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ranked #152,407 most helpful out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★☆☆☆
Not perfect - stereo image narrowed
This title has long been wanted by fans, yet sadly, this Concord release does not quite live up to that expectation. My initial thoughts when listening in the car on the way home from the store where I bought the disc was that the disc sounded great and that the mastering sounded pretty good. Later on, at home, with more time and better hardware to critically examine the disc, it became clear that the new disc wasn't all it could be. Yes, the songs are all there in all their glory; yes, the reverb was toned down from prior releases; but something was not quite right. Digging out the old LPs and CDs of this material, I found the situation getting clearer. One thing that immediately jumped out at me was the narrowing of the stereo on many of the tracks. To me, the old late '60s style of stereo separation was something to be enjoyed. Just like on the old Beatles records, certain placements of sounds in the hard right or hard left are simply part of the experience of these tracks. To now change that to something less removes something from that experience. A good example is on the track "Drinking Water (Agua de Beber)". On that track, on both the old LP and CD of SINATRA AND COMPANY, we can hear Antonio Carlos Jobim's vocals in the hard left channel. Here on the new disc, that vocal is now nearly centered, vaguely toward the right of the stereo image. The other instrumentation on these tracks is also compromised, moving from a hard left or right positioning to nearer the center, basically removing the exciting nature of the old stereo. I can understand *why* this is done - it's a function of the "headphone" generation. People all over the world are listening to their music on portable players with headphones, and the fact is that older stereo, with hard left or right panning, becomes a little uncomfortable under those circumstances. So, the mastering decisions are now made with that audience in mind. It bothers me that we who are not headphone-bound have to suffer because of those who are. I've since learned from reports on the Internet that some edits to the original material (done to polish up the original recordings) have been missed in this version. As a result, some "wrong notes" are leaking through on this edition, like the word "day" at 1:11 in "The Girl From Ipanema". There are a few other examples like that, but this one's probably the worst. The new SINATRA/JOBIM disc may be useful for a lot of people who've never heard the three rarer tracks. It puts them all in one handy place (albeit with an unfortunately compromised stereo image).
May 2010 · CDs and Vinyl
the product in question
Sinatra/Jobim: The Complete Reprise Recordings
4.7★ · 416 ratings, as of 2023
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