Re: [ARSCLIST] Quad and SACD (was Re: FBI Warning)

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There are some wrong statements here. Suffice to say that the mono and stereo 1812's were produced 
(overseen, approved, etc) by Wilma Cozart Fine and recorded by Robert Fine. In both cases, the gun 
was recorded separately (both at West Point) and the bells were recorded separately (the mono at 
Yale, the stereo at Riverside Church). In both cases, the LP masters were made using synchronized 
35mm mag-films, so yes there was a dubbing loss on the original LPs. The stereo CD was made by 
transferring the gun sequences and bells sequences to Sonic Solutions and combining them directly 
(ie live mixing) with the 3-2 mix from the master tape, directly into the dcs converter and the Sony 
1630 digital master. By the way, for the CD reissue of "Wellington's Victory," the Sonic workstation 
allowed even more precise insertion of the gunshots per Beethoven's original score than was possible 
in the blade-and-ears days. More details about how the guns and bells were recorded are heard in the 
narration bands. The "1812"/"Wellington's Victory" CD continues to sell well and was recently 
reissued as a "Decca Original" even though Mercury had zero connection to Decca until both had been 
bought and combined into Polygram many years after the "1812" albums were certified Gold.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Biel" <m.biel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 1:26 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Quad and SACD (was Re: FBI Warning)


> Michael Shoshani wrote:
> > Personally, I'd love to have even a CD of the mono version of the 1812
> > Overture. (I have the stereo CD, but including the original single-mic
> > mono recording would have been a nice touch.)
>
> Actually this would set up the possibilities of having a separation of the music and the cannons 
> and bells, for both the mono and
> stereo versions.  David Hall did the mono, and he did the sound effects on a separate reel.  There 
> probably is a production master
> mix that could be used to cut new masters and have the balance and synchronization the same each 
> time, but the original unmixed
> reels should still exist.  There are several examples over at Capitol records where they 
> apparently didn't have mixed production
> masters, for example -- The Music Man's train bells vary on different cuttings, and they either 
> lost or forgot to use Stan Freberg's
> Kay Kyser imitation intros on the CD of KK's Greatest Hits.
>
> Michael Biel   m.biel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx