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Satch

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I got an unexpected surprise from FedEx today. An album I had back ordered from Acoustic Sounds and forgot about.

97 (+/-) year old Pinetop Perkins recorded live, direct to disc at Blue Haven Studios, Salina, Kansas. "The signal from the microphone is transmitted directly to the lathe." 45 rpm on I'm guessing 200 gram vinyl. 3 songs per side.

Pinetop on piano & vocals and an electric guitar player. Very little info with this so I don't know who was playing guitar. Very good player.

I'm not smart enough to give a good review, I'm just wondering if anybody here has any experience with direct to disc...

I've played bass for a guy who played and sang a lot like Pinetop Perkins and it was just a little spooky how real this album sounds.

Satch
 
I'm not smart enough to give a good review, I'm just wondering if anybody here has any experience with direct to disc...

I've a few records from Sheffield Labs, one of the D2D pioneers. Great stuff!
 
I've a few records from Sheffield Labs, one of the D2D pioneers. Great stuff!

Yep, I was going to mention the Sheffield disc's as well, one of the pioneering labels in Direct to Disk and pretty much an audiophile staple in the 80's.

Satch, we were in the church that Blue Heaven uses as the studio when we toured Acoustic Sounds at the National Get Together a few years ago. Chad Kassem gave us the grand tour both at Acoustic Sounds (I dropped a lot of coin that day - kid in a candy shop), and at the church. He was possitively beaming as he showed us around the place. We saw the lathe that was used to cut your record!
 
DTD is the ultimate way to make an album IMO. When done correctly there is no added compression, equalization (RIAA excepted) or gain riding. The peak level is set and the musicians control the dynamics. The intent of the musicians is unfiltered by any other storage medium. There are a couple of drawbacks though, there are no do-overs, once the cut starts it must be played through, some have argued that this causes the musicians to hold back for fear of making errors. Secondly sides tend to be short because groove spacing tends to be wider.

A number of companies have utilized DTD the most famous of which are Sheffield Lab, Umbrella, Crystal Clear, Sonic Arts, East Wind, Nautilus, M&K Realtime, Direkt-To-Disk Labs and many other small labels. In fact RCA took a shot at DTD with a few releases. These companies released mostly jazz and classical music but some did release pop/rock sounds also.
 
Direct to disc = good.

I too have some Sheffield discs - definitely a thing of the '80s, but amazing sound all the same!
 
If you ever get the chance to hear it run through 7.1 surround, the Sheffield Lab direct-to-disk recording "The King James Version, Harry James & His Big Band" is unbelievable. Its recorded in the Hollywood Presbyterian Church Chapel with a single stereo mike. You can really get a sense of the acoustic space that the recording was made in. :rocker:
 
If you ever get the chance to hear it run through 7.1 surround, the Sheffield Lab direct-to-disk recording "The King James Version, Harry James & His Big Band" is unbelievable. Its recorded in the Hollywood Presbyterian Church Chapel with a single stereo mike. You can really get a sense of the acoustic space that the recording was made in. :rocker:

This is a stunning piece of vinyl. Listen to the drum kit. It is perfectly sized and the transient response is just so realistic as to be scary. Listen to this at a realistic level (100-105dB peaks) and you are in the presence of a big band.
 
Thanks for mentioning the drum kit, one of the highlights of the recording.

One of my pet peeves about a lot of otherwise fine recordings are drums and piano that is wall-to-wall so to speak. In this recording all instruments are located in an acoustic space sized as it should be. The drums are the right size to be about 25 feet away from them. The piano is further back toward the left side of the band and in the back.
 
Thanks for the feedback...

Yeah, It did have the feel of a "one take" kind of recording. Little things like Pinetop backing away from the mic at one point, foot shuffles, riffs after the song was finished, etc. All of that just added to the brief feeling I had of being live on stage with my old friend.

I'd love to watch somebody record there.

Satch
 
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