Direct 2 Disc

For those not familiar with the history of D2D LP records, this is what I read some time ago.

Doug Sax, and possibly Mayorga, was listening to some favored 78 records.  He was impressed by the presence and sense of "aliveness" heard in many of those, but not typically experienced with LPs.  Upon consideration Sax realized they were recorded directly, without the intervention of a R2R master tape copy as had become standard practice with LPs.  So he experimented with a directly recorded LP, and the rest is history.

That history now includes the several wonderful recommended D2D LPs in this post.

I agree about the Sheffield catalog. For example Lincoln Mayorga may have been a part owner/producer (?) for the label and a good musician, but his tastes were far too schmaltzy for me. And while the Harry James Sheffields are great recordings, you need to have an appreciation for the big band music that transitioned the ’40s into the ’50s to fully enjoy those.

So one might ask, "why not more D2Ds available to choose from?" Well, once the cutter head is lowered onto the master disk there is no stopping the performance until the end of that record side. Not every musician is prepared to record under that pressure. Today’s artists are mainly accustomed to having any mistakes corrected on tape or file by the mastering process. And studio time can be expensive. If obvious fluffs happen in a D2D recording the side must be started over. How many times will the producer be willing to do that?

So each of us can hopefully find a few D2Ds with personal appeal and treasure those.