O-Ton Steve Hoffman zum Pretenders Mastering…
On THE PRETENDERS? Very surprised, yes. The CBS, UK „equalized & limited cutting master“ was used to make all the vinyl and digital worldwide for so many years that when we heard the original mixes without the mastering limiting the dynamics surprised us. The original mixes were never used in production at all because they are missing the wacky stuff that was added in Post. Like the beeps, sound effects and some vocal stuff that was flown or edited/dubbed in to a tape copy to make an acceptable cutting tape as afterthoughts. Then that tape was re-copied and was used to make every LP recut and digital version (Target CD).
The original mixes (as unearthed a few years ago by our Forum Hero Bill Inglot) were used for this Gold version and the AIR and WESSEX studio tapes are neat but unfinished and we had to fly in the missing stuff per instructions prepared by engineer Kevin Tuffy at Inflight, UK. Our final masters were composited at 192 khz/24 bit. A first for me but impossible to release this album from first generation sources without the inter-step. After all, the mixes sound great by themselves but if you know this album well the missing stuff sticks out like a sore thumb. Some of the songs needed varispeed, etc. but this was done in London at Inflight. Robert Vosgien at Capitol Tower Mastering was my partner in this tricky and complicated venture (heck, I would have been totally lost without him) and did all the compositing while matching to an original pressing and the CBS, LTD analogue tape. Bob loves this album so he put in days (and nights) doing the post-production work to get it to sound just like the real deal only THREE generations of analog tape earlier! (Yea!) Thanks, Bob and thanks to Bill Inglot for finding the real mixes. We would have scrubbed the project without them.
It has a nice, fat sound with big, powerful bass (on the original flat mixes but shaved off the cutting master) plus amazing dynamic range. You’ll notice it mainly on the bass drum, etc. It’s quite amazing after all these years of not knowing it was even there.
By the way… Audio Fidelity bringt im Herbst: Lynyrd Skynyrd „Second Helping“, Vince Guaraldi „Greatest Hits“, John Mayall with the Bluesbreakers
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