Technical Flaws in Cast Albums *complaint thread*- Page 3

[sondhead]

Posted: 6/6/07 at 2:42pm

"An old friend was in the original production of PROMISES PROMISES, and she cannot listen to Orbach's performance, it's so flat on most songs."

It's so true, especially on "It's Our Little Secret." The bosses are also rather off-key and tempo in "Where Can You Take a Girl"

Posted: 6/6/07 at 4:58pm

" hate how, in general, on Cast Recordings the sound levels are so low.

When I listen to my iPod in my car, on a lot of CRs I have to put it all the way up to full volume. And then, if the song is on a playlist with songs from regular albums (not showtunes), the song will come up full blast and, since the levels are so much higher for CDs that aren't CRs, it pretty much bursts your eardrums. "

80s cast albums (even pop ones like the 1985 pressing of Chess which is INSANELY low) had this problem even more so- the remasters and modern ones are better but yeah... I think part of theproblem is shoudl they record and consider cast albums the way they do classical and opera? Or pop--cuz things liek dynamic ranges, etc, are very different between the two

E

[Princeton78]

Posted: 6/30/07 at 11:07am

"Princeton ~ the final line is actually "Follow thee more nearly day by day." Just FYI."

Depending on the recording. Some productions change it to, "I love the more dearly"..or "nearly."

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 6/30/07 at 12:17pm

My Kiss of the Spiderwoman OBC has such low levels, when I'm listening to my mp3 player and it comes on, I can never tell what it is.

[Cutielyricist]

Posted: 6/30/07 at 12:52pm

I have a unique one.

I ordered the phantom of the opera movie cd. The double disk. I wanted to familiarize myself with it since I wasnt too familiar when it came out. I listened to act one, and popped in act two and sat back. Suddenly, a random christmas song came on. I went to the next track, another christmas song. I ejected the cd, and looked,it was "Phantom of the Opera disc Two" I put it into my Itunes and the tracklist for the Clay Aiken Christmas cd popped up...

needless to say I wrote to Amazon and got a new cd..but I still have the random phantom/aiken collaboration.

[MungoGypsy8232]

Posted: 6/30/07 at 1:33pm

Does anyone else's Aida recording make like a scratchy-skip noise during one of Zoser's songs?

Posted: 7/2/07 at 9:30pm

Hrmm I'm usually very sensitive to low recording levels on CDs--they irk me too but never noticed it with Kiss at all....

E

[BwayBaby18]

Posted: 7/2/07 at 10:20pm

after Call From The Vatican on the new nine recording you can hear someone say Do It Again at the end

[Leo]

Posted: 11/10/07 at 5:51pm

Regarding the voices fading in Hard Knock Life from Annie... I'm an audio engineer.. PLEASE - HOLD DOWN THE APPLAUSE..
The tracks were originally intended to be recorded for the vinyl LP which was produced in SQ [4 channel - quad - whatever] ONLY. There were special considerations, technically, so the channels were mixed "weirdly," to give that "surround" effect. In tranferring these tracks into straight stereo [for the CD], the volume [actually the "phase"] get screwed-up a bit. I'll spare you the technical details.... These SQ processed vinyls never sounded quite as "dynamic" as a regular stereo record, but the damage was done. What you hear is what you get!!
I needed to record the track onto a CD for a rinky-dink local dance recital, and I noticed the vocals going low.. so I fixed it!
So come-on over to my computer, and you can hear it the way it should be!! ;-}

[hushpuppy]

Posted: 11/10/07 at 6:15pm

As a Certified Old Show Tune Queen (50+), I have been listening to OBC recordings since before many of your parents were born and I feel the need to add my 2 cents.

These recordings are made by people, on their 'day off', who have just been rehearsing, previewing, and opening in a show for months. Unlike professional singers, they don't have the luxury of resting their voices before going into a recording studio. They're tired. But yet, on one OBC recording after another, we (and subsequent generations) are treated to thrilling, exciting, memorable recordings. Give a listen to the OBC of WEST SIDE STORY and then to that awful studio recording with Kiri Takanawa and Jose Carreras. Do I even need to tell you which one is far superior?

And was I the only little 10-year old out there, sitting there on the floor in front of the hi-fi after school, ignoring my homework, listening to the Pearl Bailey cast recording of HELLO, DOLLY thrilling to the sound of what sounded like a dropped drumstick during the overture? For one brief second, I wasn't in my parents’ living room in San Francisco, but sitting in the orchestra of the St James Theatre, seeing the show live.

[bk]

Posted: 11/10/07 at 8:15pm

"ah well. this was a mistake by cullum, but the engineer of the cd should have heard this. i did on the first listening."

It is not the engineer's job to listen for acting mistakes, singing mistakes, or performance mistakes, that is the record producer's job. Some record producers do their job well, some don't.

As the post above states, cast albums are what they are - in days of old they were recorded in one day, with the orchestra and singers all in one room.

The engineer Leo talks about Annie's problems being because it was recorded in Quad. Not so - it was recorded and released conventionally - it may have had, at some point, a quad release in the days when Columbia was doing that sort of thing, but those were remixed for Quad - you don't record in Quad. The reason voices disappear or aren't as present on cast albums is because the engineers didn't have control - the singers and band are in one room, and if, in group numbers, the ensemble are in BACK of the lead vocalists, there is nothing to be done to bring them up in the mix.

Normally in the old days, if a flub was made and caught, they'd pick up the piece from where the flub occurred and then they would edit the takes together in the conventional way of tape editing. When I began producing cast albums, I asked my engineer why we couldn't either just put the lead singers in a booth or baffle them sufficiently so that if we got a good band take, we could just fix vocal flubs (without hearing the old vocal). He said we could, and yet no other cast albums to that point (at least in the USA, and as far as I know) had actually done that. We did, and it saved our ass every time in that pressure cooker atmosphere. Suddenly, our actors had a comfort zone and knew they could fix things, and I was very organized and knew exactly what had to be covered. So, when the band was on a ten, we'd bring the singer back and fix. Simple as pie. Now everyone does it, pretty much, but there are some studios (like Edison, where The Producers was recorded) that doesn't have booths for singers.

As to silly things like page turns or chair squeaks, again, some of it is fixable, some isn't - if there's time, you cover it by redoing that section of the band, but there's so little time on a cast album recording day. Sometimes, if the people funding the album have dough to spare, they'll occasionally go to a second day, but it's rare. We did on The King And I with Donna Murphy only (a half-day) because I knew that would make her more comfotable, and it was very helpful.

As to varying sound levels, that is no fault of the original recording - it's a mastering issue, and there is more inept mastering going on than you might think possible. I would rather strangle myself than allow a CD to have levels that require adjusting the volume button on an amp or car CD player or any volume button. Only a bad mastering engineer would let that happen. I use one of the best mastering engineers in the world, but even he was astonished at my nit-pickiness over volume levels from track to track - even if it was a half a decibel off we fixed it.

[NYC_or_Bust]

Posted: 11/10/07 at 8:27pm

Jellylorum-I know EXACTLY what you're talking about with the quacking duck thing before GIMME GIMME. What it was, was during the La Jolla run, some guys thought it would be clever to record the show's songs and then load them onto AUDIOGALAXY. There used to be a MUCH different version of "How The Other Half Lives". But yeah, if I could find a CD that I burned, I could tell you verbatim what was said.

So no, that wasn't the original cast recording, but rather a bootleg of some songs.

[buffyactsing]

Posted: 11/10/07 at 8:30pm

That the beginning of Our Shtetle (Sp) Is America on the Ragtime recording has a snippet of Marin singing from the previous song. That always drives me nuts for some reason.

Updated On: 11/10/07 at 08:30 PM

[seaweedjstubbs]

Posted: 11/10/07 at 8:31pm

If you listen to the Hairspray OBCR during "Big Dollhouse," you can hear a weird high-pitched squeak in between the three big "FOR ME"s that the cast sings at the end. Maybe I'm just hearing things. Let me know if you hear them too.

[gumbo2]

Posted: 11/10/07 at 9:05pm

buffyactsing, I hate stuff like that. They do that in Millie, right at the end of Not For The Life Of Me, to like, flow into the other song, but it doesn't work. Jersey Boys does something similar right before Who Loves You. I hate that.

As for technical annoyances, there's that skip or something near the end of Still Hurting on The Last 5 Years. I've gotten used to it now, but it's pretty obnoxious.

[James885]

Posted: 11/10/07 at 10:05pm

The ringing sound in the background of The Producers OCR is extremely annoying.

One thing that drives me up the wall with cast recordings is the low sound levels. I can identify with what StickToPriest said earlier; it's so irritating when I'm listening to my ipod on shuffle mode in my car and a Broadway CR song comes up and I have to turn the volume way up just to make it out. Then a pop/jazz/R&B/rock song comes up at full volume and blasts through my stereo.

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 11/11/07 at 3:20am

The engineer Leo talks about Annie's problems being because it was recorded in Quad. Not so - it was recorded and released conventionally - it may have had, at some point, a quad release in the days when Columbia was doing that sort of thing,

Columbia (and Angel) issued a number of titles in compatible Stereo/Quad that could play on both systems. These were phased out after a few years, but were popular in 1977 when ANNIE was issued.

Columbia offered special Quadrophonic remixes of NO NO NANETTE, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, COMPANY and the film soundtrack of FUNNY GIRL. Later regular pressings of these Lp's used the Quad remixes (but retained the standard catalogue numbers.)