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Andrew's Collection

Van der Graaf Generator   07/31/1975

Nautilus, Gallarate, Italy
Source Unknown Aud > ? > metal cassettes (purportedly 2nd gen.) > Nakamichi Cassette Deck 1 > Mackie 1202-VLZ > M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2496 > CoolEdit Pro 2.0 (production and mastering) > CDwav > mkwACT > SHN
Media Flac CDR   1 disc
Notes "The Joys of Yesterday"
Tech Notes "Notes
- See Tape Transfer Notes for full details
- The transfer was done in 2003 for a trader who had received the tape many years ago
- The patch is between the Arrow and the beginning of Faint-Heart

Flac fingerprints:
VdGG 1975-07-31 d1t01 The Undercover Man.flac:a9b48ed726664bd1aaaf3b0fe73a02eb
VdGG 1975-07-31 d1t02 Scorched Earth.flac:3fcfe34799c0035dc4a734e6e961a5cd
VdGG 1975-07-31 d1t03 Man-Erg.flac:541844eced0b20c8b6c4669ebad78f5a
VdGG 1975-07-31 d1t04 Forsaken Gardens.flac:06ea2a26f4a06df0f294fdf781ba3d82
VdGG 1975-07-31 d1t05 Lemmings.flac:8e6a61b8a2760d9c90e51435fc3721a3
VdGG 1975-07-31 d2t01 La Rossa.flac:e39183b001903833cdb245170264b4ff
VdGG 1975-07-31 d2t02 Arrow.flac:d281e186cb245a898cb980c8d089ec1e
VdGG 1975-07-31 d2t03 Faint-Heart And The Sermon.flac:97bbf625dc5d9dd89210fa789071097a
VdGG 1975-07-31 d2t04 Gog.flac:e47f172d1f8ed01934140c67a0227329
VdGG 1975-07-31 d2t05 The Sleepwalkers.flac:8127cd5bab7c11744769e790ab6ecc02
VdGG 1975-07-31 d2t06 Urban.flac:3b274467fe718254254ea173c64962ef
VdGG 1975-07-31 d2t07 Darkness.flac:ea079c5ac4479ff8c22db55663f7f000"

"Notes:

This show came to me on two metal cassettes, both labelled "2nd gen". Not sure if I buy that, but who knows? Unknown Aud source, and there is occasional microphone handling noise. The sound is variable and sometimes fairly good, but tends to be rather congested in the loud parts and suffers from mild to occasionally servere distortion (e.g., Urban). The pitch was about a quarter tone flat (compared with the Godbluff CD), and has been adjusted using CoolEdit pro's resample function. There were also splices between most tunes, and several instances where the first couple of notes were missing. Crossfades have been used to clean up these spots.

The first tape (up to Disc two Track 03) was a Sony Metal-XR 90, and the second tape (remainder of Disc two) was a TDK MA 50. Both were played back with the Nakamachi set for metal tape, and the playback azimuth was tweaked for optimum sound, such as it is. For some reason, the second tape sounded much poorer than the first, with excessive hiss and a rather dull, bass-heavy sound. An extra pass of hiss reduction was used, and some EQ applied to attempt to more closely match the sound of the first tape.

On both tapes, the left channel was particularly dull and hissy, and although the volume levels of the two channels were similar, the overall balance sounded as though it was shifted well to the right, with the "image" wandering around between center and far right, like a bad head or alignment problem in a deck used in an earlier generation. CoolEdit Pro's channel mixer was used to mix a bit of the right channel into the left and subtract a little of the left channel from the right, to stabilize and center the image.

Various plugins were sparingly applied to reduce hiss and noise. There's always a trade-off between quiet and loss of high end. I tend to prefer a light touch, so you'll still hear a bit of hiss, but it's a lot quieter than the original tapes were. There were also a few very brief spots of crackly noise and the CoolEdit Pro click and pop filter was used to clean them up.

To my ears, the original tapes sounded quite pleasant, and while the results are highly imperfect by any standard, I hope that my efforts have rendered them at least minimally listenable."
Trades Allowed Yes
Ratings Show: A    Sound: B+
Owned by Andrew · Last Updated May 23, 2023