Forums dot lukpac.org

The Toshiba Japan CD, the one that's supposedly a flat transfer of the album. Not a two-fer, just "Wild Honey," released late or mid 80's, part of the Pastmaster series.

Anyone interested in selling or up for a CD-R trade for it can e-mail me.

I don't have it, but I'm curious: do you have any entries in that series? Does anybody here have any?

Xenu wrote:I don't have it, but I'm curious: do you have any entries in that series? Does anybody here have any?

I have 6 of them. Surfin Safari, Surfin USA, Surfer Girl, Shut Down Vol 2, All Summer Long, Summer Days and Summer Nights.

I think that you and I talked about some of these in another thread here...but ask away if you have any questions.

I don't have any. I actually love the early hits, but I'm not big on most of the Lp's as a whole. If you prefer stereo, I think the Pastmasters are supposed to be the way to go, despite a few fake-stereo tracks here and there.

How does Today! and Summer Days (and Nights) sound? All mono?

Dob, feel like FLACing me those Pastmasters?

Xenu wrote:Dob, feel like FLACing me those Pastmasters?

Not the kind of question I was expecting, but OK.

I've never done an FLAC transfer and I don't even have it downloaded. You're going to have to walk me through the entire process (I'm assuming it's easy).

FWIW, I have a needle drop from the MFSL vinyl of Surfer Girl that IMO is better than the Pastmasters on many tracks. I also have the MFSL gold CD, but the needle drop is better IMO.

Oy. Maybe that isn't worth it, then.

Maybe we can work out a CD-R trade. PM me if you're interested.

Just wanted to add that I have found the Pasmasters Friends, and it is as good as expected. Eq-wise, the difference is not so big versus the Linett remaster, but the latter does have some (mild) boost in the upper midrange. Some people might prefer this, because it brings up the vocals (I don't).

The biggest plus is, of course, the volume. Every track on the Linett Friends remaster shows countless examples of digital clipping (peak level 99.8 %). The Pastmasters has a peak level of 60% or so.

Funny: The previous owner painted the edge and the inner ring of the CD with a blue pen. Maybe that is why it sounds so good.

Andreas wrote:The biggest plus is, of course, the volume. Every track on the Linett Friends remaster shows countless examples of digital clipping (peak level 99.8 %). The Pastmasters has a peak level of 60% or so.

Eh...why is that a good thing? I haven't looked at any waveforms for the Linett discs, but there's certainly nothing wrong with hitting 100%. As long as things aren't compressed beyond belief, how much do a few clipped peaks matter?

A peak of 60% seems like laziness. It may sound great, but it shouldn't be hard at all to get within 1dB or less of 0dB.

Discs that peak that low annoy me. It's like throwing away bits. I can do better that with the control panel on my freakin' Sound Blaster.

Ryan

Pastmasters Beach Boys:
They're very nice. Very, very nice. Yeah, they're not mastered at a very high level, but I really don't care much about that, personally. I turn up the volume instead of being annoyed, I guess. I consider digital clipping to be the most easily avoided sign of mastering incompetence (as opposed to compression/maximization and NR, which are usually at client request), FWIW, so you may want to take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Friends has some MONSTER bass, btw.

All Summer Long pastmasters has some fake stereo tracks, though.

lukpac wrote:Eh...why is that a good thing? I haven't looked at any waveforms for the Linett discs, but there's certainly nothing wrong with hitting 100%. As long as things aren't compressed beyond belief, how much do a few clipped peaks matter?

A peak of 60% seems like laziness. It may sound great, but it shouldn't be hard at all to get within 1dB or less of 0dB.

I call it laziness and incompetence not to care about digital clipping. And we are talking about dozens of samples per song.

I turn up the volume instead of being annoyed, I guess.

Sure, if you don't mind only getting 13 or 14 bits of resolution instead of the full 16. Granted, I doubt those old Beach Boys tapes have enough dynamic range to for it to really matter, but like Luke says it just smacks of mastering laziness -- a close runner-up to clipping in terms of just not doing the basic job.

(Side note: I'm not saying *you're* saying this (general rant alert), but it really makes me laugh when people decry the horror of lossy data compression in one breath, and talk about how much they love CDs that max out at 60% the next. And then later talk about how they love the "extra resolution" on 24-bit DVD-As.)

Ryan