No problem @billpete, you confusion is quite understandable. I’ll look through YouTube videos and see if I can find the ones wherein Chad Kassem, Bernie Grundman, Michael Fremer, and Kassem’s QRP (Quality Record Production) production manager sit around for a coupla hours discussing the whole Tea For The Tillerman debacle.
In the meantime, let me see if I can simplify and clarify things for you..Since the advent of Dolby "A" noise reduction (a more complex, full range version of the Dolby "B" and "C" used in cassette decks), it has been very widely used in recording studios. By the time of the taping of Tea For The Tillerman, there were few recordings made without it.
Here’s how Dolby A works. When a 2" 16 or 24 track master tape is mixed down to two channels (left and right, for stereo), the mix is almost always recorded onto a 1/4" or 1/2" master mix tape, the recorder running at either 15 inches per second or 30. During the recording of the master mix tape, the recording engineer, record producer, and sometimes the artist make choices regarding equalization, compression, relative track levels (volume), added reverb and/or echo, etc., etc., etc.
And here’s the important relevant point to be made: when that 2-trk master mix tape is made, the engineer and producer can decide to make it either with or without Dolby A noise reduction employed. Dolby A is a 4-band (four different frequency "groups", each with it’s own frequency response curve. I don’t know the specific frequency bands involved, but for the sake of argument let’s hypothetically imagine them to be 1,000-2,000Hz, 3,000-5,000Hz, 6,000-10,000Hz, and 10,000-20,000Hz. The numbers aren’t important in what we are trying to understand here.).
And here’s the crucial thing to understand: when that tape is made with Dolby A noise reduction employed, the Dolby circuit boosts each of the frequency bands, the boost having a frequency response curve, similar to the filters in a loudspeaker’s crossover. And during playback of the tape in the process of mastering, the Dolby A playback circuitry applies a complimentary but exactly opposite amount of frequency response reduction, returning the response of the 2-trk. tape to that of the 2" 16 or 24-trk. master tape. And since the noise inherent in all analogue tape recording is added to the signal created on the 2-trk. tape---the noise is organically mixed in with the sound contained in each of the 16 or 24 tracks---when the Dolby playback circuitry reduces the frequency response of the signal sent to the recording head, the noise inherent in the signal is reduced by the exact same amount, hence noise reduction is achieved.
When the original mastering engineer received the production master tape of Tea For The Tillerman, he apparently mistakenly assumed the tape had been made with Dolby A employed. It hadn’t. So he used the Dolby playback circuitry, which applied the frequency response reduction curves to the signal used to "cut" the lacquers needed to make an LP.. Since the tape had NOT had the Dolby frequency response boost added to in when it was made, when the Dolby A playback circuit applied the response "cuts" to the signal, the "flat" response of the multi-track master tape now resembled the response curves of the Dolby playback circuitry, not the sound on the tape itself. Oops.
The end result is that the LP was mastered with severe cuts in frequency response, cuts increasing in level as the frequencies increased (deeper cuts at 5,000Hz that at 2,000Hz, say). That’s why the original LP sounds dead, lifeless, missing a significant degree of it’s high frequency content, along with other attributes such as dynamic range. That includes the original pink label Island pressing.
Bernie Grundman made his discovery when mastering the album for Classic Records, whenever that was. When Chad Kassem bought Classic Records from Michael Hobsen, that purchase included the "metal works" for TFTT that Grundman had made for Classic."Metal "works" is the term for the metal disc that is made from the lacquer that a mastering engineer "cuts" (literally), required in the production of all LP’s.
I hope my explanation makes sense, but if not ask away!
