Did you say the Complete Anthology 4-disc box has excellent sound quality!? Not sure what you're talking about, but these CD's have pretty much the most horrid mastering in a long line of terribly mastered M&P's CD's.
They, along with All the Leaves are Brown and every other M&P's CD released in the last 10 years or so, are loud, compressed, and un-dynamic to the point of being offensive.
The only M&P's CD release that I'd say truly sounds great is the first one released, 16 of Their Greatest Hits, released June of '86, and mastered with great care by the amazing Steve Hoffman.
There are two huge problems to consider when discussing the M&P's sound quality on Compact Disc (or any digital format). The first affects every M&P's CD that has been, and ever will be, released. THE IDIOTS AT ABC
THREW AWAY THE ORIGINAL MULTI-TRACK MASTER TAPES!!!
Yup, you read that right, aside from
long ago destroying the original mono masters, the multi's were thrown out to make room for some acquisition (someone mentioned that it may have been the DOT Records catalog).
So, the person doing the remastering for each CD release nowadays has to work from poor quality copies of the original tapes. Here's a post from years back that Steve Hoffman made on his forum...
"Steve Hoffman
01-05-2002, 04:44 PM
Grant,
What did you want to know exactly?
I can ramble for a minute I guess...
I remember the project well for two reasons.
The first reason, is that I got to spend much time with pretty Mama Michelle in my office listening to all the old recordings. That was very fun.
The second reason, is that Irving Azoff gave me quite a verbal lashing when the CD came out and he played it. He said it sounded TERRIBLE. Sigh. I couldn't convince him that the tapes and earlier releases sounded much worse. He just walked away after tearing me a new butthole. Ah well, all in a day's work at MCA.
I remember putting my knowledge of mastering to good use here. Kevin Gray taught me a certain EQ style for bad sounding tapes that were usually recorded at Western. He called it "Mamas and Papas EQ". Simply put, it was a radical EQ move to get some kind of fidelity and warmth out of the tapes.
Problem was (is) that there are not enough knobs on a Sontec Paramteric to do the job in one pass. Yes, the stuff sounds that bad.
I think that the EQ moves would have been like this for most of the songs:
Adding 10 db of bass
Subtracting 10 db of glaring midrange
Subtracting 3 db of glaring 10k
That would have put me in the ball park, sound wise, with most of the songs. A lot more tweaking was done, mostly subtraction, to get the sound I did.
I told a mastering engineer what EQ moves I did for that CD and he didn't believe me.
Ha!"
Additionally, even the original multi's didn't sound great, due to the way that they were recorded. Another post from Steve...
"Steve Hoffman
01-05-2002, 11:00 PM
LOL.
Ya do what 'cha gotta do to make it work.
In the case of The Mamas & Papas, you all know how those songs were recorded, right?
Western was too cheap to get an 8 track recorder, so the songs were just bounced from one three or four track machine to another, adding various layers of music each time.
When strings were added, for example, they just had one string player (to save money), and they just bounced him 3 or 4 times to get a string section!
Shocking, because the main part of the recording suffered during each bounce. Just 'cause they were too cheap to hire another string player.
John Phillips told me that the recordings sometimes went as high as 9 or 10 bounces a song, THEN they were mixed.
Sheesh. Each bounce (or redubbing) caused the transferred sound to become muddier. The engineers tried to fix that by shaving off the bass during each bounce. By 9 bounces, there WAS no bottom end at all, and tremendous hiss. Dreadful sound.
John remembered that the engineer would announce a take that was a high bounce like this:
"Take 1-K"
And everyone laughed in shock, because they always assigned the bounced takes a letter instead of a number, and this was an amazingly high letter.
Remember at the start of "Daydream Believer" by The Monkees, Davy asks "What number is this, Chip"? And Chip Douglas answers "7-A"?
That "A" denotes the first bounce. Take 1-B, on a new reel of tape would be the second bounce, and so on.
Only on the Mamas & Papas stuff did the bounces ever go higher than "C".
So, now you can see why a take number that ended in "K" would cause the engineering staff to squirm. That is 11 bounces, and of course the oldest bounced item would sound the worst----That would be the original music tracks.
No wonder most of the recordings sound like crap.
Great songs though."
The other problem to consider explains why the M&P's releases from the last decade or so sound so much worse and have so much less emotional impact than early CD releases - the industry's stupid "loudness war"...
Instead of me explaining this here, check out these links real quick:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_warhttp://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/ ... h_fidelityhttp://turnmeup.org/Now, take a look at the waveform for Steve's re-mastering of Dedicated to the One I Love, and then the re-mastering on Complete Anthology...
Dedicated to the One I Love - 16 of Their Greatest HitsDedicated to the One I Love - Complete AnthologyIt makes me really angry that a kid who first hears of the Mamas and Papas and wants to check them out is going to most likely end up with one of these modern CD's (or mp3 versions of the same discs). He or she might then completely miss the magic of the group and, what could have been something wonderful - an emotional connection to, and a passion for, this music - may never have the chance to exist.
If anyone here has not heard Steve's '16 of Their Greatest Hits' disc (
not the same as the LP or cassette of the same title), get a copy, your jaw will hit the floor.
No other CD comes close in terms of sound quality, but there are some that are still pretty good (and amazing compared to Complete Anthology and All the Leaves are Brown...)
*Creeque Alley: The History of the Mamas and the Papas 2-disc set
*The Singles+ import
*The Reader's Digest Canada 3-disc set
The original MCA CD reissues may not be the greatest transfers, but at least they're not compressed all to hell like the newer releases, and sound far better.
Anything released in the last decade is almost sure to sound like garbage. Get the Complete Anthology, keep the wonderful booklet, and throw the CD's in the trash. There are better sources for every track on there.
If anyone's interested in learning more about compression, dynamic range, mastering, equalization, or any other audiophile-related topics, be sure and visit Steve's forum at
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/index.php