It's becoming a familiar story. Take the back catalog of the most popular artists, claim to re-mix or remaster it, and roll it out to a public that is hungry for something new from their favorite artists. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, who's next? Well, I guess it's Bruce Springsteen! We can only hope that the product lives up to the hype. Oh yeah, back to your question, have I heard of the Plangent Process? Sure, why not? |
Here you go Hodo...
http://audiophilereview.com/analog/plangent---a-better-way-to-transfer-analog-tape.html |
Most of the songs on those early albums were great but the sound was pretty bad. Hopefully this "new" system will bring some sonic improvements. |
Read the audiophile review article, seems to make a lot of sense but as always the proof will be in the pudding. Learned a new term "judder", "the slower high frequency jitter of tape, as contrasted to clock jitter in digital".
My question, if the original analog tape sounds "bad" will improved methods of analog to digital transfer help the sound quality significantly? Again, we shall see but hoping for the best, the music certainly deserves it. |
Heck, the sound continues to be awful on his recent work. It's too bad, because the music is amazing. Either he's deaf or that's the way he wants his records to sound. |
Im one of many firm believers in Plangent Processing. Its been used on live Grateful Dead recordings since at least the 1973 Winterland box set released in 2008. That was a ¼ two track tape recording. Theyve used it on their annual box sets, all eleven Daves Picks and some of the Road Trips series. Just read some of the comments about it and Jeffrey Normans work on their Spring 1990 (The Other One) order page.
However, PP is not a fix-all. Born to Run as an example, has other issues besides tape machine errors. In order to build the wall of sound feel, tracks were overdubbed so often the original tracks deteriorated. Thats different from a single undubbed source tape being corrected based on anomalies in the recording machine.
Nothin' left to do but smile, smile, smile (~):} |
This mastering stuff always fascinates. I wish the catalog were being released on SACD. It is a Sony product afterall.
Still, it is going to be great having some of these titles remastered fort he 1st time. Let us hope it is a job well done! Happy Listening. |
Love Bruce and will bite as well-- but don't expect sonic masterpieces. I have first pressings of most of his albums and they consistently are among the worst sounding---exceptions being Tunnel of Love, Lucky Town, Human Touch, Wrecking Ball and High Hopes. I must also note that Born To Run was purposely murky (missed wall of sound attempt) and Darkness had a sound that was perfect for the feeling that the Boss was trying to evoke. Magic is on the other hand, one of the worst sounding cds that I have ever heard. The vinyl is better but that is not saying much. |
Yeah, there's more problems than wow/flutter with those tapes, and that's all the PP does. |
PP also lowers distortion substantially. These sound very different, for the better. |
Jamie, once distortion has been recorded into the music, you can't take it out. It's like taking the distortion out of the guitars of SRV. Do you take out the good distortion, or the bad distortion? You can't differentiate.
Like I said, It's a solution looking for a problem. |
Cma39, you don't understand what the process tries to accomplish. Tape recorders add specific types of distortion to the music signal and the Plangent Process can analyze and remove some of these distortions. |
The process corrects for wow/flutter..... that's it. Recorders can only add 2nd order distortion, which is good. |
Any one here buy the BS album collection vol. 1?
If so, did you buy the Vinyl or CD edition?
PLease comment on the sound of this set.
Happy Listening! |
No, untrue.
Recorders add third, and the transports add a lot of IM distortion. |
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Are you familiar with other kinds of distortion besides second and third harmonic? What about intermodulation distortion - sum and difference non-harmonically related sidebands caused by frequency modulation of the audio by the transport.
The Process fixes that - IM is on tape at levels that if it were a preamp or amp you'd s**tcan it, but because it's caused by the transport, and called and measured as "flutter" it's real hard for some folks to get their head around the idea --- an almost aggro backlash response to basic FM theory that's been around since dirt. |
IMO: The new Boss CD set sounds excellent. Not sure how much the Plangent system contributed to that but obviously it didn't hurt. |
"judder" is a sniglet or neologism [aka "portmanteau"] formed from 2 or more words being morphed together to form a novel word, such as "giant+enormous=GINORMOUS." in judder’s case it is a combo of shudder and jitter, describing for the first time the psychovisual phenom of flicker in 24 frame-per-second projected motion picture material esp. when further distorted by the telecine process lacking proper 3:2 pulldown. i myself can’t easily watch large-screen movies for that reason, i get a queasy feeling akin to seasickness, when i see that shake magnified a jillion times up there. |
I own several CDs mastered with the Plangent Process. All discs sound incredible.
Happy Listening! |
See article in July-Aug 2021 TAS! |
thompsonkirk
Thank You for the TAS tip. Happy Listening! |
