Beating the RVG Horse

Not sure if anyone is still reading this thread but....

This thread had touched on the original vinyl vs. the CD reissues. As I now have a TT and one Blue Note record I can offer some additional observations - I mean as far as I can get with one record anyway. The record in question is Kenny Dorham's Whistle Stop on a 1984 French reissue (I couldn't bring myself to spend the bread on an original). This seems to be a pretty high quality pressing.

In general, the sound of the horns is fuller, richer and more present, but the record still has some of the RVG hallmarks, such as the piano that sounds like a cheap upright stuffed in a corner and drums that sound like they were recorded as an afterthought. Great music though.

My two cents. I agree that the RVG remastered CDs, while many are creative master pieces, sound noticeably thin. And I think the ones from the early sixties sound more so than the ones from the late fifties as a rule.

Theory one: RVG's original recordings were engineered for home systems commonly in use from the mid fifties to the mid sixties. If my dad or others of this generation that I knew are any indication, they were using large console systems or stand alone tube amps with just OK cartridges and turntables and big boomy drivers. RVG's recordings were engineered "hot" with bumped up the treble so that you could hear the cymbals and horns in some proximity to live versions on HiFi gear in use at the time.

Theory two: RVG is re-mastering his original recordings for use by current audiophiles who he assumes are using tube systems and he has purposely engineered the sound to compliment the bloom of the tube based systems (OK, this seems unlikely).

Theory three: RVG now thinks the bright remastered CD versions sound just fine to him on a boom box or a $200K stereo.

Anecdotal evidence: I have an old Verve LP of Ed Thigpen engineered by RVG in 1962 at his studio and it just sounds marvelous on my not so fancy SS system. No tubes to sweeten it up. Compare that to original recordings RVG has re-mastered of works by Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan and McCoy Tyner around the same time that sound a bit hard and thin to me (but extremely clear) in comparison to this old analog recording, and compared to modern Blue Note and other jazz CDs I own by various artists. I also notice much less of this effect with reissues of Columbia jazz recordings from the fifties (e.g. Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, etc.)

I am not so sure theories one and two hold up under much scrutiny. The material in most of these old recordings is top of the heap, and if you have tone controls, worth getting and monkeying with the sound until like what you hear. Or find good copies of the original vinyl and be prepared to pay $20-$50 and up a pop.

Good analysis, knownothing, and I'd say your handle is a misnomer for sure.

I wonder if RVG simply does not deserve to be canonized as he has been. He engineered recordings of a lot of truly great music made during an extraordinary period of time, but does that make him a great engineer? The remasters call this into some question.

It amazes me that 60 minutes hasn't done a segment on Rudy,I've been waiting for years for it.

Thanks. I guess I am trying to say that Rudy had a great ear once, and perhaps his approach to digital re-masters is not as successful as his original approach was with vinyl. There may be a lot of other factors or actors at work here since there is more to analog and digital production than just the original engineering. Perhaps, (Theory four?) Rudy and/or Blue Note used some kind of filtering process that cleaned up garbage on old tapes and resulted in trading off some of the original recordings roundness for clarity and reduced noise, figuring people who like digital will not tolerate background noise in their listening experience? For whatever reason, I agree with others in that I find the re-mastered RVG CDs to be universally clear but very "bright" compared with other works.

Interestingly I also find the CD re-release of Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain" and "Miles Smiles" to be similarly bright when compared with my CD copy of "Kind of Blue", which is just outstanding and beats many modern recordings in many ways (except for the background hiss). Was this the case with the original analog versions of these Columbia recordings as well, or did the sound get changed in the transfer to digital media?