I've played through the first 3 of the Oscar Peterson albums on R2R. I'm not a jazz fan, but the combination of getting first generation copies of the master tapes and hearing Oscar Peterson got me to order the set of albums.
Some observations. First, Peterson is a great pianist - both lots of intricate detail and soul in his playing. Sonics are quite fine, some albums a bit better than others. There is an intimacy to the recordings, not quite you are there in the studio with him, but very close. Peterson has chosen a bunch of great standards for most of the pieces. They are great tunes, and his improvisations often have interpolations of short bits of other great tunes mixed in - very nicely done, which adds to the enjoyment of the piece. Second, I do get put off a bit by his humming - although it is pretty quiet, in the background most of the time and only in the up tempo numbers. Nothing like Glenn Gould humming in his Bach recordings for Columbia. Third, most of the pieces so far feature Peterson and the piano and don't generally have the solos by the drummer or bass player, which I typically have heard in most of the jazz albums I have - like Waltz for Debby. Forth, the albums appear to have cuts from different microphone and instrument configurations. Peterson is always in the center, but sometime the piano is fairly narrowly focused, while in other cuts, the piano is spread wide - with treble toward the right and bass toward the left. The drums are almost always dead to the left, with the bass sometimes behind the piano and sometimes nearer the drums. On one cut, the bass is dead left, while the drums are between the piano and bass. Most of the cuts were recorded with a small live audience with applause at the end of pieces, while a few were done without any applause.
I don't have the vinyl or the digital versions of the albums, except for the bonus 45 while is mentioned above.
The notes with the album say the tapes were remastered by a pair of German engineers. I am guessing that this is the source of the vinyl and digital albums. I am trying to find out whether Peterson is playing his Boesendorfer on these recordings.
Larry