The Head Cleaner!

[Forrrce]

Man, I been pissed off something chronic this week! But a couple of days back, I made myself an extra-long CD and on playback, it's kinda settled my own hash. The hours of precision mastering these 12s (tedious but satisfying) has given me back a bit of sanity. Sounds great in the car - and cleared my head!

Sounds Of Inner City 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman' (West End, 1976)
Good Philly fun and has a broad, powerful sound. May be a little lush for some. Love the 'Love Is The Message' reference a couple of minutes from the end.
Mahogany 'My Chance To Dance' (The Sound Of Mahogany, 1980)
Sounds more like a jazz-funk/soul group diversifying than a dedicated disco act. Subtly funky and quite restrained - very 'indie' sounding. One of very few disco records I know of from Detroit.
Sparkle Tuhran & Friends 'Handsome Man' (Vitamin, 1980-ish)
Quite an 'up' record, though marred by a weak lead vocal. Vaguely reminds me of Chic for some reason I can't quite fathom. Sounds more like it's from '81 or even '82.
Fat Larry's Band 'Center City' (Atlantic, 1976)
More bumpin' fun of the Philly variety, not particularly distinctive but I've always had a soft spot for this track.
Touch 'Energizer' (Brunswick, 1977)
One of my favourite disco records, though maybe not disco enough for some. A bit of a Crown Heights Affair - type thing going on here. Party down!
Terri Gonzalez 'I'm Caught Up (In One Night Love Affairs)' (Eastbourne, 1980)
l've always liked the original by Life but this very similar version seems to sound fresh whenever I play it, which I hadn't done for at least a decade.
The Trammps 'The Night The Lights Went Out' (Atlantic, 1977)
Only really got into this over the past few years, (used to sound rather ordinary to these ears) but really love it now.
Torill 'Over & Over' (AVI, 1979)
Rather twee but listenable version of a song I'm not crazy about. One of my more recent acquisitions that I'm getting used to with repeated listening.
Goody Goody 'It Looks Like Love' (Atlantic, 1978)
One of those sultry disco songs I play for a while then file away again for a few years.Welcome back!
Shades Of Love 'Do Your Own Dance' (Scorpgemi, 1981)
Low budget, bedroomy sound; nice rhodes and a sparse feel on this slightly jazzy number. Just love the mumbled male backing vocals on the bridge.
Eloise Laws 'Put A Little Love Into It (When You Do It)' (Invictus, 1977)
Big, fat strut and a bit of a hustle...let down slightly by a rather heavy-handed disco mix (mixer not credited, may be in-house) whereby the timbale flavourings come across as a bit corny and out of place. Damned fine record, nonetheless.
Sandi Havens 'Happy' (Great Atlantic, 1980)
A feel-good record! Again, has more of an 'independent soul' feel but I think this is an underrated goodie.
Mary Love 'Dance To My Music' (TK Disco, 1979)
Can't quite tell if this is Mary Love Comer, though the vocal's decent enough. Unhurried and fairly disposable, with a bridge that puts me in mind of 'What Can I Say' by Boz Scaggs (!). Good, radio-friendly, happy disco!
Delia Renee 'You're Gonna Want Me Back' (Airwave, 1981)
A record I'd always thought about playing, rather than actually playing, more often. Again, hadn't heard for at least 10 years (or so it seems) but it's solid enough and rather typical of its time. Nice, clean production.
Cerrone 'Give Me Love' (Unidisc, '90s)
Mate of mine played this to me a couple of years ago and I really went for it (this makes my 5th or so Cerrone record). Never was down with the Malligator man or Kongas, etc - 'Supernature' made sure of that. But, this is Funky!

[QUINNY]

Originally Posted by Forrrce

The hours of precision mastering these 12s (tedious but satisfying) has given me back a bit of sanity. Sounds great in the car - and cleared my head!


Cerrone 'Give Me Love' (Unidisc, '90s)
Mate of mine played this to me a couple of years ago and I really went for it (this makes my 5th or so Cerrone record). Never was down with the Malligator man or Kongas, etc - 'Supernature' made sure of that. But, this is Funky!

Forrrce: Precision mastering for the car!!! :lol:
What do you mean by precision mastering? Just interested in hearing the effort people might go to.

Ref: Cerrone - Give Me Love... your views more or less mirror mine. Guess wot? I'm still not completely sold on the cooing chicks though or the violins etc. :lol:
Maybe it's an interesting intro looking for a more interesting song?

[Forrrce]

Forrrce: Precision mastering for the car!!! :lol:
What do you mean by precision mastering? Just interested in hearing the effort people might go to.


Well...not specifically for the car! I use minidsic for the motor - simply dubbed one off to an 80min MD (the CD's 95 minutes long) and monoed a couple of tracks to fit. Precision mastering? Well, I use Cedar Series X declicking and decrackling units. As this is done in real time (the more elaborate PC version is a science in itself) I have to remove what Cedar doesn't detect manually by cutting out milliseconds of the waveform. I then denoise the tracks (broadband noise, hiss, hum - after creating a different noise profile for each one - all restoration tools apart from Cedar are a German program called Osiris). Tops and tails, fades, a bit of EQing and 5 hours later - voila, Bob's your auntie's live-in lover. I take great care of my records (handling, machine cleaning, storage) but vinyl is never, ever perfect.
Glad to hear you're down with the Cerrone too, dispite the minor misgivings. It sounds way, way ahead of its 1977 release year to me. The fade-out is odd, though - sounds as if the track's going into a completely different direction!

[QUINNY]

Is that a full blown Cedar unit from some years back? They used to be hideously expensive.
It amazes me how incredibly bad some vinyl transfers sound when they're put onto commercial CD releases. Usually dull and ever so crackly. I wouldn't have thought there's any excuse for this nowadays, but they're still turning up on relatively new releases. Perhaps money is the key?

[BrunoRepublic]

Originally Posted by QUINNY

Is that a full blown Cedar unit from some years back? They used to be hideously expensive.
It amazes me how incredibly bad some vinyl transfers sound when they're put onto commercial CD releases. Usually dull and ever so crackly. I wouldn't have thought there's any excuse for this nowadays, but they're still turning up on relatively new releases. Perhaps money is the key?

I have achieved excellent results in restoring vinyl using Cool Edit Pro, which is a relatively inexpensive DAW program for Windows. The hitch is that it takes a lot of time and experience to do this right. I started about three years ago, but it took me a year to learn enough to get decent results. Since then I've learned a lot about sound cards, cartridges, and setting them up, which also makes a huge difference.

Despite what some would have you believe, there is no magic button or setting that will instantly clear up everything. In any piece of music, there are elements that will appear to be clicks, but are actually part of the music (attack transients, pulse waves from reed instruments, etc.). Setting automated click removal too high will wipe out these, setting it too low will leave in too much crackle. So, I manually scroll through the waveform and remove each click by hand. Depending on the condition of the LP, it can take several hours. But if you love the music, it's worth it.

Dull-sounding transfers are usually a symptom of heavy denoising, poor cartridge choice, or a lame attempt to mask some of the surface noise by EQing it out. Or possibly all of the above. Add to that the current "loudness wars" where most new CDs have the dynamic range completely squashed out of them, and you've got a recipe for a sonic atrocity.

[efunk_adelic]

Originally Posted by Forrrce

Man, I been pissed off something chronic this week! But a couple of days back, I made myself an extra-long CD and on playback, it's kinda settled my own hash. The hours of precision mastering these 12s (tedious but satisfying) has given me back a bit of sanity. Sounds great in the car - and cleared my head!

Cerrone 'Give Me Love' (Unidisc, '90s)
Mate of mine played this to me a couple of years ago and I really went for it (this makes my 5th or so Cerrone record). Never was down with the Malligator man or Kongas, etc - 'Supernature' made sure of that. But, this is Funky!

Forrrce, this Unidisc '90's .... is this a 12" single? or the entire "Supernature" LP?

This has always been a classic to my ears :D I just know you like the way they play the bass. I suppose you like the long percussion break towards the end.... funky funky funky!!

[Forrrce]

Cedar's Series X components were introduced about 5 years ago as an 'inexpensive' alternative to the full blown professional system. The units are slim, rack mounted boxes with minimal parameters and were designed for on-the-fly processing.
I had tried many, many declicking programs since being on the internet and have found them all to be fairly average - Cedar removes 2,500 impulse spikes a second and none of these other systems perform anywhere near as well. The Series X units are very expensive, though nowhere near the Pro kit - I decided to take the plunge for my own peace of mind and have been able to use the units on a semi-pro basis, gradually (though not yet totally) recouping my initial outlay over the last year.
To me, there's very little difference in performace in Cool Edit or Dart Pro and, say, the token declicker in Nero - though I'm sure the algorhythms for these programs get updated. But, they just don't do the job well enough for me.
Yes, too many re-issues are sloppily mastered by cloth-eared engineers - fairly recent CDs from the likes of Blue Note and Atlantic (Chick Corea's 'Tones For Joan's Bones' was cut from an untreated, crackly vinyl copy - intensely annoying when I can play the vinyl for the same s**t sound - idiots) simply rip-off the quality-conscious public with lazy transfers. A 'good' example of consistently bad remastering is the Collectables label - having only recently discovered the joys of 'audio restoration', their Atlantic titles re-issue CDs are so over-zealously denoised that the music is literally strangled, leaving a stringy, computerised sound, completely bled dry of ambience and space. Many good titles available but they really sound that bad...it's incredible. Maybe one day, Collectables will get with the program and actually use a master tape. I doubt it. The Willie Tee compilation on Tuff City credits an 'audio restorer' - yet you've never heard so many f**ked 7"s in your life. Please.....

efunk-adelic: These are all 12s. The Cerrone is a double-sider with 'Supernature' on the top. Not sure what year this issue's from, but it looks very recent. I have it on a UK 12 too, but the Unidisc is sonically superior. Bass? Percussion? Strange...you have my number, kiddo! :D

[efunk_adelic]

Originally Posted by Forrrce

efunk-adelic: These are all 12s. The Cerrone is a double-sider with 'Supernature' on the top. Not sure what year this issue's from, but it looks very recent. I have it on a UK 12 too, but the Unidisc is sonically superior. Bass? Percussion? Strange...you have my number, kiddo! :D

Forrrce,
you realize that you are making my mouth water... Give Me Love on 12" :o I just gotta have it!!! here I go back to gemm.com :D .... where am I gonna get all this money... lol

[NickNack]

Originally Posted by Forrrce

Glad to hear you're down with the Cerrone too, dispite the minor misgivings. It sounds way, way ahead of its 1977 release year to me. The fade-out is odd, though - sounds as if the track's going into a completely different direction!

Hi Forrrce: The fade out feels 'strange' because Side 2 of the "Supernature" lp is a non-stop mix:

GIVE ME LOVE 7:42
LOVE IS HERE: 2:08
LOVE IS THE ANSWER 6:03

What you're probably hearing are the string rushes leading into the second song. Don't worry though, they are nothing like "Give Me Love" and would probably leave you and Quinny kinda cold with the lush orchestration and those ever-present girls. :D

[Forrrce]

[quote="NickNack
What you're probably hearing are the string rushes leading into the second song. Don't worry though, they are nothing like "Give Me Love" and would probably leave you and Quinny kinda cold with the lush orchestration and those ever-present girls. :D[/quote]

Peace, Brother NickNack 8) ...is why you t'ink I no like-a da strings and de girls, eh...eh? I is definitely pro-stringy!!!!!