 |
| December 1, 2008 Ultra Sounds: The Aliens I’ve retired my "Radical Sounds" columns to concentrate on this one, "Ultra Sounds." The old column was devoted to recordings released on SACD and DVD-Audio, and though I’m not abandoning those formats, there are many new media that provide high-definition sound. It makes sense to have a column that will be dedicated to great-sounding recordings, no matter the format. This time out marks my first in selecting a digital download as a great-sounding album: Luna, by the Aliens, on Linn Records, available in FLAC or WMA format at 24-bit/48kHz. Linn also offers Luna in 16/44.1 CD quality in FLAC and WMA, but don’t go there if you want great sound. The music of the Aliens -- what’s left of a popular Scottish group, the Beta Band -- is usually described as upbeat, psychedelic pop. (You can find videos and live footage on YouTube.) The music on Luna, their second album, is appealing and eclectic, sounding by turns like the Who, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and others, but the main ghosts in this machine are those of the Beatles. There are lots of sound and instrumental effects and tight harmony vocals, and never a dull moment. The CD was released first. Linn, wanting to encourage other
independent labels, picked it up, and the producer completely remixed Luna for
release in Linn’s Studio Master series (the 24/48 downloads mentioned above). I found Luna fun to play with as I tried out different synthetic surround formats. Dolby Pro Logic II worked pretty well, but best was Neural-THX Surround. Luna’s constant fluctuations between in- and out-of-phase signals produced some very clean and effective surround. Some racing cars seemed to go around my room. Pretty neat. Turning to the tried-and-true CD, I find there’s some life left in the soon-to-disappear format. About two weeks ago I received Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s new gold CD edition of Frank Sinatra’s Nice ’n’ Easy, and have listened to it many times with great pleasure. I still think Only the Lonely (also on the way from MoFi) is the best of Sinatra’s Capitol sessions with arranger Nelson Riddle, but Nice ’n’ Easy isn’t far behind. Recorded in 1960, it finds Sinatra’s voice darkened with age but still in excellent shape. There are maturity and wisdom in every note, but his technique is still sure enough that his voice still does exactly what he asks of it, and Riddle’s lush, romantic arrangements -- never mere "accompaniment" yet never in the way -- work with the singer hand in glove.
Sinatra’s voice, too, sounds infinitely better on the Mobile Fidelity edition. I can detect far more nuance, and deliberately swallowed tones that lend meaning and pathos to many passages. Mobile Fidelity has been down memory lane with Sinatra before, on vinyl, and those releases sounded pretty wonderful, but on this gold edition of Nice ’n’ Easy the singer’s famous voice sounds better than on any other CD release I’ve heard. That leaves out the more recent digitally remastered CD from Capitol, which I haven’t heard, though what I’ve heard about it isn’t flattering -- apparently, the engineers worked with the compressed 1998 remastering. If you want to hear Frank Sinatra’s voice in all its glory, you’ll have to resort to vinyl or this very analog-sounding gold CD, one of the few that will make me sad to see the format disappear. . . . Rad Bennett
Ultra Audio is part of the SoundStage! Network. |
The difference is one of night and day. The CD has compression of all sorts,
resulting in harsh, congested sound. The download has no compression and sounds open,
free, and transparent. Lots of things are going on simultaneously in these mixes, but none
of them is lost in the download. The bass is solid and, like everything else, in good
focus. On the CD, when the struck cymbals enter in "Bobby’s Song," they
might as well be garbage-can lids. In the download, they shimmer -- I can clearly hear the
striking of the stick and the ensuing sound of the cymbal.
By 1960 Capitol was
routinely recording in stereo, and captured these sessions in very natural sound, albeit
with somewhat hard directionality: winds in one channel, strings in the other, Sinatra in
the middle. Such separation sounds least natural in the 1988 Capitol CD edition, in which,
in Sinatra’s duet with a trumpet in the title song, it sounds as if singer and
instrumentalist are on different planets. The Capitol CD suffers from compressed dynamic
range -- from beginning to end, everything is at pretty much the same volume. The MoFi
fixes that nicely. String surges, which one could experience with the Capitol only by
pitch change, have the urgency of rushing wind or surf. The bass line, which I strain to
hear on the Capitol, is solid and focused on the MoFi.