Disco CDs with bad sound quality

[eddie]

Vaughn Mason and Crew's "Bounce, rock, skate, roll" was also included on Rhino's Street Jams: Back 2 the Old Skool, Vol 3. Other reviewers complained of excessive hiss and I actually hear it but believe its on the original masters since Rhino remasters to death. Cds can bring this sort of imperfection out.

I have a "scratchy vinyl sounding" version of Young & Co's "I like what you're doing to me" (7 minute version) on Wagram's Spirit of Funk compilation pressed in 2001. The edited version on Rhino's famous disco series didn't have any noticable imperfection except that it was short.

I was able to obtain a CD of their one Lp complete with bonus with bonus tracks. it was put out by That's Right Classic Cds and I bought my copy at Tower records in Paramus, NJ which is now defunked. It has no UPC and the Cd is blue which means its sort of like a CDR but its perfectly remastered. They had about a half dozen copies the day I bought mine and I've never seen it again including at Amazon.

Personally, I don't mind minor vinyl crackles and actually prefer Cds to be remastered from clean mint vinyl. Channel dropout where you hear nothing in one speaker for several seconds is totally unacceptable to me . This impurity only comes from cassette tapes or damage to the original master tapes. In that case, they should use vinyl!!!! I notice certain tracks have this channel dropout on every pressing and it sounds terrible. It doesn't make sense to use deteriorated master tapes.

[neonlights]

Originally Posted by Graham_Start

Unidisc uses horrible EQ (their release of Gino Soccio's "Outline" will make your ears bleed... roll off the highs by 6db and it's *still* bright), crappy dynamic compression (Cerrone's "Supernature") and cleaned up needle drops... some done reasonably well (Salsoul compilations), others done quite badly (Bumblebee Unlimited). They might have the rights to distribute the music, but that doesn't mean that they have access to the master tapes.

I think I know what you mean regarding the "Outline" CD..The worst Unidisc release that I've heard so far was the Cerrone "..Golden Touch" CD.. With, like "Outline" it seems (which I don't have, and probably won't get now), such excessive brightness, it was like listening to nails on a chalkboard..

I guess what I should have said was that as uneven as their quality standards are, I've heard some Unidisc compilations/reissues that sounded good, at least to my ears. Those seemed to be mostly of material they owned (ie. the Prelude catalogue, and I think also, the Megatone catalogue) as opposed to the stuff they licensed... Even then, I've heard at least one of their Prelude reissues which sounded overly processed (ie. Musique II)..

I'm generally willing to tolerate Unidisc reissues and their imperfections, when the sound quality is at least decent (ie. their recent Salsoul reissues, which sound clean, but not quite 100% clear if that makes any sense). Sometimes it's just easier to do that than to track down the vinyl.. Or in the case of Salsoul, better than some of the other existing reissues like those from Suss'd in the UK..

[SandraDee]

I can forgive many sound problems as they are at least better than scratchy vinyl (not all vinyl) but I've actually bought 3 Hot Productions CDs (Carol Williams, 7th Avenue & Best of TK) that are obviously CDRs which look & sound like home-made efforts & are almost unplayable! This is inexcusable & I am very careful when buying CDs now.

[Graham_Start]

But sometimes you're not even safe with vinyl. I picked up a copy of Lowrell's album on AVI, and it turned out to be counterfeit: mastered from an old cassette and on crap vinyl too. Totally unsalvageable.