It was a bit frustrating, we run into the brick wall of NDAs. One of our biggest allies did the Phil Spector reissues and couldn't tell us.
Metropolis is aware of Plangent and asked for a unit to be essentially loaned ad infinitum in lieu of an outright buy and I simply didn't have the working capital to build a system for gratis use. Today we could but 18 months ago?
I know eventually it will be a standard item. Just the archival capture of the machine's motion... The hidden servo... Ought to be standardized. But it's a very different beast than a normal tape player, regardless of the quality of the machines of 1975 still commonly in play. And by the way those machines are wearing out and not playing back as originally spec'd but thankfully that can be fixed too.
It is a heartbreaker to miss out because it's possible these tapes won't see daylight again while we're alive. 24 years since '91.,..
Please pardon the mispellings and occassional insane word substitution I'm on an iPhone
> On Aug 4, 2015, at 7:58 PM, Lou Judson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Thanks Tom! I just might give it a listen some time. I’ll ask my stepson if he wants them, as an excuse to spend money on it! I missed his birthday this month…
>
> And, I am glad I asked - it was idle curiosity at first, but I have learned a lot! Thanks gang!
> :-)
> <L>
> Lou Judson
> Intuitive Audio
> 415-883-2689
>
>> On Aug 4, 2015, at 2:16 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Lou,
>>
>> Most people who love the music won't hear the flaws. I agree there's some audible scrape-flutter, if you listen carefully for scrape-flutter. What I would have really desired out of a Plangent transfer, which I think would have been delivered, is that super-crisp drum attack (super-fast rise times on percussives, which comes from eliminating the mechanical time-smear). John Bonham was a MONSTER, and his hit impacts drive the excitement of the beat. Getting rid of that last bit of tape smear would have been great.
>> That said, Jimmy Page apparently wanted to work with a guy he knew in England and thus getting the kind of Plangent transfer I have gone for with my remastering wasn't in the cards.
>> Aside from the (slightly) audible results of non-time-aligned mechanical playback, they got other things right. There's plenty of dynamics, plenty of bass, and the digital transfer captured stuff like reverb tails and guitar note picking action very well. Much better than previous digital iterations.
>> -- Tom Fine
>>
>> On Tue, 4 Aug 2015 09:18:09 -0700, Lou Judson wrote:
>>
>> Thanks Tom. Judging form an earlier comment, apparantly they skipped the dictum of getting the highest possible analog playback step. If someone (of us either here or on the Ampex list) can hear scrape flutter, it was not the best playback…
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