Listening to Kenny Burrell Midnight Blue

I have not yet purchased Midnight Blue, partly because I have a copy of the original. Frankly of the Music Matters re-issues I have purchased some have more noise than the originals in my collection. All of my originals were purchased new and have been played sparingly on good equipment over the years. But this raises a question about the whole vinyl re-issue business. What exactly are we getting for what I view as a lot of dollars? Last week I compared track for track The Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Time Further Out" album. Redbook CD vs. Music Matters reissue. I picked this one for several reasons, a major one being that the Music Matters vinyl copy is one of the best sounding recordings in my collection. I took the time to level match and tried two cartridges: Ortofon 2M Black, and an Audio Technica AT150ANV. The AT sounded more similar to the CD so I went with it for most of the listening. The two formats sounded quite similar overall, astonishingly good in fact. I am not sure that there was enough difference for me to discern one from the other in a double blind test, but overall my impression was that the vinyl was a bit richer, maybe a bit more bass, the CD was quieter and perhaps had a bit more air especially on the softer passages when Paul Desmond was soloing.

The answer is that the engineers in the early days of stereo had yet to discover with two track, the phantom middle channel. Most, if not all, of the early jazz recordings suffered from this hard left, hard right/dual mono effect. From what I've been told, the first jazz LP to discover that phantom middle channel - and essentially by accident - was the Contemporary recording Art Pepper +11. Koenig/DuNann because of mixer limitations had no place to the last instrument; in the end, their solution was to mix half in the left and half in the right channel and voila the center image.

As far as the echo issue goes. I have a third gen, 15 ips copy of Midnight Blue and it's on the tape. Whether it was there initially or they got some print through because no one periodically rewound the master (upkeep of the masters is a real hit or miss operation) is anyone's guess.

Oh yes, the MM release is a darn good facsimile of the tape. Just a little bit missing here and there but the LP ismy still wonderful sonically and musically.

Myles, thanks for the info, very interesting and informative.
I guess one has to also remember that any company that is in the reissue business is probably a little restricted by the condition of the original master tape that they get to utilize. Therefore, if there is echo on the master tape and it is caused by print through, then I guess that's what you are going to hear on the reissue ( unless the engineer removes it and thereby takes the risk of impacting the overall presentation).

Myles,

I think your point is well taken that in the early days of stereo recording there was a steep learning curve and a whole lot of ping pong nonsense from one channel to the other and a void in the center. On the other hand, maybe this problem was more pronounced at some studios than others. On the 1959 recording, Kind of Blue (Columbia), we hear Miles Davis in the middle, John Coltrane in the left channel, and Cannonball Adderley in the right channel. The piano, bass and drums spread across the back stage from left to right. Several Brubeck records (Columbia) from that era have similar spacing with Desmond generally front and center. MJQ (Atlantic) generally had natural spacing too with Jackson front right, and Lewis front left most of the time. You have me thinking of re-listening to a lot of records now, as though I needed an excuse ;-). Thanks!