Grateful Dead

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Spectacular! I'm on side C and this is by far the best sounding vinyl Dead release. I completely understand the purists that want an all analog transfer but even if this was from the digital master, it's outstanding. To all who purchased, enjoy!

there are three sides with less than 10 minutes each on them, it would be nice if you filled these disks up

Yes I purchase these LP sets to spin an a gatherings and parties. I must say you did a much better job splitting the jams on this than 2/27/69(No one wants to flip the record after Mountains Of The Moon, you want to hear the segue into Dark Star uninterrupted.) The problem with the side splits on this are WRS and Wharf Rat, a great place to switch records, but it would work much better if they were on 2 different records, so I could segue to the next part of the jam from one record to the next on 2 turntables uninterrupted. Having to flip the record makes this impossible. Small potatoes to most, but it is a major disappointment to my enjoyment and purposes. Please consider this in the future. The Jam after Truckin' and The NFA are split on separate records...and that is gonna be just exactly perfect! That said I am thrilled with this choice as a release, it is one of my favorite shows.

All different. As an audio recording, mixing and mastering engineer for most of my life I have a little insight about the confusion of all this, so will attempt to share a little of what I know for everyone out there who loves their vinyl or may be curious. Transfers of analog tape to digital format. Could be the mastering engineer, his assistant, or third party like plangent. Digital clocking, conversion process and amount of samples per second has improved in quality significantly since our early CDs were transferred, sometimes from inferior sources, as we know now. Mastering is the most confusing item as it could include a few things. It sorta changed when the CD came out. It used to be the mastering engineer did cut vinyl from the tapes, but when vinyl was going away it became about assembling digitally everything for the album, doing EQ/Compression/Leveling, and creating a Master disc to be duplicated. That process is still much the norm these days, with the final product being digital files. A good deal of vinyl today (and since the 90s) is cut from this digital master, especially the big label issues. Cutting refers to the creation of the master lacquer on a cutting lathe used for making vinyl. There are a few more steps in between this and pressing, but not relevant here (creation of mother, stampers, etc). Pressing refers to the process of making the actual thousands of records in a pressing plant One thing that labels do that's a little misleading is say "remastered from the original analog tapes" or "painstakingly remastered for vinyl from the original tapes" (as Brookvale has said). That just means they did new transfers from tape to digital and remastered it (EQ, compression, leveling), but does not necessarily mean they cut the lacquers for vinyl directly from tape. If they have cut straight from tape they will usually make a big deal about it because it takes a special tape machine and outboard equipment, with a cutting lathe to do that, and is a more expensive process. I don't believe Norman has that capability or experience with a lathe. He either transfers the files to digital himself or receives the digital files from whoever transferred them (ie plangent), masters them, then a plating specialist cuts the lacquer for pressing. For many Dead releases it has (luckily for us) been Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman's place in Cali. Then they are pressed at a pressing plant of choice, or whoever is not so backed up to make the release date. I don't believe any of the modern day GD records have been cut directly from tape, but all from hi-res digital. That doesn't mean they can't sound great or be a whole lot of fun to hold in your hands. Even the "One from the vault" vinyl sounds great to my ears. Doesn't hurt that it's a phenomenal show! SIDE NOTE: Bellman has also done the Phish releases and did in fact cut the first 3 albums straight from the tape, while rift was cut from a DAT, as they never mixed it to tape. The band made sure in press releases to let us know this. Many 90s albums were only mixed to DAT as tape was going away. I do get what is being said about just let the tape play and capture that raw source for archiving, so I'm not dispelling that desire. I might actually prefer that too, but will have to go with what they give us, which has traditionally throughout the Dead's history, been to elevate the listener experience with the quest for hi-fidelity, whether it be in the amps, speakers, guitars or effects that the band used. Gotta love them for that! Oh and the music..... (sorry about all the parenthesis!!) Peace

Greengo72 - I like your style, but I disagree (or have been informed differently) on a few things that you brought up: #1 - My understanding is that a Mastering Engineer is responsible for taking the original studio or live recording(s) (or a 'safety master' if that is what is available) in whatever condition or form they appear in, whether it be analog or digital, and converting or 'mastering' it into a format that can be mass-produced for a commercial release when the mastering engineer's final product is then sent off to the LP or CD manufacturing facility. In the mastering engineer's studio he will typically have reel-to-reel playback machines, digital rigs, and a lathe in order cut records from digital or analog sources. Of course there are many other components in the studio too, but historically the mastering process from analog tape playback to cutting a record on a lathe does not have a digital tollbooth (like plangent process) in the signal chain. #2 - Plangent, as I understand it, is fantastic at reducing what is known in the mastering engineer industry as 'tape flutter' noise, but it has to do it in the digital domain for it to work. So we have our good ol Grateful Dead's analog signal from original tape running along nicely on a reel-to-reel player, the analog signal goes into a digital Plangent box, hangs out in the digital domain getting 'processed', and then spits out as a digital signal to be fed to the lathe in order to cut the record. This whole process is overseen by the Mastering Engineer (in this case, Norman), though he may have marching orders from his customers that specify what gear he is supposed to use (or not). #3 - Not all Brookvale Dick's Picks reissues were cut from digital. In fact, I believe that only 2 out of the 7 reissues used hi-rez digital sources. Thankfully, Brookvale has been very transparent about what sources they have used, and sadly, it was completely and utterly out of their control for their first two releases (i.e. - Dick's Picks Vol. 1 and Dick's Picks Vol. 2). Why? Because the masters for Dick's Picks #1 and #2 have friggin' disappeared! Yup. That is right. Dick (or somebody) totally dropped the ball after using those tapes for the commercial CD releases in the 1990s. They're gone! So Brookvale had worked out the details with the GD organization to reissue, on vinyl, the first two Dick's Picks...and then the analog tape was MIA. Wow. A huge loss (given that those releases / shows totally slay!). However, the Brookvale Dick's Picks #3, #4, #5, #6, and #8 on vinyl all use the original analog masters. BTW - there is no Brookvale reissue of #7. I'm pretty sure (like 99.99% positive) that Plangent was not used by Norman in the vinyl reissues of 3,4,5, and 6, but the jury is still out on #8. I'm working on finding out. #4 - You are absolutely correct about the hi-rez advantages, when it hits vinyl. I have not heard the Cornell vinyl release on my system, but I heard it on a friend's system (which is pretty good), and it sounded magnificent. But there is just some weird part of my lizard brain that likes to be both an analog fetishist and historical stick-in-the-mud. So I took a pass on purchasing Cornell on vinyl, but OF COURSE I bought the big CD box set and enjoy them thoroughly through my digital rig...even though they are 16/44. But all plangent griping aside let me be clear on something... I want everybody to enjoy as much Grateful Dead as possible, in any format they can get it. My preferences, while rooted in a traditional adherence to format continuity, are certainly not blind to the experience of musical ecstasy and transcendence. Happy Listening to you, sir.

...Plangent has nothing to do with mastering, but rather the playback of the tapedeck and it's relationship to the computer during the transfer to digital. Then the mastering EQ/Compression/Level matching is done by the mastering engineer after all tapes are transferred. I don't pretend to understand Plangent completely as it's pretty complicated but you can find out more here (https://audiophilereview.com/analog/plangent---a-better-way-to-transfer…). While decent sounding, all the Brookvale records are cut from digital files as well, but do not employ this process during the transfer. Seems to me like if it's gotta be digital to vinyl, this process is a viable way to go, as it's applied at the tape transfer stage. As long as they use hi-res digital files to cut the vinyl, it can actually sound superior to the CD, as CD is dithered down to only 44.1kHz 16bit, where the raw digital files are probably 96kHz 24bit. The Cornell vinyl sounds spectacular and presumably was cut from hi-res digital. Anyways, happy listening!

But on my rig at home (EAR 912 Pre-amp, Quicksilver Horn Mono amps, restored Garrard 301 turntable, AMG arm, Dynavector cartridge, restored Quad ESL 57 speakers, etc), I can hear pretty deeply into recordings....warts and all. If you went to the Smithsonian and walked up to the one and only US Constitution only to see a beautifully acid-etched digital copy on wonderful Japanese paper, you would probably ask some questions. How about the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum? What if there was instead a beautiful piece of gray plastic, that looked 99.99% identical to the original? Again, you would probably furrow your eyebrows. The nice thing about both those examples above is that they might actually 'look better' than the originals. Hmmmmmm.....I'd like the option to not have my 'historical documents' muddled with, thank you. As much as I like hot sauce, I try to take at least one bite of my meal without hot sauce (just to see how it stands on its own). That is what the CDs are for. Throw the magnetic tape through a digital prism and enjoy the final product with a digital to analog converter in your CD player, on your computer, or on your phone (it is just like eating your meal drenched in a very enjoyable hot sauce). Heck, I'm ordering the CDs for that exact reason. I'm not afraid of the future, or a lot of hot sauce, and I'll walk my talk. But take me back to the days (just briefly) when music was not 1s and 0s, and keep it purely in that form as a commercial offering in 2018. Respect the 'historical document' aspect of tape, the analog waveforms, and all of the 'perceived' frequency limitations that come with them, and I'll snap up a copy just as quickly as I pick up the CDs too. If you think I'm just blowing smoke on this, listen to any of the releases from the Beatles mono vinyl collection that came out a few years ago. The all tube mastering system used, along with a well maintained lathe, cutting head, etc - resulted in a time machine experience. I've been buying the Dick's Picks on vinyl re-releases from Brookvale Records that Norman masters WITHOUT plangent processing, and they sound absolutely superb. Yes, the Hampton 79 vinyl release (which Norman admits comes from a lowly cassette source) still sounds decent. It might even sound better if it had been run through plangent process, but I'm a bit of a traditionalist that will make chickenshit out of chickensalad (as evidenced by the 100+ shows I was willing to sit through and pay for from 1992-1995). Let me emphasize my position on the subject again: Keep plangent process in the mastering chain for the digital releases. Expel plangent process from the mastering chain for the vinyl releases. Do it for me. Do it for the history. Do it for the children. :)

Why is this $100 on pop market?

I would like to clarify that I absolutely believe in Plangent. When I was able to hear side by side comparisons of Dead tracks with and without Plangent, it was an obvious improvement when Plangent was used. At times you would swear it was a remix of the tracks because details that you couldn't hear before were brought forward in the mix. Plangent was able to remove the distortions that obscured these details for so long. My preference for vinyl is to be all analog, that's all.

How is this tool that much different than someone using an outboard processor to run effects? The Plangent process playback system is a hybrid hardware/software package combining state of the art contemporary analog electronics coupled with unique digital signal processing. It begins with an ultra-wideband low-distortion custom reproduce head and subsequent associated hand-wired preamp, followed by proprietary DSP that provides total speed stabilization and wow and flutter correction. This unique combination of integrated hardware and post-processing provides the archival mastering and preservation community a level of playback quality never before possible.