The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

Hey,

Sorry for a rather lame question. I've recently been replayign the Razor and Tie CD release of Lost Horizon a lot and had a technical question. The sound in some of it sounds much more degraded than I'd expect for an early 70s recording. Specifically listen to Share the Joy (particularly the orchestra interlude) or the opening fanfare to Lost Horizon, and you hear a lot of cracklign background noise--especially on loud notes, almost what you'd expect to hear on an old record. I know there were issues about releasing this soudntrack, gettign all the source material, and the booklet mentions audio flaws--but I'm paranoid. This isn't just a problem with my copy is it? I ask becuase as the CD plays the later songs are MUCH cleaner sounding as it progresses...

To be honest a lot of it (even a relatively good sounding World is a Circle) sounds more like what I'd expect from a late 50s movie musical soundtrack than a 1973 one...

Thanks for anyone who can help clear this up. (I haven't listene din headphones either, but some parts sound mono to me--is that possible?)

Cheers

E

Hi,
sounds like a source material problem. Whatever company
issued this cd probably didn't have access to the best tapes,etc.
and cheezeballed out the release...that is just a guess....
The original source material for Lost Horizon should sound crisp and clean with a high amount of quality...
Steveo

Well I tend to be a stickler for audio quality--I know some source tracks were hard to find i think--the cut songs? Anyway I assume it is a prob with the release in general and somethign they tried their best to get around

Could be, Eric. The archiving of tapes and source materials has
some horrendous history...I've seen a lot of careless handling of
these materials over the years...one that comes to mind is the
Liberty records tape archives...when they sold to United Artists, there were tapes in boxes all over the floor, haphazardly strung
out with people tripping over them. This would have been the early 70's, but anyway, it could also be cd companies not having access to the best source materials...whatever it is, I'm glad we have what we have....

Steveo

That makes sense--and isn't too surprising, sadly. I've heard of movie studios almost throwing out rare pieces of footage, etc

How about JAmes Aubrey, who at that time was recently hired as
a big wig at MGM(1969) and ordered the destruction of all of the musical acetates and music scores to be dumped into the Santa Monica landfill?(to make space)This order was carried out !
Steveo