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Posted: |
May 29, 2012 - 6:48 PM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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Interesting, I've never owned the mono album.
I've heard purists also say the mono mixes of The Beatles' early LPs are superior. Apparently at that time, stereo was such a small market that much more care was put into creating mono masters than stereo ones...
For that reason, the first few Beatles albums were made available in both mono and stereo versions when they were recently remastered on CD.
As far as music aimed at kids - and the Beatles would have fit into this category - good stereo was not even a serious consideration.
For "adult" music - classical, jazz, showtunes, soundtracks, standards - more thought and work ostensibly went into the stereo mixes/recordings. But the results could still be varied. Think about it: They'd been perfecting mono recording/mixing for more than fifty years, and then they had to quickly deal with stereo in just a few years. There was a learning curve, and there were also opposing mindsets as to what constituted "good" stereo. Sometimes they got it right, sometimes not.
Mancini's "Combo" and "Mr. Lucky" albums sound fantastic in stereo. "Peter Gunn" has lots of reverb in stereo and the balances are off, so the mono sounds better in that case. "Charade" is by no means bad in stereo, compared to other things from that time, but the mono is better.
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For "adult" music - classical, jazz, showtunes, soundtracks, standards - more thought and work ostensibly went into the stereo mixes/recordings. But the results could still be varied. Think about it: They'd been perfecting mono recording/mixing for more than fifty years, and then they had to quickly deal with stereo in just a few years. There was a learning curve, and there were also opposing mindsets as to what constituted "good" stereo. Sometimes they got it right, sometimes not.
Mancini's "Combo" and "Mr. Lucky" albums sound fantastic in stereo. "Peter Gunn" has lots of reverb in stereo and the balances are off, so the mono sounds better in that case. "Charade" is by no means bad in stereo, compared to other things from that time, but the mono is better.
I'm curious though, have you ever heard the XRCD of the Charade album? To my ears, it sounds staggering, like Mancini is in the room. Perhaps it was remixed or something...
http://www.amazon.com/Charade-Henry-Mancini/dp/B00005LVZ2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338347668&sr=8-1
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I'm curious though, have you ever heard the XRCD of the Charade album? To my ears, it sounds staggering, like Mancini is in the room. Perhaps it was remixed or something...
I have not, but I would love too. It is possible that it was either improved through mastering or even remixing. The six Charade tracks on the compilation that I mentioned earlier were remixed, and they sound much better on there than they do on the original stereo album.
Edit: Regarding the XRCD album, I hope it sounds staggering, at that price. 
I bought it when it came out, it was about $20 - $30. They issued about 10 or 20 albums from the RCA catalog, trying to get the new format going, but it never took off. It plays on conventional CD players though.
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Like most of my Mancini from this era, I have the LP and never picked up any CD version… until now.
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Posted: |
May 30, 2012 - 6:24 AM
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By: |
Joe E.
(Member)
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I don't have any yet, alas. I'm actually a bit relieved to see I'm not the only one here who doesn't have it yet. I definitely plan to get this new release, though. I agree the music is terrific, as is the whole film for which it was composed, and I want both in my library (I used to have Criterion's first DVD edition of the movie, but sold it off when I was desperate for money and also correctly guessed they'd do an anamorphic upgrade at some point, but I still haven't gotten around to getting the latter yet, and now at this point I'm holding off on most DVD releases in favor of Blu-ray, though I don't have a BD player yet).
Mancini is one of the most underrepresented composers in my music library in proportion to how much I enjoy his music (that is, I love his stuff, but have so little of it).
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I do own an original LP from 1963 with a very Bondian cover design.
The artwork is by Bond main title designer Maurice Binder.
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