HW: Sonic Attack -No Ducking!

[Doug Pearson]

On Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:40:30 PST, Darrin McKeehen <dmckeehen at HOTMAIL.COM>
wrote:
>First off, Andy G. you are one cool dude. Great responses!

That he is!  (Hi Andy, I owe you an Email!)  Buy stuff from CD Services!

>I did a little Sound Quality test last night between:
>(1) Kings of Speed
>(2) Glastonbury '90
>(3) Milton Keynes '99
>
>All 3 are audience recordings of would be bootleg "nature". So, it's apples
>and apples.
>
>For reference, these CD's were played through my stereo:
>12 year old ADCOM GPF-555 amp and preamp
>5 year old California Audio Lab ICON mkII
>9 year old Boston Acoustic speakers

note: Hawkwind discussion follows boring gear/tech-speak ...

If you play a lot of "unofficial" audience recordings (nudge nudge, wink
wink) on your stereo, I would *highly* recommend investing in a device by
BBE (Barcus-Berry Electronics) that they call a  "Sonic Maximizer".
Although their intended application is for musicians and
home/project/amateur studio users (I also use to to clean up final mixes
from multitrack cassette), they work great for this purpose.  See
http://www.bbesound.com/maxim.html for the devices, and
http://www.bbesound.com/tech.html for an explanation of the technology.
They work wonders in improving high-end clarity of muddy recordings, the
instruments and voices become much more distinct.  Stereo models (although
some have standard RCA home stereo jacks, some only have balanced 1/4" &
XLR jacks) can be found used for around $100 or a bit more.  Easily the
best $125 (I think) I ever spent for listening to those kinds of recordings
(if the source material already sounds good, the Sonic Maximizer won't do
anything for it).

[... most details of very informative listening test snipped ...]

>I would say that G'90 sounds like MK'99 would if it were run through a phat
>studio mixer /soundboard w/ nice parametric equalizers,

Which is probably (I would hope!) what happened when the G'90 tape was
being prepared for release (although it probably would have been all done
digitally, since Pro Tools plugins these days can work work miracles with
sub-optimal source material).

>If you are happy w/ MK'99, you should be happy w/ G'90.

That's what I wanted to hear!  I'll have to pick up 'Glastonbury 90', then,
since I do like the Bridget lineup very much.

Darrin, thanks for the detailed listening test.  This is exactly the kind
of evaluation that these 'Collector Series' releases could use, so that
people will know whether or not they'll fit into their individual sound
quality tolernance threshold.  Me, I love 'Text of Festival' because the
jam on disc 2 of the vinyl set is IMO one of the most incredibly
psychedelic jams *ever* recorded, sound quality be damned!  I'll state the
painfully obvious in saying, if that crap can be reissued again and again
and again, why the *#&%R^ can't at least one of the releases have the whole
album on it?!?

        -Doug
         ceres at sirius.com