Time Life CDs

Does anyone know where I can get a comprehensive list of Time Life CDs. I am most interested in "Rock and Roll Era", "Classic Rock", "Sounds of 70's", "Sound of 80s" and "Your Hit Parade"

Would like to cross reference with my collections to make sure I am not missing anything.

Thanks all

Edited by Fetta

From what I understand, many of T-L's compilation series have been reworked. For example, Sounds of the Seventies is now called Ultimate Seventies, which is basically Sound of the Seventies I and II in one package. Shame really, as there were some other discs in that original package that had some high/low/no chart material.

I think Sounds of the Eighties may also be out of print. Best bet is to check eBay. Ron's listing on the site he gave you will at least give you a strong start on what to look for.

If you have the compulsive urge to collect (as I would assume many of us on this forum do), you might want to hunt down Time-Life's Solid Gold Soul series. Some volumes are repackaged from the discontinued Rhythm & Blues series, and there are quite a few new entries. There are single-CD volumes for each year from 1956 (1954 and 1955 were available only as as Rhythm & Blues) through 1979, with an early '80s entry, a mid-'80s entry, and a few others. The '70s-era single-year CDs are really outstanding, with superb track selection, and great sound quality (mastering by Dennis Drake). Well worth the hunt, although a lot of these are getting pricey.

The AM Gold series seems to carry a lot of weight with collectors also. Many of the earlier years are repackaged Superhits collections. These, too, extend out to 1979, and I recommend the later ones.

Some seem to like the 2-CD sets for Singers And Songwriters. I don't have many of them, so I can't comment.

In general, if you can find collections released on Rhino, Razor & Tie, or Time-Life released between 1992 and 1996, you'll be satisfied. Anything released after 1996 is generally mastered too loud, with compression/maximization ruining the sound quality (do a search on "the loudness wars" on the stevehoffman.tv, for more info.) There are a handful of Time-Life collections released between 1996 till around 2002 that aren't mastered too loud, but those are the exceptions rather than the rule.

Reason being - Sounds Of The Seventies uses analog sources - AM Gold uses digital.

Hey Aaron,

I think the AM Gold series was released starting in 1993 or 1994. Sounds Of The Seventies has dates of 1988 or 1989-1991 as I recall. On the back of my SOS discs, it says The high resolution of this compact disc may reveal limitations inherent in the original analog recordings.