Amir, check this one out too! One of my all-time favorite albums.
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Excellent suggestion. I was wondering what else to buy after settling the grief with my credit card company blocking my purchases from there. Fascinating write-up on the production of the digital version:
http://www.naimlabel.com/recording-meet-me-in-london-192.aspx
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The Technical Process
The original album was recorded on 24-track Ampex tape in analogue and without any Dolby noise reduction at September Sound in Twickenham, by Peter Williams. The playback of the analogue masters and capturing as 24bit digital WAV files was being undertaken at the famous Strongroom Studios in London. Fortunately, the master tapes were found to be in good condition and did not require any oven baking to consolidate the oxide layer - a problem that can plague old masters.
The process of capturing the digital WAV files in 24bit resolution at 192kHz in Pro-Tools began by playing the original masters on a Studer A800 MKII analogue tape machine. The A800 is universally regarded as one of the most faithful and accurate 2-inch reel-to-reel tape machines ever built.
The playback feed from the Studer was carefully aligned to the original tapes using the test tones recorded at the time, was routed into a Digidesign analogue to digital converter and monitored via Digidesign D-Control ES mixing console. This state-of-the-art console is fully integrated with Pro-Tools HD, enabling control of the recording to be undertaken either via the console or from within Pro-Tools itself. The captured 24bit/192kHz WAV sound files were saved to hard disk.
The next step of the process was to convert the digital files back into analogue to enable them to be mixed on a Neve analogue mixing console. Why not just use the original analogue master on the Neve and avoid all the A-D and D-A conversion? Given their 14-year age it was considered that the tapes wouldn't have survived the repeated playback required during mixing. Making a duplicate analogue master and mixing from that would have introduced additional tape noise, which would have been obvious on 24-bit/192kHz playback. Alternatively mixing on the Digidesign console entirely in the digital domain would have meant using certain plug-ins that only operate at 16- or 24bit/44.1 or 48 kHz and would have necessitated down-conversion of the digital signal. None of these other options were considered desirable from a sound quality point of view.
The Neve was chosen for mixing because of its superb sound quality. The Apogee Symphony was used post mix to convert back to digital as it interfaces directly with Pro-Tools HD and sounds fabulous and Tony did not want to feed the audio back through the same converter twice.
Mastering again presented questions in whether to convert to analogue to apply final EQ and limiting or to stay within digital but with a smaller choice of tools. Listening tests determined that staying in digital was the obvious choice - a decision made easier by the availability of the excellent Sonnox plug-ins that are capable of supporting 24bit/192kHz. The plug-ins were used to add slight touches of EQ and gentle limiting to maximise the overall musical presentation.
As Antonio Forcione says "Remixing Meet Me in London was a very rewarding experience. Listening back to it now is like observing a starry night through a very powerful telescopic lens - suddenly you see things you didn't realise were there in the first place ... Amazing!!"
. I am hunting these down and this one I can only find used for $15. So I ordered it that way even though it is a bit much for a used title.
