to the older recording - drawing out frequencies which were not previously clear (but which had to have been there), and neutralizing the excess artifacts (previously masked) through additional noise reduction (at leas that's what I do with CEDAR and some other processes) -

Edited January 19, 2008 by AllenLowe

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

WoW!

I'm coming in because this is very itneresting and I want to know when someone adds to the thread, but also to ask whether y'all want this moved out of the reissues forum into the audio forum.

MG

[Tom Storer]

The XR approach is to analyse the overall tonal characteristics of a flawed recording, compare this to a modern recording of preferably identical, or if not, very similar material, and use this as the basis to correct the tonal imbalances of the original. [...]

When it comes to the Quintet concert material at Massey Hall there's clearly never been anything quite like it since, so again, a further modification of the process is required, as well as a good deal of careful adjustment, tweaking, call it what you like, it's professional judgement derived from many years of professional experience (I may appear to have popped up from nowhere on some folks' radars but I do have what I think is a reasonably impressive track record in the audio engineering profession).

I don't know the first thing about audio, but I'm curious to know what you mean by "identical if not similar material"--the songs themselves (the key they're in, etc.), the style? For example, the Massey Hall concert was a bebop quintet with alto sax, trumpet and rhythm section, featuring songs that bebop quintets covered often. I would think there has been plenty of stuff "quite like it" in general terms, so what about it makes it hard to find "similar material"?

[Christiern]

With the bass dubbed in later?

[PristineAudio]

The XR approach is to analyse the overall tonal characteristics of a flawed recording, compare this to a modern recording of preferably identical, or if not, very similar material, and use this as the basis to correct the tonal imbalances of the original. [...]

When it comes to the Quintet concert material at Massey Hall there's clearly never been anything quite like it since, so again, a further modification of the process is required, as well as a good deal of careful adjustment, tweaking, call it what you like, it's professional judgement derived from many years of professional experience (I may appear to have popped up from nowhere on some folks' radars but I do have what I think is a reasonably impressive track record in the audio engineering profession).

I don't know the first thing about audio, but I'm curious to know what you mean by "identical if not similar material"--the songs themselves (the key they're in, etc.), the style? For example, the Massey Hall concert was a bebop quintet with alto sax, trumpet and rhythm section, featuring songs that bebop quintets covered often. I would think there has been plenty of stuff "quite like it" in general terms, so what about it makes it hard to find "similar material"?

I mean similar to the extent of the same pieces being played by the same instrumental forces, including replication of the solos, albeit by different musicians in a different venue. This equates to the degree of similarity I look for when working on classical recordings. Thus with this kind of material we move to slightly less similar material, as you describe...

[PristineAudio]

With the bass dubbed in later?

I've reproduced the history of the original release as currently available at Wikipedia on our website page here:

http://www.pristineclassical.com/LargeWorks/Jazz/PAJZ002.php

This includes details about Mingus' attempts to re-record his bass parts.

[PristineAudio]

thanks - it does, however, sound very similar to the precision notches that can be cut with digital eq - not to beat a dead horse here, and to take too much of your time, but it sounds as though you analyze an equivalent recording, come up with an eq curve, and than apply that eq curve to the older recording - drawing out frequencies which were not previously clear (but which had to have been there), and neutralizing the excess artifacts (previously masked) through additional noise reduction (at leas that's what I do with CEDAR and some other processes) -

You're thinking more or less along the right lines - the complexity of the EQ curve is such that it's not possible to derive it by ear, hence the use of references - and a good deal of professional judgement as well.

However, it's taken over a year and many thousands of hours of remastering work to hone the techniques involved down to their current level within the classical music sphere, and several hundreds of hours have now been spent further adapting and fine-tuning this to work with other genres, so I hope you'll forgive me if I don't give away too much either here or elsewhere.

I do invite you to listen not only to the small amount of jazz (and blues) material on our site but also to the many classical recordings which have also been remastered this way. There's an up to date listing of XR releases here (excluding XR work done on Music and Arts Programs of America reissues):

http://www.pristineclassical.com/XR.html

Edited January 19, 2008 by PristineAudio

[JSngry]

What about the owners of the original material? 50 Year Rule?

[PristineAudio]

What about the owners of the original material? 50 Year Rule?

That's right. I should point out that many of our recordings are otherwise unavailable anywhere. Others may be obtained in different transfers for less. We're not out to swamp the market with cut-price merchandise - where we offer an alternative to existing issues it's because I feel we have a significantly better finished recording to offer. The final decision is of course with the customer, who gets to hear a good sample of what we're offering before making and financial commitments.

FWIW the business was started up after many discussions with record companies in this line - all of which were in pretty tight, if not dire financial situations. None of this would be possible if we'd not decided to go it alone, and take that risk ourselves.

[AllenLowe]

one thing I will add, if you've heard the Massey Hall stuff with the original bass (available on the Debut box) it is head and shoulders above the version with the Mingus overdubs -

[PristineAudio]

When you consider how the overdubs would most probably have been done it's not surprising! I was pleased to hear in these remasters how well the sound of the original bass came through most of the time. Some registers it does disappear a bit, and by the end of the Quintet material it's almost inaudible, but for much of the Quintet concert and just about all of the Trio concert it's perfectly acceptable. Also the drums don't sound like someone thwacking on plastic Tupperware boxes, as I've heard elsewhere...