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taco "puttin’ on the ritz"

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Topic: taco "puttin’ on the ritz"
Posted By: edtop40
Subject: taco "puttin’ on the ritz"
Date Posted: 05 April 2008 at 10:25am
i have a cdr copy of this song from somewhere and it is very hissy at the beginning and end.....do any of the 7 other cds containing the 3:25 45 version have a less hissy version?....

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edtop40



Replies:
Posted By: Todd Ireland
Date Posted: 05 April 2008 at 12:04pm
Ed:

I have the 45 version of Taco's "Puttin' on the Ritz" on the following CDs:

Ultimate New Wave Hits (Flashback 72714)
Like, Omigod! The '80$ Pop Culture Box (Totally) (Rhino 78239)

I have the LP version on these CDs:

Rock of the 80's Volume 11 (Priority 53767)
Nipper's Greatest Hits - The '80s (RCA 9970)
Hits of the 80's (Box Set) (Columbia River Entertainment Group 310001)

Unfortunately, the hiss you speak of is present on all of the above CDs and therefore it's probably safe to conclude this is reflective of the master tapes. (I actually find the hiss to be slightly louder on the LP version CDs than on the 45 version discs!)

By the way, I seem to detect some slight "crackling" vinyl artifacts on during the intro and outro on the CDs containing the 45 version that I'm not hearing during the same passages on the LP version. Is it possible the 45 version on the CDs listed above could've been mastered from vinyl???


Posted By: jimct
Date Posted: 05 April 2008 at 12:18pm
Ed, this doesn't answer your question, but just as an aside, this's song meteoric rise to Top 40 poularity in 1983 caught the U.S. division of RCA Records SO completely by surprise, that they didn't feel they could press up normal RCA promo 45s quickly enough to service U.S. radio, especially given its "novelty song" angle. So RCA decided to both quickly purchase and distribute stock copies of the song from their "RCA Canada" division, where it was already popular. They then affixed those small, black-and-white "NOT FOR SALE" stickers, that RCA would sometimes utilize, whenever they would happen to ship out a stock 45 copy to radio, as a "promo 45 substitute." To this day, I still only have 3 of those "stickered Canadian vinyl stock 45s, used as U.S. promo 45s" in my 1983 promo 45s box. I wonder if, later during its hit chart run, RCA might have went back and ever issue a "standard yellow label" RCA promo 45 for "Puttin' On The Ritz?" Does anyone know, or happen to have one? FYI, in all my years inside Top 40 radio, this was the ONLY time I can ever remember a label utilizing a "mass stock 45 purchase, from an international division of their own company" to more quickly service radio, rather than taking the time to press up a standard U.S. promo 45!


Posted By: bdpop
Date Posted: 05 April 2008 at 4:01pm
I worked at a one stop at the time this was released and the stock copies were also the Canadian issue.


Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 05 April 2008 at 7:56pm
Originally posted by Todd Ireland Todd Ireland wrote:

By the way, I seem to detect some slight "crackling" vinyl artifacts on during the intro and outro on the CDs containing the 45 version that I'm not hearing during the same passages on the LP version. Is it possible the 45 version on the CDs listed above could've been mastered from vinyl???

Todd, I noticed this same thing many years ago; however, I don't think it's vinyl clicks. It sounds to me that there may have been a problem with the master tape. On occasion, I've heard this same kind of clicking on cassette tapes.


Posted By: Fetta
Date Posted: 05 April 2008 at 10:29pm
I always just thought it was an effect at the end of the song. Sorta goes along with the fading vocal effect.


Posted By: Todd Ireland
Date Posted: 05 April 2008 at 10:39pm
Aaron:

Now that you mention it, you're right... The artifacts heard on the 45 intro and outro aren't so much "clicking" noises, but rather intermittent short bursts of static. Otherwise, the sound quality on the 45 version sounds very crisp and clear, like one would expect from a tape source.


Fetta:

I too thought the pattern of static sounds heard at the end of the 45 version was just part of the fading vocal effect until I discovered today that the LP version outro doesn't have those static noises!


Posted By: edtop40
Date Posted: 07 April 2008 at 8:17am
the clicking i hear is only in the left channel and occurs every second and a half......almost like a scratch on a record, but it doesn't sound to me as if the track is copied from vinyl.....it must be something in the mastering or from the original source tape....

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edtop40


Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 13 May 2021 at 9:02pm
Puttin' on the Ritz

Regarding hiss:

Most of the hiss is just part of the recording. Part of the unique sound of the song is heavy use of effects on the electronic percussion and vocals. The boxes they used in that era added a lot of hiss anyway, and the
type of reverb they intentionally put on the hi-hat sounds was especially hissy by design.

Regarding clicks in the left channel on the CD reissues:

The clicks are not supposed to be there, and were not on the original records.

The clicks are not from vinyl. They're at somewhat regular intervals (though not to the millisecond!), are only in the left channel, and are not at the rates that would match the rotation of a record. They also have a
weird look in the spectrogram in Adobe Audition, not being a simple infinite spike like you get from debris in a vinyl groove, but rather a very brief tone with tightly packed harmonics which don't reach into the very highest
frequencies. So I say they're an artifact of a tape transfer gone wrong. What exactly went wrong, who's to say.

http://www.top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6974 - As already mentioned , it seems this same mastering, with additional noise reduction (which cleaned up some, but not all, of the clicks), was the
basis for the Hard to Find 45s On CD Vol. 14 release.

I've checked almost all of the CDs in Pat's database which have the 45 version, and they all use the same master. The only ones I didn't check were the Time-Life Club Hits and 80s Music Explosion discs, but
I don't hold out hope that those would be any different than the others.

So apparently the 45 version has yet to be released without some kind of problems. That said, if you remove the clicks from the Like, Omigod! CD version, it's pretty close to what it needs to be.

Anyway, I just ripped my US-distributed Canada-pressed 45 and did some detailed comparisons, so I can clear up some more things about it:

1. The 45 has noise reduction which is not on the After Eight CD album nor on the German or US 12" releases. This noise reduction is exactly the same as what you hear on the clicky mastering that's been showing up
on all of the CD compilations. So I don't think they actually added all that much noise reduction to most of the CD reissues; that's just how the 7" edit sounds.

Given that it was 1982, I expect they were using a dynamic range expander for this—the lower the volume level, the greater the additional reduction in volume applied by the device. An expander is typically used to remove
the extra hiss that gets added when copying tapes. If over-applied, it will mute reverb tails and create a kind of halting effect on the beat. It's on the verge of being over-applied on the 45, to my ears, especially when
you compare it side-by-side to the album. You primarily hear the effect in the intro, the outro, and the tap-dance break, as well as any other moment with mostly percussion.

I experimented with the CD album version and the dynamics processing effect in my audio editor, and was able to get quite close to what you hear on the 45, so I'm pretty sure I've nailed what we're hearing here.

2. The intro of the 45 has what I assume is tape print-through which makes it so that before each clap, you hear a faint, muffled clap. This pre-clap is not on the clicky 45 master that's been used on all the CD
compilation releases so far. It is possible it's not even on all of the 45s, maybe just the Canadian version; someone can check their US pressing in headphones and see.

3. The clicky remaster plays at the same speed as the 45.

But for whatever reason, maybe artistic intent, the song plays very flat, by over half a semitone. To get it into its true key (E flat), you have to play:
• the US 12" at +5.0%
• the After Eight CD at +4.8%
• the 45 or clicky remaster at +4.0%

Or, you can get it the rest of the way down to D if you play:
• the US 12" at -0.9%
• the After Eight CD at -1.1%
• the 45 or clicky remaster at -1.8%

[edited to fix incorrect analysis of the clicky remaster speed; it's the same as the 45.]

No matter what speed you play it at, though, it still sounds kinda weird. That's just part of the charm.


Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 13 May 2021 at 9:28pm
Oh wow... I just took a closer look at the spectrogram for the mastering on Hard to Find 45s On CD Vol. 14, and found that not only was it subjected to excessive noise reduction (as
crapfromthepast already mentioned in the thread about that CD), but this one track is also taken from a lossy source! It's all sparse and dotty above 16 kHz, and lowpassed at about 19.6 kHz. LAME -V1,
I think. Also they faded it out about 2 seconds early.


Posted By: crapfromthepast
Date Posted: 14 May 2021 at 12:28pm
Nice detective work from mjb50!

Here's some mastering info:

LP version (printed 4:36)

The LP version first appeared on CD RCA's Taco album After Eight (copyright 1982). This disc was among the very first batch of CDs released by RCA. It's crazy rare, to the point where I've never seen one out in the wild. Safe to say that you probably won't encounter one unless you go looking for one online, and then it'll run you about $30 (as of May 2021). I don't have this disc myself.

The earliest compilation to include the LP version is RCA's Nipper's Greatest Hits The '80s (1990), where it runs 4:36, runs at 98.7 BPM, and also sounds pretty good overall. There's a differently-EQ'd digital clone on:
  • Time-Life's 2-CD Modern Rock Vol. 8 Early '80s (2000)
I think, but can't confirm, that Priority's Rock Of The '80s Vol. 11 (1994) and the Nipper disc above both use the same analog transfer (possibly both based on After Eight?) The Priority disc is signficantly hissier than Nipper, also runs at 98.7 BPM, and runs 4:37 (extends longer than Nipper by exactly three footsteps). There's a differently-EQ'd digital clone on:
  • Time-Life's 2-CD Modern Rock Vol. 21 Club '80s (2001)
There's a different analog transfer somewhere in the EMI vaults overseas, which runs 99.1 BPM and has a slight desynchronization between its left and right channels (sounds a little swooshy when summed to mono; the RCA and Priority discs don't have this swooshiness when summed to mono). It appears on:
  • EMI Australia's 5-CD Pop Complete (1999)
  • Disky's 8-CD Greatest Hits Of The 80s (2002) - left/right channels swapped
45 version (printed 3:25)

The 45 version first appeared on CD on Rhino's Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 10 (1994), where it runs 3:24, runs at 99.6 BPM, and sounds pretty good overall. There's a glitch in the left channel on the fade, which repeats like a record scratch, but isn't a record scratch. The same analog transfer is used on:
  • Time-Life's Sounds Of The Eighties Vol. 11 1983-1984 (1995; I have a RE-1 reissue but I don't know if that differs from the original release) - differently EQ'd digital clone
  • Rhino Special Editions' cheapie New Wave Hits Vol. 2 (1996) - digitally identical
  • Rhino's promo Selections From Like Omigod (PRCD 400056, 2002) - level-shifted digital clone, about 0.5 dB quieter
  • Rhino's 7-CD Like Omigod (2002) - absolute polarity inverted (insignificant; it just means that the waveform looks upside down)
  • Eric's Hard To Find 45s On CD Vol. 14 '70s And '80s Pop Classics (2012) - digital clone of Like Omigod but with added noise reduction; avoid
As far as I know, there are no other analog transfers of the 45 version on CD. All the masterings trace back to Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 10.

My recommendations

For the LP version, go with Priority's Rock Of The '80s Vol. 11 (1994).

For the 45 version, go with Rhino's Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 10 (1994).

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There's a lot of crap on the radio, but there's only one http://www.crapfromthepast.com - Crap From The Past .


Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 14 May 2021 at 6:39pm
Thanks for the concise summary.

I wasn't going to mention it, but I did stumble across a foreign mastering out in file-sharing land, on a custom compilation, and can't figure out where it came from. Sadly, it's not perfect either:
it has a lengthy tape dropout in the right channel during the intro, resulting in almost the same kind of effect as the NR on the 45 masterings mentioned above. But the rest of the song does not have
excessive NR; it sounds like what was probably intended for the 45 all along.

We could re-create the 45 mix from the album version easily enough, and it would sound better (IMHO) than how it was ever heard in the '80s. But is that inauthenticity desirable?

When evaluating or making my own transfers and remasters, I'm always having to decide how much authenticity I really want. Do I want this song to sound like it did when it was played from a 45? Do I
want to faithfully reproduce what is on the record by undoing as much of the playback system's coloration as possible? Do I want to go further and try to make it sound like the best master tape (or
what I think is on such a tape)? Do I want make it sound competitive and good, by today's standards? Do I want it to match a particular CD mastering? Am I willing to reconstruct any of it using
CD/digital sources?

These are all competing "sounds"! And regardless, the authentic sound of the past is even more complicated because many of us would still mess around with tone controls/EQ to get it sounding "just
right" on our sound systems when we played the records, or we were listening to it on the radio, which has its own aesthetic.

Anyway...


Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 15 May 2021 at 1:12pm
Originally posted by mjb50 mjb50 wrote:

Thanks for the concise summary.

We could re-create the 45 mix from the album version easily enough, and it would sound better (IMHO) than how it was ever heard in the '80s. But is that inauthenticity desirable?


Yes.

Well, to me it is - as long as it's the same mix, but just altering the mastering to try to match the mastering of the 45.

Or is the 45 and LP actually 2 different mixes (and not just mastering approaches)? I know it's edited obviously.


Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 15 May 2021 at 4:01pm
I'm 95.7% sure it's not a different mix.

They just used razor blades and tape, but of course they did not cut up the precious original tape; they used a copy to
work on, and probably also made a copy of the finished edit. Who knows how many copies were made, what decisions were made
along the way to reduce noise and preserve fidelity, and how well calibrated their equipment was.

In the end, at the very least, we can say the Canadian-made 45 ended up with the exact sound and speed as what we hear on
the CDs. The only difference is the unwanted clicks on the CDs. It's easier to remove those clicks than it is to figure out
the exact expander settings they used...although I have a pretty good guess that they were using the dbx 3BX; I used to
have one and it does what I am hearing in this track (basically concentrating the expansion effect in the upper midrange,
affecting drums and cymbals more than vocals and other instruments).


Posted By: Jody Thornton
Date Posted: 15 May 2021 at 5:50pm
Is it just me, or does some of the LP version seem "added to" or "appended to" in some way? During the parts where he goes "Up .... Down" and "Move to the ...." I'll have to check the times, but it sounds kludged in to the single mix.

EDIT: Just dug up a video - so between 3:10 and 3:45 is where most seems to sound unnatural, and I think it's more than just my being more familiar with the edit.


-------------
Cheers,
Jody Thornton
(Richmond Hill, Ontario)


Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 15 May 2021 at 10:25pm
Not sure what you mean.

The last 1:30 of the LP version is a medley which incorporates parts of Broadway Rhythm, Always, White Christmas, Alexander's Ragtime Band, and There's No Business Like Show Business. 35 seconds of this medley were
cut out for the 45 by removing several short sections, but I don't think there was any change to what was left.


Posted By: EternalStatic
Date Posted: 16 May 2021 at 8:28am
EDITED POST: Never mind -- I went back farther in the
conversation and see that the difference in reverb has already
been addressed, and is likely down to the overuse of NR. Wild
the amount of difference that can make!


Posted By: Jody Thornton
Date Posted: 17 May 2021 at 2:52pm
Originally posted by mjb50 mjb50 wrote:

Not sure what you mean.

The last 1:30 of the LP version is a medley which
incorporates parts of Broadway Rhythm, Always, White
Christmas, Alexander's Ragtime Band, and There's No
Business Like Show Business. 35 seconds of this medley
were
cut out for the 45 by removing several short sections,
but I don't think there was any change to what was left.


I just mean to say that the various parts on the LP
version don't sound like they merge as naturally, whereas
the single sounds more merged together naturally.

For example, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=TMstTM01m28 (or pull out an LP version). At 3:31 and
3:42 sound like awkward junction points. I recall the LP
version of Loverboy's "When It's Over" sounding a hair
clunky on "cause ... deep deep down inside" where on the
45-rpm disc the song is edited by jumping to the chorus.
So I wonder if sometimes, content is actually added
rather than edited out.

-------------
Cheers,
Jody Thornton
(Richmond Hill, Ontario)


Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 17 May 2021 at 11:24pm
Originally posted by mjb50 mjb50 wrote:

The 45 has noise reduction which is not on the After Eight CD album nor on the German or US 12" releases. This noise reduction is exactly the same as what you hear on the clicky mastering that's been showing up on all of the CD compilations. So I don't think they actually added all that much noise reduction to most of the CD reissues; that's just how the 7" edit sounds.

This is a very keen observation and one that I hadn't noticed until doing an A/B with the 45 and LP version. The 45 version does, indeed, have noise reduction applied, which totally changes the sound of many elements in the song. The "snare" hits (or electronic handclaps) have quite a bit of reverb on the LP version, but the NR on the 45 has shaved much of it off. The synthesizers also sound noticeably different. Another giveaway is the "tap dance" passage that starts around 1:54. On the 45, the tap dancing sounds gated, whereas there is noticeable reverb on the LP. The reverb (or lack of) is not something that was added or subtracted from each mix. It is most definitely a result of noise reduction.

That said, the 45 still has an audible layer of hiss. My guess is that the LP version was recorded without NR. Then, when it was transferred to another tape to edit down for the 45, the NR was mistakenly turned on. (Alternately, it could be that the wrong type of NR was turned on when copying the tape.)

Originally posted by mjb50 mjb50 wrote:

Given that it was 1982, I expect they were using a dynamic range expander for this—the lower the volume level, the greater the additional reduction in volume applied by the device. An expander is typically used to remove the extra hiss that gets added when copying tapes. If over-applied, it will mute reverb tails and create a kind of halting effect on the beat. It's on the verge of being over-applied on the 45, to my ears, especially when you compare it side-by-side to the album. You primarily hear the effect in the intro, the outro, and the tap-dance break, as well as any other moment with mostly percussion.

I actually think you're more accurate by describing it as noise reduction. If it were just reducing/gating the volume, I wouldn't expect the loud volume passages to sound different, but they do. Take a listen to the synths on each version starting at 0:05. The 45's synths are muffled from the NR, whereas they are clear sounding on the LP version.

Regarding the "clicking" or "static" noises on the 45 master, it appears they are present throughout the entire song but are mostly overpowered by the music. The first appearance is just before the 4th beat on the intro, and then again just before the 6th beat. I can also hear it at least once in between beats during the "tap dance" segment.

As I've gone through my collection of '80s tracks, I've often edited an LP version to match the 45 whenever the 45 version on CD doesn't sound as good. This one is tricky, though. I'm tempted to call the NR a mastering/engineering "mistake," but it's a goof up that has drastically changed the sound of the song. Editing the LP version to match doesn't give you "better" sounding 45 version. It simply gives you a "different" sounding 45 edit that is not true to the original.

-------------
Aaron Kannowski
http://www.uptownsound.com - Uptown Sound
http://www.919thepeak.com - 91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop


Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 18 May 2021 at 5:53am
Originally posted by aaronk aaronk wrote:

I actually think you're more accurate by describing it as noise reduction. If it were just reducing/gating the volume, I wouldn't expect the loud volume passages to sound different, but they do. Take a listen to the synths on each version starting at 0:05. The 45's synths are muffled from the NR, whereas they are clear sounding on the LP version.


Yep! Well, we're both right, because it's noise reduction for tape, which was achieved in that era mainly by way of dynamic range expansion. Ideally you'd compress the dynamic range and maximize the SNR when recording, and then expand the dynamic range in a complementary way on playback; this would reduce the relative level of the tape hiss and keep the music mostly the same. Normally one Dolby, dbx, or Telcom "compander" unit would do both functions for you (you'd press a button to say which mode you wanted—recording or playback), but there were also standalone expanders (by dbx and others) which were intended to improve the sound of any hissy, clicky, or overly compressed audio, not just audio that had been pre-processed in exactly the opposite way.

My first experiment just involved using the built-in Dynamics Processing effect in Adobe Audition, which as I mentioned, got me pretty close, and reminded me of how my old dbx BX3 expander sounded.

Your comment spurred me to do some more experimenting, though, and I remembered I have the Satin VST plugin (not free), which emulates the classic tape noise reduction systems Dolby A, Dolby B, dbx I, and dbx II (all without mentioning them by their true names).

Playing around with the plugin, I found that applying Dolby A decoding to the After Eight CD album version got me even closer to the 45 version's sound right away, so it seems that's probably the mistake they made (leaving Dolby A decoding on during playback of a non-Dolby-encoded tape).

For fun, I ended up doing a reconstruction of the 45 like this:

1. roll off the high end (simulating a mediocre tape copy)
2. apply Dolby A decoding (via Satin)
3. boost high end (undoing step 1, and then some)
4. apply more dynamic range expansion to 2 kHz+ range (Satin's Dolby A wasn't enough)
5. overlay a light amount of white noise (simulating final tape)
6. interpret sample rate as 44502 (~0.91% speedup)
7. make all the edits to match the 45
8. boost high end a little more
9. temporarily roll off 3 kHz+, reduce volume 40 dB, reduce right channel volume another 8 dB, copy to clipboard, undo all of that
10. starting 1.058s after beginning of first beat, mix-paste 60% clipboard + 100% existing audio (simulating the tape print-through!)
11. resample to 44100
12. more EQ to approximate the poor fidelity of the 45

I wouldn't blame anyone for not going to that much trouble to reproduce the noise reduction, though. I'd rather just make the necessary edits to the album version, set the speed either to match the 45 or to get the proper key, and enjoy how it was supposed to sound all along.

(I'm happy to share my files or detailed settings; just PM me.)

[this post edited in 2022 to fix word wrapping]


Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 18 May 2021 at 12:44pm
That explanation helps clear up what the Dolby A is doing a little better. Are you saying, though, that Dolby A is not manipulating any particular frequencies or filtering out what it deems to be tape hiss? The range from 6 to 10 kHz seems to be particularly affected. I've never fully understood how Dolby achieves the noise reduction, although I can often identify the effects of Dolby-gone-wrong.

Re: how it was supposed to sound all along. Yeah, most of the time I'd agree. If I can edit down the LP version to greatly improve the sound quality vs. what's available on CD, that's my preference. In this case, however, the reverb and synths sound different enough that it feels like a different mix, even though I know it's not. It almost sounds "wrong" trying to "right" the mistakes of a past engineer in this particular case.

-------------
Aaron Kannowski
http://www.uptownsound.com - Uptown Sound
http://www.919thepeak.com - 91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop


Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 18 May 2021 at 4:44pm
Originally posted by aaronk aaronk wrote:

Are you saying, though, that Dolby A is not manipulating any particular frequencies or filtering out what it deems to be tape hiss? The range from 6 to 10 kHz seems to be particularly affected.

Dolby A is indeed manipulating some frequencies more than others. But it is not really detecting hiss, per se. It's only reacting to and adjusting volume levels.

The hiss added by the tape is at a constant, low level, and is in all frequency bands (it's literally all frequencies at once), so we try to drown it out as much as possible when recording. If we just record the song at
the loudest level we can without distortion, all the really loud parts are where the bass is loud, or when there's a whole bunch of "noisy" sound like claps/snares/cymbals, or densely harmonic instruments (brass, synths).
Meanwhile, the rest of the music, especially in the higher frequencies, is relatively quiet; it could be made much louder without distorting.

Dolby A is four automatic volume-level processors, operating on different frequency bands. So it is like a four-band EQ. One band is for the deep bass (bass instruments), one is for the high bass and lower midrange (voice
& tonal instruments are concentrated here), one for the all of the higher frequencies (harmonics and hiss/ess/treble-y sounds), and one for an overlapping section of the highest hiss/"ess"/treble-y sounds (just to provide
a stronger effect in that range).

During the encoding/recording stage, each processor is reacting to the volume level of what it "hears". If it's already loud, nothing happens. But the quieter the volume gets, the more of a boost it gets. (There's also a
limit to how much of a boost is applied, depending on which band is being processed.) Imagine listening to just the 3–10 kHz range, and you've got one hand on a volume knob or slider, and you're quickly cranking up the
volume whenever the signal level drops. The more it drops, the more of a boost you give it. You never make it too loud, you just make it not quite as soft as before. This is dynamic range compression. It can also be
achieved the way most compressors work, which is to reduce the volume of the loudest parts, then amplify the result by a constant amount so the loudest sounds are at their original level.

The end result is that within each frequency band, the volume level is brought closer to constant—it still varies, just not as dramatically as before—and this relatively dense, hiss-drowning-out signal can be recorded to
tape. So instead of the quiet parts being, say, 30 dB louder than the hiss, they're now 40 dB louder than the hiss.

During playback, an expansion effect is applied to undo the changes—that is, the automatic four-band EQ is applied with complementary logic, each processor reacting to a slight drop in volume level by turning the volume
down even more. The quieter sounds are restored to their proper not-so-loud levels, and the hiss in those parts is now 10 dB quieter than it would've been without the NR system. So the net effect is the music hasn't
changed but the hiss is being magically and variably reduced during the quiet moments.

dbx's type I system does the same thing, but does not split the signal into four frequency bands. It still works well enough, but can create what people call a "breathing" effect. Dolby is not perfect either; it requires
precise calibration of levels and the player has to be running at exactly the same speed as the recorder.

If you use a standalone expander, or if you use the Dolby or dbx unit to process a signal which hasn't been encoded by the same system, you get the sound we are hearing in the 45 version of "Puttin' on the Ritz". The fact
that it's concentrated more in some frequency bands than others, and is on a pro reel-to-reel rig (not cassette), suggests it is probably Dolby A. Or I can think of a couple other ways it could be happening, with the use
of standalone expanders, but my money is on simple Dolby A for now.


I think there's still a question as to whether this NR is on all copies of the 45 version. All I know for sure is it is on my Canada-made original pressing, and it's on all the CD reissues. But is it on all of the 45s?
The edit was also on the Netherlands 7"; I wonder if it's better, or if anyone noticed and used a better master on later North American pressings.


Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 18 May 2021 at 9:11pm
This is a fantastic, detailed explanation, and it makes complete sense. It's easy to hear the hi-hat get sucked away by the NR while the frequencies in lower ranges remain intact.

You raise a good question about other 45 copies. I just put my Canadian stock copy on the turntable, and the NR is there, just like your copy. I highly doubt anyone went back and re-edited the song to remove this artifact. As a kid, my US-pressed RCA copy was on styrene, so any "hiss" removed by the NR was sure to be there tenfold after a handful of plays. I likely have an unplayed US stock copy, too, and I'll try to remember to look for it when time permits.

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Aaron Kannowski
http://www.uptownsound.com - Uptown Sound
http://www.919thepeak.com - 91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop


Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 19 May 2021 at 3:14am
Originally posted by aaronk aaronk wrote:

I highly doubt anyone went back and re-edited the song to remove this artifact.


Agreed, but what I was saying is that it's possible that not all of the production masters have the NR.

With the help of Discogs, we know (based on durations printed on the labels) that this version was released on 7" in Holland (The Netherlands), Canada, USA, South Africa, and The Philippines. I would say it almost certainly
was created for, and in, either Holland or Canada.

To create the edit, somebody would've started with a copy of the album version on tape. They physically cut that tape with razor blades and spliced the seams to create the edited version.

That tape may have directly been the basis of one of the 7"s. Or, they may have made copies of the edited tape first, and sent those second-generation copies to manufacturers. It's possible third-generation copies were made
for some of the markets. Any one of these tapes could have been the first to have the NR on them, and thus all copies descended from them would, but the others may not. If the very first copy that was physically edited has
it, then of course they all do.

We can't even know for sure that all of the Canadian copies have the NR; they might've caught the error and used a better master for a repress. That seems unlikely, though; they probably were more concerned about counting
the money than replacing a bad tape!

Anyway, I just closely inspected the rip I found online that does not have the NR, and decided it is a fake, just someone's reconstruction; they didn't get the seam before the "Gotta Dance" segment exactly right.


Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 19 May 2021 at 5:31am
Originally posted by Jody Thornton Jody Thornton wrote:

I just mean to say that the various parts on the LP version don't sound like they merge as naturally, whereas the single sounds more merged together naturally. For example, go to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMstTM01m28 (or pull out an LP version). At 3:31 and 3:42 sound like awkward junction points. [...] So I wonder if sometimes, content is actually added rather than edited out.


OK, I kinda see what you mean. It's just the way this particular medley is set up. In the album version, it goes from "Alexander's Ragtime Band" melody into a part where we hear a funky guitar and vocal ad-lib (where he
spells out R-i-t-z), and then it goes into the "There's No Business Like Show Business" melody. The 45 version cuts out the funky interlude and just goes straight from one melody into the other.

The album version's transitions sound good to me. The start of the vocal ad-lib "put it on, puttin' it on" overlaps the last note of the first melody, and the end of the patter ("how 'bout you and me says") overlaps the
beginning of the first note of the 2nd melody.

I like it both ways. The edits they made in the 45 version are all really good. They tighten up the song, keeping it moving, without losing anything too important. They did a great job with it, overall.

It's hard to say how that part of the medley in the album version was constructed. It's likely there was layering of "live" material and previously recorded material onto multitrack tape. So in a sense, you're right, it
was an additive process. But since the edit can be perfectly reconstructed, content-wise, by cutting sections out of the album version, that's certainly what they did. The edit does not derive from an alternate mix which
didn't have the ad-libs in it.

Does adding things in ever happen? Usually no, but I can say that for '70s disco songs, the album versions were often the 12" versions, which were often created by adding and repeating parts from the original multitracks
for a short version of the song. '80s remixing legend Shep Pettibone said in an interview that he always started by making a 7" remix and then he'd derive his 12" versions from that. And I occasionally run across cases
where both the album and single versions or video of a song both seem to have been edited down from a longer, unreleased mix, but may in fact have been created by adding rather than subtracting. Duran Duran's "Is There
Something I Should Know?" is in this category. So it's true, editing doesn't always involve cutting things out.


Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 19 May 2021 at 5:58am
Originally posted by mjb50 mjb50 wrote:

Any one of these tapes could have been the first to have the NR on them, and thus all copies descended from them would, but the others may not. If the very first copy that was
physically edited has it, then of course they all do.

Yes, agreed--all possibilities. I don't think I'll be importing 45s from Holland to find out, though :)

-------------
Aaron Kannowski
http://www.uptownsound.com - Uptown Sound
http://www.919thepeak.com - 91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop


Posted By: KentT
Date Posted: 28 May 2021 at 9:59am
Originally posted by jimct jimct wrote:

Ed, this doesn't answer your question,
but just as an aside, this's song meteoric rise to Top
40 poularity in 1983 caught the U.S. division of RCA
Records SO completely by surprise, that they didn't feel
they could press up normal RCA promo 45s quickly enough
to service U.S. radio, especially given its "novelty
song" angle. So RCA decided to both quickly purchase and
distribute stock copies of the song from their "RCA
Canada" division, where it was already popular. They
then affixed those small, black-and-white "NOT FOR SALE"
stickers, that RCA would sometimes utilize, whenever
they would happen to ship out a stock 45 copy to radio,
as a "promo 45 substitute." To this day, I still only
have 3 of those "stickered Canadian vinyl stock 45s,
used as U.S. promo 45s" in my 1983 promo 45s box. I
wonder if, later during its hit chart run, RCA might
have went back and ever issue a "standard yellow label"
RCA promo 45 for "Puttin' On The Ritz?" Does anyone
know, or happen to have one? FYI, in all my years inside
Top 40 radio, this was the ONLY time I can ever remember
a label utilizing a "mass stock 45 purchase, from an
international division of their own company" to more
quickly service radio, rather than taking the time to
press up a standard U.S. promo 45!


A note: RCA by then did not own a pressing plant as
they'd sold them. RCA had to get their records pressed
elsewhere by other plants.

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I turn up the good and turn down the bad!



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