Ein Bericht von Steve Hoffman beim Abhören der Mastertapes von Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours…
Die Rhino LP wird klingen… wie keine andere LP/CD zuvor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
O-Ton Steve Hoffman:
What a great album.
I bet (original Capitol cutting engineer) Ken Perry must have cut 500 sets of lacquers for that one album over the course of two or more years; what a tremendous hit it was.
It is obvious to me that when they were recording and mixing this album they KNEW it was going to be a big hit. The care that they took in the mixing (mixing to two tape machines at once, to keep a first generation cutting master AND a pristine first generation safety) shows that they expected the thing to take off.
Cutting the album with Kevin for Rhino was a great challenge. We wanted to be authentic but we also wanted the true sound of the original master mixes to shine through. WB sent me over a bunch of LP’s of RUMOURS from the 1970’s and early 80’s and I duly listened to them all. They were all cut by Ken but all sounded different from each other. Arggh!
I doubt a lacquer had been cut on this album for a great many years, at least since the CD era. Over the run of the album there were so many little things that changed during the mastering that if you had 50 different USA pressings of the album you might have 50 different „styles“ of sound, including big changes in EQ, compression and especially reverb. As the recuts moved into the CD era, ‚verb was dumped on everything to make the album sound more dense (in that bad ’80’s way, I guess). When we received the master tapes (many, many reels) we were surprised to learn that the original tapes were pretty bone dry sounding. In other words, all of the echo that is on the later cuttings of the album and ALL CD versions was NOT on the original pressing of the album. So, it’s not on the new Rhino LP either!
You are going to hear RUMOURS exactly like it was recorded and mixed; no revisionist mastering, no bass bump, treble tweaking, echo dumping or other signal processing done by us. It’s very clean sounding, almost mellow and our version has the „sound“ of the initial DJ pressing of the original release except with greater dynamics and improved resolution (due to the improved cutting methods used by us at AcousTech/RTI). I never get tired of this album and I love to play the AcousTech/RTI test pressing. It’s very satisfying to me.
I hope you like it!
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