Mosaic Dial set coming soon

[gmonahan]

I'm with Lon (as usual). I've also preordered it. While the Bird stuff is always fun to hear, no matter how often I have it (the Spotlite LPs, the Stash set, the Savoy/Dial set), I'm particularly interested in the other non-Bird things. I'm also curious about the booklet, and I'm seldom disappointed in Mosaic's remastering.

gregmo

[Big Beat Steve]

I'll pass. Except for many of the Garners, I have at least the master takes (and part of the alternates) of about all of the tunes included here (and all in all am quite satisfied with what Spotlite did with the source material for THEIR reissues) and I dont think I'll need that many alternates of that many tunes.

But tastes differ, I know ...

[mikeweil]

I have all of the Spotlite LPs on which this material was first reissued, so I'm hesitating. But if the sound really is that good ..... I'd have to listen to a decent sample to convince me.

[erwbol]

I have all of the Spotlite LPs on which this material was first reissued, so I'm hesitating. But if the sound really is that good ..... I'd have to listen to a decent sample to convince me.

The two parker samples have a whooshy sound in the highs that I dislike. The other two samples didn't (I focused mostly on the Bird), so I figured it wasn't down to a too low bit rate.

Edit: The samples were not definitive as Jonathan Horwich explained to me.

Edited October 1, 2014 by erwbol

[Clunky]

Given that this set's selling point to many will be the sound it's surprising that low bit rate samples are all Mosaic manage. Listening through the low bit rate artefacts of whooshing the music sounds strong and clear. I'll be on fence though until it's clear that this set upgrades the sound of previous editions.

The recent Uptown Howard McGhee duplicated a few tracks found on his Dial sessions released by Spotlite. The Uptown sounded significantly better. If that level of upgrade is seen on the Mosaic then I'll be buying.

[Ed S]

I mentioned it before in the Condon thread. I really like this type of set by Mosaic. The HRS set, Capitol Jazz, Columbia Small Group Swing, Clifford Jordan Strata East all really appeal to me as they are multiple artists/leaders presented under a common theme. I just like listening to the variety knowing that it somehow ties into a greater unifying theme. I spent this past weekend listening to the Jordan Strata East stuff and really enjoying it. I know the Dial stuff will hit me in the same way as the others I have.

I might pre-order this as the $149 price is more than what my family members can afford via the Mosaic wishlist for such things as birthdays / Christmas / Holidays

Edited September 29, 2014 by Ed Swinnich

[miles65]

I always found the sound on the Spotlite Lp 's to soft. You had to 'pump up the volume' to hear it well. This puts this set clearly in the picture for me though I already have most of it. I have no trouble with the samples given that the Internet quality will be lower than the actual CD.

I prefer the CD's with master takes first and alternate takes at the end of the CD.

The Verve Charlie Parker set I find very hard to listen to because of the many false starts and incomplete takes. I love how the Miles Davis/Gil Evans set was programmed.

[jonathanhorwich]

I thought I'd weigh in here since I just saw some of the comments, especially by Erwbol. Very helpful to have these comments now as those Parker tracks up on the site are not complete yet as far as audio goes. We (meaning IPI) never ever use noise reduction. Ever. In this case we hand remove every tick and pop that is gross and that does not affect the sound. That takes time. The whooshy sound of the cymbals on Moose the Mooche is the sound of the original recording. I just heard it. But worse. More muffled, as are the horns. And distorted which is to be expected. The version on the site although not final (and not necessarily a good copy which I will rectify) is much better in my opinion than the original, as you can hear the horns much much better, but of course you'll hear the wooshy sound of the cymbals even more with the noise gone as explained above. We don't get into EQing things and messing with them too much so if there is a generic fault in the original like those very poorly recorded cymbals in Moose the Mooche, you'll hear it clearly in the upgraded sound.

It would really help if Erwbol could let me know what original he is comparing it to and I can go check it myself. To make sure. That would really be appreciated.

My experience so far is the mastered versions are much better than the originals are. But if we have some better originals out there I don't know about love to learn about this now.

Thanks.

Edited September 30, 2014 by JLH

[jazzbo]

Thanks for weighing in Jonathon.

[Bluesnik]

Thanks to all. I only have the Savoy/Dial masters (am not to keen on alternates) Savoy released a little over a decade ago, so I don't know about alternates.

[crisp]

I am not a fan of any releases with track lists like this:

8. Congo Blues (false start 1) (A) 1:04

(Red Norvo)

9. Congo Blues (false start 2) (A) 1:14

(Red Norvo)

10. Congo Blues (tk A) (A) 3:59

(Red Norvo)

11. Congo Blues (tk B) (A) 3:51

(Red Norvo)

12. Congo Blues (tk.C) (A) 3:51

Give me 8. Conga Blues (released take) any day. They probably could have made it a 4-5 CD set if they did.

That sort of thing used to bother me too. In fact I passed on the two VeeJay Mosaics because of this.

However now that I rip all my boxed sets losslessly it's not an issue. It actually makes it easier to tag the files if they are in date order.

I've never had any need for studio chatter and false starts, however. Today they seem like a very Nineties CD-era thing.

[David Ayers]

I've never had any need for studio chatter and false starts, however. Today they seem like a very Nineties CD-era thing.

Glad you said that.

[Big Beat Steve]

I've never had any need for studio chatter and false starts, however. Today they seem like a very Nineties CD-era thing.

Glad you said that.

Maybe it's because I come from a slightly different angle but to me they seem like a very 80s CIRCLE records LP thing.

Apart from the occasional others like that 10-minute version of some tune on Sonny Boy Williamson's "Bummer Road" LP (Chess) marked "not suitable for airplay" on the cover back in those prude 70s days because Sonny Boy can be heard in the studio chatter to burst out "M****fu**er" and "B**ch" etc.

[Stefan Wood]

This may be the one Mosaic box I will want to buy in a long time.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Stefan Wood

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I am not a fan of any releases with track lists like this:

8. Congo Blues (false start 1) (A) 1:04

(Red Norvo)

9. Congo Blues (false start 2) (A) 1:14

(Red Norvo)

10. Congo Blues (tk A) (A) 3:59

(Red Norvo)

11. Congo Blues (tk B) (A) 3:51

(Red Norvo)

12. Congo Blues (tk.C) (A) 3:51

Give me 8. Conga Blues (released take) any day. They probably could have made it a 4-5 CD set if they did.

That sort of thing used to bother me too. In fact I passed on the two VeeJay Mosaics because of this.

However now that I rip all my boxed sets losslessly it's not an issue. It actually makes it easier to tag the files if they are in date order.

I've never had any need for studio chatter and false starts, however. Today they seem like a very Nineties CD-era thing.

I passed on the Mosaic Ike Quebec/John Hardee & the VeeJay boxes for that reason as well. I don't mind an alternate take here and there but to have 3 or 4 takes in a row of the same song or an alternate for *every* track annoys the heck out of me. I don't know why but it does.

False starts are just plain annoying. I imagine musicians find them fascinating but I don't share their enthusiasm. The worst were those Verve CDs (form the 90s ) that had someone shouting take numbers from the booth before each false start. The shouting was usually louder than the music and had me jumping for the volume knob half the time.

When I rip CDs with alternate takes, I generally don't rip them at all.

[Big Beat Steve]

The novelty of false starts wears thin extremely fast IMO. It may occasionally be interesting for a "key" recording in some artist's recording career to see how that recording evolved, but overall ... ho hum. And like Kevin said, having to wade through one or more alternates though every track of a CD (or several) just is too much. Particularly if the alternates aren't all that different ALL the time.

I can understand, though, that the compilers of this box had no choice. Hans't there been the oft-reported story, for example, about Bird's "Cool Blues" being so different from one take to another that the issuers at the time issued those takes as "Cool Blues", "Hot Blues" and "Blowtop Blues"? And once you get started on that track (and quite a few alternates by Bird merit inclusion) you cannot stop halfway because other collectors might whine "why this but not that?"

[bogdan101]

I have all of the Spotlite LPs on which this material was first reissued, so I'm hesitating. But if the sound really is that good ..... I'd have to listen to a decent sample to convince me.

It's not simply the absence of noise. The two parker samples have a whooshy sound in the highs that I dislike. The other two samples didn't (I focused mostly on the Bird), so I figured it wasn't down to a too low bit rate. I'm concerned these whoosy highs are a result of Mosaic's clean up job.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from the Mosaic page I understand they did not go and transfer all the masters from scratch, but only "Starting with the best transfers of the catalog which still left much to be desired..." and worked from that. I understand that marketing requires scrubbing all these old recordings clean, lest modern ears be gravely offended and people return sets because they got a "defective copy". My Spotlite lp's of this material don't sound any better, so Mosaic if far from being the worst offender in this category, but come on, this is Charlie Parker, is anybody going to step up to the plate and do it right?

Edit: Jonathan, I just saw your comment on this thread, thanks!... I don't know what sources you used for this transfer, but are they that quiet that the Parker samples on the Mosaic website have no discernible background noise?.. I understand YOU don't use noise reduction, but maybe someone else did?...

I found some sound samples online from the Fremeaux Charlie Parker edition, and in particular the "Cool Blues" one does have more top end to the cymbals sound. Also I hear more distortion, probably because they did not work from pristine copies. Btw, I agree that the horns sound better on the Mosaic samples than on my Spotlite lp's.

Edited September 30, 2014 by bogdan101

[jonathanhorwich]

Again, I want to emphasize we do not scrub these recordings clean. I'm not sure where this is coming from but we have no such purpose and no such action. We try and make them free of big and obvious clicks and pops (done by hand, manually, so as not to affect the sound) and we try and restore original tonality. As in all our IPI releases for ourselves or for Mosaic. I'm not sure what I'm missing here in listening but these don't sound scrubbed clean to me at all. You can hear the swishy cymbals as originally recorded, etc. I'm not sure what else to do with the recordings but what we've done with all our reissues. Improve tonality and the communication of the players without screwing up the sound. Scrubbing clean has never been on our minds nor in our results. Listen to the Hemphill we put out. All the original faults in the recording are there, big time. if anyone would like to communicate with me directly they can at jonathanhorwich@me.com. Thanks.

Edited September 30, 2014 by JLH

[king ubu]

Yeah, well, with Bird it's any effin' note anyway ... and of course skipping the Vee Jay Mosaics was a bad move

[jonathanhorwich]

Edit: Jonathan, I just saw your comment on this thread, thanks!... I don't know what sources you used for this transfer, but are they that quiet that the Parker samples on the Mosaic website have no discernible background noise?.. I understand YOU don't use noise reduction, but maybe someone else did?...

I found some sound samples online from the Fremeaux Charlie Parker edition, and in particular the "Cool Blues" one does have more top end to the cymbals sound. Also I hear more distortion, probably because they did not work from pristine copies.

Thanks. The sources we used were from Mosaic as provided. I won't go into details but as you know we absolutely do not use and do not like noise reduction. Hate it. (Don't get me going on noise reduction.) I also hate those click and pop removers that are automatic. Very often used by companies but it can screw up the sound. We never do that. We do manually remove clicks or pops that are loud and distracting without hurting the sound as there is a way to do it. You have to be careful when you hear more top end or more this. You don't know if they EQ'd it up or what. I just know that from the masters we were given we have not screwed with the sound. But you will hear more of the original faults such as the drum sound they used to get or was part of a bad transfer (bad azimuth setting?). I'm sure you all know that unlike some of the other reissues we've worked on, with Parker there are no original tapes to go back to. Nothing. One relies on earlier transfers and that puts one at a big disadvantage as you all know and may be the cause of some of what we're all hearing, like the drum sound. Could be or could be the original recording. I know I'll never know. On the Hemphill I was dying to get my hands on the original multitrack tapes without some of the faults of the transfer to the two track tape I had. But I could not find it and no one knew about it. Just had to settle for what I had. At least you can hear the music. Same with Parker. And I think with improved tonality in this case.

I'm waiting to hear from Erwbol on what masters he compared the Mosaic posting to so I can check this out carefully. But the above pretty well covers it.

Thanks.

Edited September 30, 2014 by JLH

[erwbol]

Hello Jonathan,

I noticed your post this morning but was away for the day (dog had to visit the trim salon). I'll post a proper reply in a couple of hours.

Thank you for taking an interest in the discussion on Organissimo.

[jonathanhorwich]

Thanks and appreciate that. The problem is the transfers we start with have those swishy sounds whether from the original recording or lousy transfers (so common). But not from noise reduction. Thanks.

[AllenLowe]

just a word on CEDAR - it takes ears, but it can be done right without distortion or attenuation of the highs; I say this from about 15 years experience and thousands of hours; also lots of Mosaics used CEDAR (when Doug Pomeroy did them, that I know) but yes, the really big clicks and pops usually have to be done by hand, either by whatever process you are using or by going right to the wave form.

[jonathanhorwich]

Thanks for this on CEDAR. Glad to hear it works well. I've never used it so can't speak about it. But unlike many people the tape hiss of the 60s and clicks and pops just don't bother me that much. I hear the music. But with that said, we do try and remove the distracting noise without in anyway affecting the musicality or tonality.

P.S. As an added note, I just listened to two different other transfers of the Parker Moose the Mooche. I won't name names as that is not the point but both have their cymbals very attenuated so the swoosh sound is very subdued. The midrange is very distorted. I then had someone who has the original 78s check theirs and they said the cymbals are very attenuated and you can barely hear them but the swoosh is there for sure. This is just more data. The link on the Mosaic site is being fixed so it has final versions of some of the things we have done so far. Hope this helps. It helped me to get some perspective here.

Edited September 30, 2014 by JLH

[crisp]

The worst were those Verve CDs (form the 90s ) that had someone shouting take numbers from the booth before each false start. The shouting was usually louder than the music and had me jumping for the volume knob half the time.

When I rip CDs with alternate takes, I generally don't rip them at all.

The loudest take announcements I've heard are Sonny Stitt's on the VEE of Only the Blues. Holy moley. They're deafening. Almost funny actually.

I like alternate takes when they are complete -- in fact I don't even tag them as such; I don't care if they are alternates, I'll decide if I like them or not.

What does annoy is when chit-chat is left at the start of these. Again the worst culprit is a VEE: Motion by Lee Konitz. Almost every take is ruined.

of course skipping the Vee Jay Mosaics was a bad move

Yup. Track order wouldn't matter to me now.