The very best sound: Direct to Disc

A couple weeks back I proselytized, in the thread entitled "Why no interest in reel-to-reel if you’re looking for the ultimate sound?", that Doug Sax had proven in the early-1970’s that a direct-to-disc LP afforded higher sound quality than any tape recording ever made. I suggested buying every direct-to-disc LP you can get your hands on.

The first d-2-d LP I heard of (thanks to JGH), and subsequently heard in 1972, was the second Sheffield (S-10): The Missing Linc by Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Collegues (the cream of L.A. studio musicians, including bassist Jerry Scheff---renown for his work with Elvis, Roy Orbison, T Bone Burnett, Richard Thompson, the doors, lots of others---and drummer Jim Keltner---Ry Cooder, Bill Frisell, Randy Newman, Dylan, George Harrison, John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Steely Dan, Eric Clapton, J.J. Cale, many others). The music on the album is imo pretty corny, but the sound is incredible!

The sound of a d-2-d LP is startling "alive": very "immediate", with incredible transient "snap" (as JGH put it) and punch. In comparison, all but the best tape recordings sound veiled, out-of-focus soft, distant, pale, lifeless. The only thing that came close to the shock of hearing a d-2-d LP was hearing an ESL loudspeaker for the first time. And then hearing my first Decca cartridge, whose sound characteristic was uncannily similar to a d-2-d LP.

As I said above, Sheffield S-10 was the label’s second d-2-d LP, and by the time I heard of it the first---S-9---was out of print. It took me years to find a copy, but find one I did. I now have 13 Sheffields, Pop and Classical. Some actually have musical worth ;-) . One thing to be aware of is that Sax sometimes ran more than one lathe at a time (some LP jackets contain cutter info), and some titles were done with more than one complete side take. So different LP pressings can and do contain different takes!

Another point to make is that Doug Sax didn’t invent direct-to-disc recording, he rediscovered it. Prior to the invention of the tape recorder (by German engineers, for the Nazi war effort. The Allies discovered the recorders in the underground bunkers, and brought them back to the U.S.A.), ALL recordings were made direct-to-disc. Remember the scene in O Brother Where Art Thou, when the hillbillies are singing into the "can" in the radio station? Remember the shot of a lacquer being cut in another room as they did? Direct-to-disc.

Other direct-to-disc record companies sprang up in the wake of Sheffield, the most prolific being Crystal Clear. I have 7 CC’s, including those by The Dillards (you’ve seen them as The Darlings on The Andy Griffith Show), Carlos Montoya, Arthur Fiedler, and Virgil Fox (playing a pipe organ, producing a 16Hz tone on the bottom pedal!). Other labels include M & K (L.A. retailer Miller & Kreisel, where Steve McCormack started his hi-fi career), whose title For Duke (loved by HP) once commanded hundreds of dollars (though I got a copy from Brooks Berdan for $75), and even Cardas (The Gregg Smith Singers, pressed at 45RPM).

One reason many d-2-d LP’s are so musically tepid is the musicians’ fear of making a mistake, which requires scrapping the lacquer and starting anew. The cost of doing that runs into thousands of dollars. That’s why Sax and Mayorga used the best studio musicians, who are used to working under the intense pressure of studio recording, which can be very intimidating to non-studio players. Bands actually break up while making their first recordings, finally hearing what they actually sound like. Such was the case for Russ Kunkel, who went on to become a very successful studio drummer (James Taylor, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, Stephen Stills, Lyle Lovett, etc.). The other members of the band he moved to L.A. with continued to toil in obscurity.

The Thelma Houston Sheffield is a little brash, some thinking there is overload taking place somewhere in the chain (the cutter head or electronics, the mic pre-amps, or perhaps even the mics). The Sheffield Drum Record suffers no such imperfection; just clean, extremely dynamic drumsets played by Keltner and Elvis’ drummer Ron Tutt. Keltner’s playing is good, but Tutt choked a little. ;-)

I don’t own Flamenco Fever or the L.A. 4 discs, having grown weary of using mediocre music as source material for speaker evaluations before finding copies. Time is too precious to me now to waste on just good sound---I turned 70 last week. Plus, I'm done evaluating loudspeakers.

One of my favorite records to listen to is: Les Brown and his band

I was also wondering if anybody else finds 45 RPM albums to be too noisy?

Keltner plays Paiste cymbals, Tutt A. Zildjians; the two brands sound very different. I played A. Zildjians in my younger years, switching to Paiste 602's in the mid-70's. Keltner is a master at drum tuning, his drums usually sounding great (though live I found his DW's to be too "ringy", LOTS of sustain). Tutt I never heard live, and his drumming with Elvis not to my taste (he's fine in the Roy Orbison tribute show).

Keltner has done far more recording than Tutt, and is a true musical artist, not "just" a drummer. Ry Cooder arranges his recordings around Keltner's availability. And then there was Leon Russell, who didn't care for his drumming. He asked Elton John to dismiss him from the recording sessions for their album together.

@tomic601, Tom and I really hit it off. I would always gravitate to his workbench when I went into Brooks Berdan, Ltd., where I would watch him find the problem in (often) Jadis amps. He is one of only two guys I would let near a Music Reference amp (the other being clio09). Both of mine (RM-10 Mk.2 & RM-200 MK.2) are unmolested, factory stock. The mods guys would perform on his amps drove Modjeski mad!

About Keltner and Tutt’s drums: in the 70’s (when the Sheffield albums were made) Keltner was playing double-headed (heads on both top and bottom of each drum) Pearl drums, Tutt single-headed (top/batter head only) Ludwigs. So their drum sound could not have been more different. Plus, they used different size sticks, and had different "touches".

Keltner came to Rock/Pop from Jazz, having been born in Tulsa and moving to Pasadena at a young age. His favorite drummer (one of mine too) is Roger Hawkins (The Swampers---the Muscle Shoals studio band, Traffic). To hear the father of Rock ’n’ Roll drumming, listen to Earl Palmer (Little Richard, The Wrecking Crew). I, along with lots of other drummers, used to go see him play live at Chadney’s Steak House in Burbank (which closed in the late-90’s), across the street from the NBC studio where The Tonight Show is taped.

Oh, and perhaps most important of all: Keltner favours metal-shelled snare drums (particularly brass), Tutt wood. Brass is brighter and wetter (more high-frequency ring), wood darker and drier (less ring). Of course, that is effected by the tensioning/tuning of the batter and resonant heads, the tensioning of the snare wires, and the amount of damping applied to the top/batter head, via absorptive pads (as Ringo preferred) or Moon Gel. John Bonham played his Ludwigs wide open (no damping), except for his bass (kick) drum.

To hear the difference between metal and wood-shelled snare drums, compare the snare sound on "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down" to the other tracks on The Band's brown album. To play the press roll on the former, Levon required the sensitivity and "wetness" of his old metal-shell Ludwig Supraphonic (those made prior to 1963 brass, '63 and later aluminum alloy). The wood-shell snare drum that was part of his stage set was too dry/dead to make for a good pr. That drum originally came with gut snare wires (as opposed to more modern metal), which, considering it's sound, it may have still been fitted with. VERY dry.

As a producer and recording engineer Mr. Miller changed the music industry for the better. Brad Miller had two driving passions - sound and quality. If you count yourself as an audiophile, you probably owe Brad Miller some measure of gratitude.

Brad Miller (1939-1998), was an acknowledged master of recording outdoor environmental and man-made machine sounds. He began his career by recording the sounds of steam engine railroad trains as a teenager during the 1950's, releasing LP's on his own Mobile Fidelity Records. In 1965, he founded the Mystic Moods Orchestra (a.k.a. Nature's Mystic Moods), which mixed the sounds of machines and/or the environment with orchestral music. In 1977, he founded the renowned audiophile label Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. He produced music projects through the companies Mobile Fidelity Productions and Mobile Fidelity International Productions. Brad Miller died September 9, 1998. In 1955, Brad recorded the sounds of one of a steam locomotives for the first time. He borrowed his father's Ampro monaural tape recorder along with a crystal microphone, and recorded passing steam trains from the Burbank tower, and at Surf, California where he vacationed with a telegrapher friend. A kind Los Angeles round-house foreman installed a power converter (32 volts DC to 110 AC) so that Brad could make his first cab recording aboard a Southern Pacific #4455 engine.

In the fall of 1957, Brad and a friend named Jim Connella decided to record and release a record album of Southern Pacific steam locomotive sounds. In March, 1958, Mobile Fidelity released album MF-1. They released two more monaural albums before the end of 1958. In September, 1958, Brad traveled through Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska, recording locomotives while living on hamburgers and sleeping in his car. He had purchased an Ampex 601-2 tape recorder and a pair of Electro-Voice microphones, a battery and an ATR converter. The trip resulted in Highball, MF-4, Mobile Fidelity Record's first stereo album. High Fidelity Magazine praised the album.

While recording the sounds of steam locomotives, Brad had on occasion captured other outdoor sounds. This inspired Brad's idea of expanding the soundstage to give the listener a more panoramic environmental scene. Mobile Fidelity's MF-8, released in September of 1961, was entitled Steam Railroading Under Thundering Skies. As the title implies, the record featured the sounds of locomotives combined with rainstorms. The album was recognized in Billboard Magazine as their "specialty pick of the week".

One night in 1964, a San Francisco disc jockey - Ernie McDaniel of KFOG-FM - played Steam Railroading Under Thundering Skies on one turntable and some music on his other turntable, and broadcast both simultaneously. Listeners responded very favorably, as the station's phones lit up and hundreds of requests to hear the combination flooded the radio station. McDaniel relayed his actions to Brad Miller, and Miller spent three months creating One Stormy Night, the first album of the Mystic Moods Orchestra. Among many other productions with the highly successful Mystic Moods Orchestra, Brad Miller also made two solo "sound-effects" albums in the late 70's and early 80's. The Power and the Majesty and The Power and the Majesty Volume 2 which were both released on Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. """

R.