Buddy Holly in Stereo: 30 Classics cd review

 Over the years, the decades even on this blog we have looked at "Golden Oldies", the stuff the ill in bed with bucket me would with just the radio on low for company would hear new to me music and how that shaped some of my musical likes.

Sometimes these have taken the form of various artist compilations that may of been by year or record label or taken the route of a single performer.

An interesting subset of such releases is those that offer previously unissued recordings or mixes as after all once you've got a bunch of recordings by artists or a specific era you are likely set to go for your life.

Many recordings from the Rock and Roll era to the late nineteen sixties came out in mono, aimed for teens with shoe box record players or AM Radio and over the years people have tried to find the session tapes to mix them into stereo, the current standard, unused stereo mixes or make via many techniques such mono recordings into stereo.

In the past the attempt by crudely adding echo, splitting the high and low notes and so on made things worse - those of us who bought records in the seventies and early eighties recoiled in horror to how many of those attempts sounded.

That reaction lead the "Back to Mono" movement that has influenced many modern re-issues where anything in  mono is left that way and for original mono hit singles to be used in compilations over stereo remixes made for albums.

In more recent years attempts using computerized technology and advanced very narrow filtering of sounds has lead to some new attempts at the holy grail that is turning mono into recognizable stereo.

Buddy Holly is an artist that via those oldies radio shows and fifties nostalgia I've always loved, teens of my generation were amongst the biggest buyers of 1978's "Buddy Holly Lives: Twenty Golden Greats" recognizing how he influenced many of our heroes.

In the mid nineteen eighties MCA Records in the US, the arm of which did b******** all to promote him and his legacy leaving to MCA in Great Britain where he's more respected put out a couple of compilations that used the real master tapes, mixed from the sessions and mastered by one Steve Hoffman.

Cd's such as 1985's From the first time from the original masters" remain the gold standard of Holly releases because someone cared to find the proper unadulterated tapes.

Recently Hit Parade Records in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, issued this thirty track cd that uses "Digitally Extracted Stereo" utilizing three programs with much human intervention to ensure every track is in stereo.

Previous albums only had his last songs such as "It Doesn't Matter Any More" and "Raining In My Heart" and the unreleased at the time songs overdubbed  by The Fireballs" such as "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" which was a big hit in the UK in true stereo coming out as stereo became a thing on record.

The vinyl edition of Buddy Holly Lives had the others in fake stereo while the cd version followed the mono stays in mono convention of today.

When I got this cd I wasn't sure how this was going to work out having heard some good examples of this modern technique - much of the Beach Boys Wild Honey album of 1967- and the bad "Do You Wanna Dance?" from same groups Today album in the "stereo portion" of the cd.

The extent to which each sound is clear in that original mono mix does seem to affect how well these techniques can work and in Buddy Holly's case Norman Petty's recordings at Clovis, New Mexico, were amongst the finest of that era.

I'd even say they are better than a good number that came out decades later actually.

This does mean that actually the "stereo" is surprisingly good, stable across the image and adds that missing dimension although had a "proper" stereo mix been attempted at the time it would of course be preferable for capturing everything by design.

Hearing tracks like Rave On and Not Fade Away which was covered on 45 by the Rolling Stones no less in what is a good example of the illusion that much popular recordings in stereo are not being recorded with each instrument as a stereo pair in space.

The insert notes while not revelationary, are comprehensive outlining Buddy's life and career which is what he deserves.

I would not toss aside those cd's Steve Hoffman remastered mainly in mono back in the mid nineteen eighties but would put this along side it as an alternate form of hearing these songs as the actual mastering is better than some of Universal/MCA's current cheaper compilations and this having 30 tracks on it is great value.
 

Going back to the Seventies

While I'm preparing to be off having packed my case, tote bags and lord knows what else you take and find you really didn't need as much here's this weeks main post, a day earlier.
There are times not least with the more middles life I have I feel that we over complicate things not least compared to how things were in the past where we may of had less options but we just got on with it.
Like today we download things or stream them but there are different places, different formats and you're never quite sure if even an album will playback in the right order as different software works different sometimes having things playing in alphabetical order before now.

It was so much easier when this and it's ilk ruled the home entertainment roost as you just put a record  on and it just played it and if you wanted to hear the latest sounds you just spun the tuning dial and that was it no need for software upgrades and the like.Need to make a personalized selection then the cassette unit would let you do that from any source and play it on the 'Walkman'.
There are times when there's something to be said for keeping it simple.

Project X

I've been interested in how things work for quite sometime which in the old days was fairly straight forward in that often you could see just by looking at all the key bits and that often was connected with audio equipment as getting good sound has always mattered to me.
Sometimes I'd buy either a full kit to assemble or boards with all the main components mounted on to just wire up and a few bits to make say a radio unit or an amplifier for not much money.
Sometimes it was worth it just for the learning experience alone.
As a good number of you know in recent years because of my acquired difficulties with my hands, that whole avenue has been denied me simply cos I can't solder and screw things together anymore. That really hacks me off big time.
I've bought something more or less ready done to experiment a bit with though and it is this.
It's a SA 36A Pro 'amplifier' ready assembled from board similar to what can be bought part done with a power unit.
The first and in many ways intriguing aspect to it is it uses a special low power integrated circuit to produce approximately 25 watts per channel made by TI Instruments, the TPA3118D2DAP, which is a Class D high efficiency one that a number of people are raving about for its sound..
I won't bore the pants off of you by explain all about Class D as there's a good entry on Wikipedia explaining all but it's why such a small cheap board can equal the output of a more conventional amplifier of a similar power using less electricity and getting less hot.

The front panel shows just how small it is and  also why  I put parenthesise around the word amplifier as while it has a volume control, it does lack an input selector which at a later stage of this project I intend to tackle.

This is the actual board as fitted with the integrated circuit the small black object in the centre and you'll also see how careful design has removed the need for trailing wiring from back to front.

This is the back panel of the SA 36, original version which only accepted 12 volts dc input, the 36A Pro accepts up to 24 volts for higher output via black switched mode (transformerless) power unit that is supplied.

There are binding posts to connect 4 to 8 ohm loud speakers to, left and right line input and that 2.5mm inner, 5.5 outer socket for the power unit.

The supplied power unit is 12 volts but only 2 amp maximum which I feel is a bit restricting so I've ordered a 60 watt max, 5 amp one to use with it as if the amplifier draw more than the supplied power unit can give it's protection circuits are more likely to need to kick in and some have found the quality of these units is compromised  by the rather basic supplied units, that are not the manufacturers own. 

That unit also has a fused UK mains lead where as the supplied unit is a unfused continental 2 pin one with a basic unfused adapter which I wasn't happy about on safety grounds as serious conditions could develop before your mains circuit tripped, knocking off the power.

I'm interested in two things, the first being just how good is this chip? and secondly as advocate of getting good sound into peoples lives, can budget hifi equipment by non mainstream manufactures provide a way in for people who end up with so-so all in one music systems to enjoy more of their music.