Question: Jazz Album CD Combo Packs, Sacrificed Audio Quality?

[Jazzamataz]

Hi Everyone,

First post here.

My question is are the Value CD combo Album packs lower quality? I dont recognize some of the reissue labels who are putting these together. Ive seen allot of the more well known jazz legends on offering. You might get 5 albums on 2 CD's for little more than you would pay for one album. Just wondering about audio quality and if anything has been spared in the transfering of these albums. Some of the deals are quite amazing but im not interested if the audio quality is reduced or compromised in any way.

Just building a Jazz CD collection ATM. Any advice would be great!

Thanks

 

[B5Erik]

Hi Everyone,

First post here.

My question is are the Value CD combo Album packs lower quality? I dont recognize some of the reissue labels who are putting these together. Ive seen allot of the more well known jazz legends on offering. You might get 5 albums on 2 CD's for little more than you would pay for one album. Just wondering about audio quality and if anything has been spared in the transfering of these albums. Some of the deals are quite amazing but im not interested if the audio quality is reduced or compromised in any way.

Just building a Jazz CD collection ATM. Any advice would be great!

Thanks

Most of these collections are from Europe. The copyright laws are different there. Recordings become public domain sooner than in the U.S., so a lot of these small companies can release these titles without licensing them (because, in Europe, they are public domain). They don't remaster them from the original tapes (since they don't license them). They rip them from whatever sources they can get. Often that means ripping it from another CD issued by the original company. The best of these companies will have an engineer re-eq them and balance out the volume between titles. The worst will just rip them and put them out as is.

I've bought a handful of them when the official versions are out of print and the U.S. record company that holds the rights has no intention of reissuing them. (And if they did reissue them I'd buy the reissues.) With a lot of titles it's the only way to get them.

AVID does a lot of them, but they're hit or miss with quality. I bought a Count Basie set cheap, but they used some odd Stereo masters and their, "Enhanced stereo," just made them sound worse (it enhanced the reverb). They sound awful. On the other hand, I got a couple Horace Silver sets that sound amazing. (Mastered by a different guy.)

I ended up getting the individual Count Basie releases from the official versions, and they sound much better.

If you can get the official releases individually that sometimes gets you better sound quality. Not always, but a good percentage of the time.

 

[Jazzamataz]

Thanks for the response. I will at least stick with the Blue Note Multi packs then.

Cheers