Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Fri, 17 Apr 1992 10:37:20 EDT
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Kibbles & Bits for the Andalusian Dog

Bond <tbont@IEEEPUB.ORG> ponders Re:  CD COSTS
> I'm interested in making a digital recording of an acoustical
> performance and then peddling the master as a potential CD.
> Has anyone ever done this, and would they be willing to share
> what they learned along the way? Also, what is the minimum
> recording equipment necessary to produce a master for a CD?
> Can off-the-shelf DAT recorders with high sampling
> rates be used?

You can get a CD (or LP) pressed from any sound source, down to the most awful
scabrous hand-held recording quality you can imagine (remember the golden age
of bootlegs, where you heard recordings that sounded like Radio Shack pocket
microcassette players smuggled in inside the bootlegger's girlfriend's purse?).
Are you referring to the tape that comes out of the "CD premastering" stage,
the tape with all the digital encoding (index numbers, etc.) that they make
the CD glass masters from? That tape can be prepared from any audio source, by
any lab with the equipment (there are several in the Boston area, we chose the
most obscure for our project). The output of that is digitized at 44.1 KHz and
for some vague historical reason uses 3/4 inch video cartridge tapes, the old
U-Matic broadcast format, as the recording medium (their only known audio use).
You don't need to do this yourself, the people you deal with to press your CD
can do it for you; we chose to do it ourselves to retain control over the last
equalization stage-- once it gets turned into those bits on that tape, nobody
can mess with the sound ever again-- at least not at the present state of the
technology. (Unless somebody in netland has a working digital filter on hand?)
Anyway, you can certainly use your DAT machine as a source, but it still has to
go through that pre-mastering stage. (By default, DAT has a different sampling
rate from the 44.1 KHz for CD's, but some DAT machines have a setting to allow
recording at the CD rate. I wouldn't worry about it, though-- you'll probably
want to do some EQ on the live tape, and that means at least one analog pass.)

Jon <JEPSTEIN@KENTVM.BITNET> discourses Re: marillion
> I like the Fish solo stuff better than the new marillion.  His first solo
> album, Vigal in a WIlderness of Mirrors, was a bit rough, however.  His last,
> Internal Exile, which is being released in the States in June, is an excellent
> album.  My money is on the song Just Good Friends (close) as the first single.

In England, the title track was the first single, released as such in advance
of the album. You're probably right that they'll pick a different song for the
American market; we don't have the British tolerance for bagpipes. (Note to
Carol: the pipes on this tune are pretty good for rock'n'roll.)

"Ronald D. White" <rowhite@WRDIS01.AF.MIL> recalls:
> 	Anybody here know of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers?
> 		---Fat Freddy's Cat

Instant flashback time, as all us old farts begin to recall favorite episodes.
"Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you
through times of no dope"-- a slogan that somehow failed to survive the last
three recessions...

Unless you mean there's a *band* by that name, which is a possibility too
cruel to consider...

OMC: My wife has the day off (her company is European-owned, and they get Good
Friday as a holiday) so she went out and bought 8 CD's last night to listen to
today. I don't remember what they all were: one was the new Spinal Tap, one was
Hiram Bullock's _Way Kool_ (which turned out to suck unreservedly), one was an
improv set called Iconoclast, featuring a NYC sax player and the drummer from
Doctor Nerve, both electronically enhanced so it sounds like a tight quartet
rather than an improvising duo... But there were two that stood out on the
brief listens I was able to give them last night. The Clubfoot Orchestra's
_Music from Metropolis_ sounded like a kind of Steve Reich interpretation of
Schoenberg, little loops of twelve-tone themes metamorphosing in weird ways,
very interesting. And Bobby Previte's _Music from the Moscow Circus_ has that
brassy exuberance you want from march music (and don't get often enough). More
later...