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Percy Sledge - When A Man Loves A Woman |
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crapfromthepast 
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Joined: 14 September 2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 3 |
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 Topic: Percy Sledge - When A Man Loves A WomanPosted: 08 January 2025 at 10:10pm |
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The song was mixed only to mono when it was a hit in 1966.
I have this song on a total of 47 CDs, more or less. I will now perform the thoroughly unnecessary task of tracing the mastering history on CD. 1984 The song appears on Motown's very early CD More Songs From The Original Soundtrack Of The Big Chill (1984). It runs 2:49 here. Overall, a valiant first effort at getting the song into the digital world. On the plus side: nice EQ, plenty of headroom, no added compression/limiting, and no evidence of added noise reduction on the fade (not that such NR existed in 1984). On the downside: The mono tape was played on a stereo-head deck, and the left and right channels go slightly in-and-out of phase every few seconds. (We can fix this by using just the left channel or just the right channel of the audio.) Plus, there's a tape dropout at 2:42. The same analog transfer is used on the following CDs:
There's a new analog transfer on Atlantic's 7-CD Atlantic Rhythm And Blues 1947-1974 (1985 original release). It runs 2:50. The first few seconds are very muddy-sounding, with a loss of most of the high end. It seems that there's a little tape drag in the first half of the song, too, when speed-corrected and matched with the Motown mastering above. The same analog transfer is used on:
There are a handful of mail-order compilations that received their tracks on analog reel-to-reel tape, and, as a result, don't sound very good. Avoid these:
There's a new analog transfer on Rhino's It Tears Me Up (The Best Of Percy Sledge) (1992). It runs 2:50. It's an improvement over the earlier masterings. It's in true mono here, with both channels being the same audio, and not a mono tape played on a stereo tape head. It seems to be free from the tape drag that's on the 1985 Atlantic set. There's no dropout at 2:42. The same analog transfer is used on:
There's a new analog transfer on Rhino's 6-CD The R&B Box - 30 Years Of Rhythm & Blues (1994). It runs 2:54, which is about 5 beats longer than everything listed above. It sounds comparable to the 1992 mastering, but it has tape drag issues similar to the 1985 Atlantic set. The first half of the song seems to run a little slow. The same analog transfer is used on:
There's a new analog transfer on Rhino's The Very Best Of Percy Sledge (1998). It runs 2:54. It's a definite improvement on the R&B Box, in that it doesn't have the tape drag issue and the first few seconds of the song sound much cleaner than everything listed above. The second half of the song pretty much sounds just like R&B Box, including the same fade points. The same analog transfer is used on:
I prefer Rhino's The Very Best Of Percy Sledge (1998). If you'd prefer a multi-artist compilation, may as well go for the Rhino's inexpensive Millennium New Soul Party (2000). These two discs have a nice, crisp first half of the song with no tape drag, and play longer than all of the pre-1994 releases. |
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