so this means the album will be written to using analog methods?
Maybe yes or maybe no. My guess is from new remastered digital sources. It did say new remastered, right. Hopefully high resolution.
Definitely no digital in the chain at all - that is what David said. Pure analog vinyl LP's from the original master reels.
That good news
oops, not so fast.
POSTED ON
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/ Morning All,
My name is Karl Groeger and I am the owner of Brookvale Records and Looney Tunes. I am the one putting out the Dick’s Picks series on vinyl.
We have been working very closely with The Dead on these releases and I welcome your questions and concerns.
As a fan first, I knew there would be challenges going into this project and I think we are doing an amazing job with them. I would like to address 2 concerns I see brought up here. Sound source and side splits. Of course these are critical.
While we want of course the source tapes to every show, we are at the mercy of The Dead for masters for both ART and MUSIC. For the first shows the Dead simply does not have the original masters for them. We had no choice except to go from the CD. My first reaction was, thats impossible, how do they not have the masters? Well after about 6 months of searching they just do not have them. It looks like though for future releases they have about 90% of the masters on all the volumes.
OK so we don’t have the masters. Can we go from the CD? How is that going to sound? Well they sound great! (Check out the reviews on brookvalerecords.com).
We had a choice to use anyone we wanted to master this vinyl from the CD. We were suggested to use Rainbo pressing. I decided not to. I have been a HUGE face of both RTI and GOTTA GROOVE RECORDS. I think both plants have been making some great QUIET records. After about another 6 months of discussions, we choose Gotta Groove to re master and manufacture the vinyl on 1 and 2. And I could not be happier. Although YES the CD is not ideal to go with. BUT I think it came out EXCELLENT! Or I would not put my name on it. I have actually made LPS from masters on another project that did not sound half as good as these dead records do. I hope you will enjoy them.
SIDE SPLITS. Yes this is going to be another challenge for sure. With vol 2 you notice that it is a 3 sided record?
WHY
I decided to not make a side 4 because I could keep the JAM going on side 3. Where ever possible I will also keep the jam and do our very best with track listings and side splits. It will be a challenge YES. BUT I DO NOT THINK that its a reason NOT to do these.
I love vinyl. I think it is the perfect way to listen to The Dead.
I welcome your comments. (crap…ha ha).
Thank you for your time guys I hope this addresses some concerns.
Best,
Karl
Brookvale Records is proud to announce that we will be collaborating with mixing and mastering engineer, Jeffrey Norman. Brookvale Records will be releasing Dick’s Picks Series volume 3 and volume 4 this February on vinyl and Jeffrey will be doing the mastering for us. We would also like to announce that he will have access and will be using the ORIGINAL master tapes for this project. As we get more information we will let you know. Pre orders for these releases will go up next week. STAY TUNED!
For more information on Mr. Norman, you can click these links below:
http://www.mockingbirdmastering.com/ http://www.dead.net/features/interviews/mixing-and-mastering-dead-s-archives-jeffrey-norman FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES!
Mr Norman talks about mastering vol 3 and 4.
“I was excited to get the chance to remaster the early Dick’s Picks’ releases for vinyl…they were originally mastered for CD in 1995-96, and I was looking forward to hearing the 1/4″ source tapes once again, 17 years later. What I didn’t expect was the dramatic improvement the new mastering gives to these classic releases. The original CD resolution is 44.1KHz/16bit (as is any released CD), while the mastering I am now doing for the vinyl releases is 96KHz/24bit. I’m now using a state-of-the-art analog to digital converter (Pacific Microsonics Model 2)….and I’ve probably gotten better at doing this over the years! I used the original CDs as a guide for the new mastering, but when listening to the CDs I feel like I’m listening in black and white, while the new mastering feels like I’m listening in color. It’s very exciting!
A few observations: the mixes for Dick’s Picks Vol. 3 and Vol. 4 couldn’t be more different. The Pembroke Pine show (Vol.3) is quite bass strong and powerful. The Fillmore East show (2/13-14/12) on the other hand is very bright and a little bass shy. Both represent the ears and interpretations of the mixers at the time (Betty Cantor Jackson at Pembroke Pines, and Bear at the Fillmore East), and both capture the quality and excitement of these shows. I did some equalization on both shows to enhance the presentation but kept true to what the original mixers intended. As typical of all Grateful Dead shows, both these two shows are very dynamic….there’s a wide range of volume from quiet to very loud. I tried to keep the dynamics intact, with very little limiting, using limiting mainly as protection against digital overs.
In choosing the songs for each side of vinyl, the goal was to be true to the flow of the show and keep the fidelity as high as possible. There is a physical limitation to the length of a vinyl side….if it gets too long there is a loss of bass and level. Ideally the sides would be no longer than 20 minutes, and for the most part that was accomplished. However there are a few sides that are longer than ideal, but because of the way the music lays out there was no way around a few longer lengths. Also because of those side length constraints, there are some songs that had to be split in two (i.e. Vol.4 Dark Star, The Other One, and Lovelight)…sorry, you’re going to have to flip the record to get the entire “good stuff”.
Considering that these tapes are 40 years old (in the case of Vol. 4, Fillmore East), they sound phenomenal! There are some issues on the original recording that can’t be fixed (i.e.. L/R movement side to side in Vol. 3 Eyes of the World), but that in no way takes away from this great music.”