Pilot of the Airwaves

Thanks to Hykker, I can confirm the mono side of the promo 45 IS simply a mono fold-down of the stereo mix.

(Dang, but it sounds GOOD off the vinyl, though! Sure there's pops, clicks, and assorted analog noise... but the "encoded" audio on the 45 is excellent. Crisp, clean, clear, excellent dynamics...

Perhaps it's the Dolby decoding issues Andy mentioned but it's hard for me to understand sometimes why we can't pull at least equal audio from the source tapes 40 years later with what you assume would be 40 years of technological improvements.)

There's a different thread that talks about a process which was used in the sixties in mono vs stereo processing. I think the process was used on a Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66 album.
It was later possible to use a digital process to remove and improve the sound of the album.

Is there anything similar that can do this for Dolby that was improperly encoded?

I'm starting to think I'm losing it a bit here...

I already had a copy of the Rhino "Radio Daze" series Vol. 2, so "Potted" it up a bit to hear some of the oddities folks were commenting about. What I found was starting at
about 2:25 and through 2:40, I'm hearing a definite capstan drag or some other form of distortion affecting the pitch. It's a bit intermittent in this time range, so
I can't really say exactly where this happens except maybe 2:29-30? And, a couple other spots.

I went out to Discogs and collected a clean copy of the K-Tel 8's Pop Explosion just to compare. On the K-Tel CD, I don't hear any of the "Dragging" effect. I'm getting ready
to once again pull out the Radio Daze disc and see if I can hear this from the disc directly.

One thing that made me curious about this was they were ripped from the same machine, software etc. Has anyone ever encountered songs that were ripped to a file, (In this
case .wav files for both versions), having variances that can be heard? I'm not an engineer nor a software developer, but can speed issues be picked up while ripping? Or,
are there really some issues on the Radio Daze CD that are inherent to the recording?

I just pulled up the CD source from Radio Daze, I can still hear that slowing or doppler like effect. Is it time to call the nice young men in their clean white shirts?

Edited by AdvprosD

Ah, I missed reading this in Ron's post above:

"The second is Rhino's Radio Daze Vol. 2 (1995). It runs 3:18 here, with a nice, untruncated tail to the fade. It has great dynamic range, nice EQ, and no evidence of noise reduction. I
believe that it uses a low-generation tape source, and I think it sounds significantly better than the K-Tel disc. Others in the group noticed that the song has a little tape drag starting
with the beginning of the guitar solo. That's true, but I hadn't noticed it until it was pointed out to me and I made measurements to confirm. (It's not nearly as bad as some of the early
masterings of "Le Freak", for example, which had some nausea-inducing tape drag.)"

And, I am also familiar with the tape drag in "Le Freak."

So, it appears I'm not losing it. Just a little slow on the uptake.

Thanks Andy and Ron!

Another note, the UK single on Island is full length. I
own this 45 as well as the USA Island 45.

Edited by KentT