Posted by geox 3 days ago
The Nirvana gig mentioned is https://archive.org/details/ajc00795_nirvana-1989-07-08 The quality is surprisingly good for a bootleg and the band are super-tight!
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With pro analog tape recordings (e.g. 2-inch 24 track, half-inch 2-track), you record alignment tones onto the tapes to capture the state of the recording device, and then later calibrate the playback device to the particular tape so that playback alignment matches recording alignment. But this is essentially never done with cassettes, so you have to earball it.
Cassette players for mastering studios actually have alignment options (e.g. adjustable azimuth) that aren't present on consumer devices. But without the tones, you have to guess.
The problem with starting from a digitized source is that it may have been digitized from non-aligned playback. Ideally you want to go back to the analog originals - but old cassettes are rarely in perfect condition.
In loose terms: It does this with a special read head that splits one of the recorded tracks into 2 distinct signals (for a total of 3 signals from 1 stereo recording). The split tracks' signals are compared, and it adjusts the azimuth (by minutely rotating the head) until the signals from the split track match most-perfectly.
A better overview is found in this sales flyer: https://www.richardhess.com/manuals/Nakamichi/dragon_folder....
(Take note of the pictures of the machine. If anyone finds one sitting around at a flea market or in a forgotten pile of old junk, please rescue it. Nothing like this will ever be manufactured again. Even if the condition is "it looks like someone went after it with a big hammer as part of their anger management process," the bits that remain still have significant value and are easy to sell.)
Grateful Dead has analog reel-to-reel recordings going back to the 60's but most of those have been digitized already or are in the Deads vault.
There are also large collections of recordings on Betamax cassettes made with Sony PCM-F1 digital front-ends which were used before DAT become available. These are digitized versions of old analog recordings and original digital recordings from the 80's. They need transferring and sample rate conversion (they are 44.056kHz) and in some cases pre-emphasis removal.
There is also a lot of digital material on DAT cassettes including analog transfers and digital recordings from the 90s. There are also some CD-Rs where original sources can't be found.
A lot of the cleanup is just figuring out what comes from what show and substituting sources where there are gaps to make complete versions for listening. The archival nature of the endeavor usually limits the amount of "clean up" that is done.
59-year-old Aadam [sic] Jacobs made his first recording 42 years ago in 1984 when he was 17.
He would have had to average 238 recordings/concerts per year — nearly 5/week — over those 42 years to accumulate 10,000 of them.
He began to attend and record 15 concerts each month, and has said "It went pretty quickly from just being an occasional thing to something I did far too often."
So his average is every other day. Also, most concerts / shows have more than one act. I went to an MF DOOM show back in the day at a small club with FIVE opening acts, and then DOOM had THREE more openers in his set time. That's 9 total acts on one night. Even the sprawling wu-tang tour last year had run the jewels as an opener.
Carry on.
> “Especially after the first couple years, he’s got it so dialed in that some of these recordings, on, like, crappy little cassette tapes from the early 90s, sound incredible,” deMause said.
I think in some ways we’ve come full circle such that it doesn’t matter.. because people are listening to various compressed streaming music sources, with loudness-wars mixing, output to airpods, phone speakers, laptop speakers, and all sorts of suboptimal listening devices.
Remember to donate and help keep the Internet Archive alive.
* Midnight Oil: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
This one has a fairly decent quality recording of "Beds are Burning" too. Australian Classic Rock. :)
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* Tracy Chapman: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
Audio quality is decent here too. Listening to "Fast Car" now, and the quality is solid. :)
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* Ben Folds Five: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* R.E.M: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Björk: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Born to Run: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Captain of Industry: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Depeche Mode: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Lemonheads: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: https://archive.org/details/aadamjacobs?and[]=creator%3A%22n...
* Nirvana: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Sonic Youth: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Suzanne Vega: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* The Bangles: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* The Cure: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
> Audio quality is decent here too. Listening to "Fast Car" now, and the quality is solid. :)
Fast Car was terrific, thanks for sharing! It is especially amazing considering this recording was made in 1988, just one month and one day (how poetic!) after Fast Car was released as a single.
"Talkin' Bout A Revolution" is in there as well, and some stuff marked as "unreleased".
The entire Tracy Chapman recording there is actually really well put together. The volunteers who did the work to transfer it from cassette and clean it up, did an outstanding job on this one.
> Recorded by: Aadam Jacobs
> Transferred by: Brian E
> Mastered by: Dennis Orr
No Pixies, but The Amps have one appearance: https://archive.org/details/ajc02207_amps1995-10-31 The performance is ... "uneven"
And four stunning Guided by Voices sets, of which the best is https://archive.org/details/ajc00711_gbv-1999-12-10/GBV1999-...
Billy Bragg:
* https://archive.org/details/ajc02362_bbragg1986-12-04.ajcpro...
* https://archive.org/details/ajc02359_bbragg1988-05-06.ajcpro...
Not the cleanest vocals on either of the recordings, but the former is overall higher quality from what I could tell.
Boogie Down Productions:
* https://archive.org/details/ajc02338_bdp1988-05-18
Excellent recording and great live act, just a pity that it is rather short.
Mojo Nixon:
* https://archive.org/details/ajc02226_mojonixon-skidroper1987...
Another great live act and recording. I am sure Mojo would very much approve of this being shared as well.