Collecting 1979

Good list for high quality versions of these songs! I own most of the CDs on your list and I agree that they all sound good. I'm sure there are a few cases where slightly better sounding versions can be found on other CDs, but you really can't go wrong with the discs on your list.

The only frustrating cases for me are the following:

GQ - "Disco Nights": Only one CD (the Mega Hits Dance Classics) has the correct 45 version but the mastering is terrible...incorrect speed, highly compressed and bad eq. This one needs a proper CD release of the correct 45 version.

Amii Stewart - "Knock On Wood": It sounds fine on the CD you listed, but this is one where I prefer the 45 version by a mile (gotta have that sound effect intro). Unfortunately, the only 2 CDs with the 45 version are needledrops and too maximized. I finally stitched together a recreation of the 45 using needledrops of the 45 for the intro and the 12" for the rest, and it turned out quite nice.

Roscoe wrote: Another observation about your list: It appears that you have a preference for the work of Bill Inglot, who had a hand in mastering most of the discs on your list. Inglot's mastering gets a bad rap in audiophile circles, but I think his work on many of the Rhino and Time-Life comps from the early 90s was quite good. Eq may be a little too bright for some people's taste, but it usually worked well on the 70s and 80s material. Not to mention the fact that he often found the best possible tape sources.

Very true all the way around, although I know many on the stevehoffman.tv mastering forum that really like his work. I'm a fan as well.

For the pop songs that we routinely deal with on this board, I think Bill Inglot has a knack for finding the best tape sources, and then doesn't use any additional compression or limiting. To my ears, that's the secret of good mastering. His EQ choices are a little treble-heavy, compared to some other mastering engineers, but I like it.

For the disco tunes that were all over the charts in 1979, the Disco Years compilations were head and shoulders above any of the competition, before or since. Some of the Time-Life collections I listed have differently-EQ'd digital clones of Bill Inglot's Rhino mastering, and those Time-Life collections tend to blunt out the high EQ just a little bit.

EdisonLite wrote: CrapFromThePast, when you say you've picked the ones with "best sound quality", what characteristics make the best sound quality to you? Brightest? dullest? loudest (most compressed)? No compression whatsoever? midrange boosted a lot while treble is sacrificed (ala the Dan Hersch mastered CDs on Varese & Rhino)?

Basically, I'm looking for the most accurate representation of what the engineer heard in his monitors when he was doing the two-track mixdown (or one-track for mono).

There are things that immediately rub me the wrong way:

(1) Additional compression/limiting/maximization at the mastering stage. If you look at the waveform and all the peaks hit the same level, then some kind of compression and/or limiting was applied. Or, it was just mastered too loud and clips. This is inexcusable for older pop, although inevitable for most pop produced since the mid-'90s. Ultimately, your ears should be the final judge, and my ears tend to react badly to this.

(2) Bad EQ. This can be the so-called "smiley-face", with an excessive boost in bass and treble, or just dull-sounding and lifeless. I've heard both extremes on some of the off-brand compilations. With a respected mastering engineer (Bill Inglot, Dennis Drake, Doug Sax, Steve Hoffman, Vic Anesini, Mark Wilder, Barry Diament, ...), the EQ is usually pretty reasonable.

(3) High-generation source tapes. This is a little trickier to detect, unless you're doing comparisons among different CDs. Just like the cassette dubs from your childhood (OK, from MY childhood...), an analog dub never sounds as good as the original source. The lower generation tape sounds more clear, has better definition and has finer detail - I realize that these are pretty nebulous terms, but it's like you're unveiling the music when you use a lower generation source tape.

There are other factors that are sometimes secondary to me, like noise reduction (CEDAR, No-Noise). Some hate it at all costs, and prefer higher-generation source tapes to lower-generation source tapes used with noise reduction. I'm on the fence, and I need to hear it on a case-by-case basis.

For instance, the Queen greatest hits CDs on Hollywood are de-noised, which can suck a little of the "breath of life" out of them. It shows up as a lack of air around the cymbals and high frequencies. Actually, I prefer the Hollywood GH to the import EMI GH collections, which aren't de-noised but use higher-generation source tapes. That's just me. I know the mastering engineers I listed above tend to avoid de-noising software.

Hope that answers your question.

Yeah, that answers the question. And that's a fair way to judge the CDs.

And btw, I think I have a stronger dislike for Denoised CDs.