|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
24.167.222.192
It turns out about 10yrs ago I must have bought two copies of "Belafonte At Carnegie Hall". One mono, one stereo. I must not have been too impressed, as I never played it again.
I just looked them over and the mono copy is in really good condition, and the stereo is decent, with one deep scratch to one track.
My tastes have changed so I was going to transfer one over to digital. I can probably clean up the scratch, so which one has the best sound? I know I could listen to both and make up my own mind, but I have a lot of LPs I want to get digitized.
I get the impression from the liner notes it is ok to play the mono with a stereo cartridge. Is that true?
It's funny I didn't even know or remember that I had two copies.
Follow Ups:
I tried to listen for electronic artifacts on voices in the stereo version, as a common occurence in stereo offerings from that era. Was surprised to hear barely any trace of steely electronic signatures. The stereo version also projected a cavernous image of the hall venue beyond the capability of the mono version.
Interesting as the Belafonte ( carnegie and return to Carnegie ) series is some of the best recordings ever done to LP ...
Later Gator,
Dave
Nobody I know hears music in mono. I like the stereo version.
tee hee.
Have you listened to the record? :-)
-Wendell
Record the stereo version, except for the damaged cut. Copy that one from the mono.
Also mono playback with a stereo cartridge should be OK. Some early stereo releases warned against playback with mono cartridges. I assume that was due to the larger conical tip size?
"The piano ain't got no wrong notes." Thelonious Monk
Please take this as gentle kidding, not mean spiritedness, but isn't it odd that you feel you cannot take the time to compare the LPs, but you do have the time to make a digital copy of one of the two versions? Will you ever have time to listen to the digitized version, whichever one you choose? Another way of looking at this is that it is not important what any of us think; if you only save one of the two versions, that's the only one you will ever hear.
Having registered my sense of irony, I would vote for mono, strictly as an audio purist.
Of course he may have listened but may still want to query for an opinion.
ET
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936
I am sure I listened to one of them a long time ago. I must not have cared for it.
I happened to be reading something and there was a reference to that album. I had noticed one of them and while looking for something else I saw the other one.
I find it easier to program albums I have digitized as I can be doing other stuff. With an album you are up every 15-25 minutes. I can do the recording while watching TV. :
I would have done a search but never thought the topic would have been discussed.
I thought maybe one was considered the version to have.
As to the guy who doesn't approve of or questioned my time management skills, well they need work. I'm very aware of that.
As a young kid, HB at Carnegie was one of my favorite albums, and I came to learn to sing every song on there. That version that I enjoyed so much must have been the mono one, because that's all we had back in the late 50s. That is why I recommended the mono version.
To the guy who mentioned that the mono and the stereo were recorded on the same date, are you sure? Because I recently purchased the re-issue of the stereo, and I don't love it as much. Either this is due to the mere 55 or so years that have passed, or there is something different about some of the renditions of the songs that I don't like as much. "Mathilda", for example, sounds different from my memory of it.
Both albums I have are original releases, same recording dates. I was going to pull it up on Discogs as that is the data base that Vinyl Studio uses. That is when I noticed they had different letters, LOC and LSO 6006.
Yep, I'm 100% sure.
I had no idea the 2 versions existed, so when I came upon the mono version a year or two ago I posted a similar question to the OP and someone said they thought it was the exact recording on the same night at Carnegie Hall.
So I played the recordings side by side to listen for audience reactions and little inflections by HB himself and sure enough, they are identical.
Without ever having done such a meticulous comparison, because I no longer have the mono version, I would have said that, for one thing, there are more choruses on "Mathilda" in mono than on "Mathilda" in stereo. Gone are the days when anyone in his or her right mind would "run Venezuela", anyway.
I am going to have to buy an original mono version to see if there is any other reason why my memory of this LP in mono is superior to the reality of the stereo version.
I was a big Johnny Mathis fan back then, too.
Could depend on a lot of things.. Maybe your mono pressing was better/earlier on the master die (is that the correct spelling?...the metal negative that prints the vinyl). It's well known that as they spit out pressings, the quality of the copy diminishes until the metal negative "wears out" or whatever happens.
Seeing as this was the first LP to sell a million copies, I'm sure there are plenty of mono that are better than stereo and vice versa.
It may have been the first double LP to achieve a million is sales. Not sure about that. Elvis Presley RCA debut sold more than a million in 1956.
-Wendell
Both would probably be good, but the stereo one especially so. With good software, you can probably eliminate most if not all of the sound of that scratch, and anyway even the most visible scratches don't necessarily cause major "clicks". So I would try the stereo one.
Stereo
-Wendell
Yes , it is OK to play a mono record with a stereo cartridge. No harm will ensue although a mono cartridge may sound better (everything else being equal).
I posted this question about a year ago. I have both and prefer the stereo. They were recorded at the same time on the same day. I listened to them both and the audience is the same.So if I were to choose one or the other to record, it would be the stereo version.
Edits: 09/23/16
M3, I was thinking about either just using the one mono track or side. I still have to wash the stereo version, although that won't fix that scratch.
And I may have washed it once before. Before I moved, like 9yrs ago, I would keep the unwashed used LPs in one area and the washed but not listened to in a separate place. When I moved I asked a friend, who was a librarian to pack the records thinking he would keep them in order. While he reversed all the alphabetized records, and mixed up the other two categories. I am still looking for records, and finding ones I didn't know I owned.
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: