Speaking of this set - I have one for sale, listed elsewhere on the forum. No bites so far - make me an offer if you have been pondering it.
I've listened to this set in its entirety probably over 25 times. That's about 500 CDs worth of listening. Fortunately I have done this via digitizing it into iTunes so the disks remain pristine. The thing to remember is if there is anything missing - it isn't much and 40 CDs worth of music by one artist in all of its wonderful renditions and varieties should be more than enough for most.
Lets hope we discover more but the "How complete...." argument seems a little to disparage this magnificent collection as if it was a poor attempt or falsely claiming to be "The Complete Works by..." It will never be complete given the possibilities of what might be later discovered but for my purposes it is complete enough!
I am just on to different things and listening to different musicians. I'll keep my iTunes version but no longer want to keep the disks as I begin to downsize. I'll be listing a bunch of other CDs eventually.
I would gladly buy it for a reasonable price. Unfortunately (as I mentioned earlier) shipping costs alone makes it pohibitve. Then again, the discussion about how much the sound is improved from the Nevers work to the Label Ouest editions is still open for me.
With the Label Ouest editions, you can really hear the different instruments. In the Fremeaux set you hear Django and a poum tchak sound with sometimes a bass note (it is exaggerated but you get the idea).
There have always been those of us who sort of obsess over having "everything" - it was certainly true for me at one time even if I'm done now. But there are others still at work on this admirable pursuit - we'd be missing a lot of great things in every style of music if there weren't obsessive people out there looking for missing recordings. Back in the 60s, people went door-to-door in black communities in the south looking for old blues 78s and the vast library of these recordings we have today owes a lot to the guys who did this work - just as we owe the people who searched the markets in Paris for jazz manouche recordings. The continuing search doesn't diminish in any way earlier work. The search continues because as Casey says, there may always be more - like those recordings from the Savoury collection. I have a pretty good collection of old jazz manouche recordings but I know for a fact there is much I will never have. But it exists.
I'd still like to know more about this 5-hour concert with Dizzy Gillespie. This is the first I've head of this...
That's what I keep reading. My question is: how can this really be? You're working with mono sources that can (at best) be painfully cleaned in a computer for x given times. How much improvement can you really have? I think at least 50% of what we read it's just hype to resell a product.
You can get get the whole set from Europe ebay for under $200 dollars with free shipping (argentina not excluded in the fine print I saw). You have to order the collection in 3 sets which are priced around $65 each
Thanks for the tip. The thing is 200 dollars are right now a third of my monthly income (and I have a pretty good salary for local standards...) I guess I'll stick to my mp3 copy for now ;-)
I don't have the Integrale collection. I compared the Samy's remasters to the JSP set and these were my notes from a different thread:
I got them in mail yesterday. I listened to a few songs and compared them with some other reissues of the same. I used a pretty good headphones.
Well mastered, all instruments are in front and present. Some background noise but well controlled, much less than on other reissues but not detrimental to music like some that have all the noise removed but the music sounds awful.
It's very detailed, some things jumped at me that I didn't notice before. When I go back and listen to other recordings they're there but just didn't get my attention before. I wanna compare more with the Bluebird Djangology album but for now I think on these remasters the sound has more body to it. I compared Tears from JSP chronological set and this new one is better again for all the above mentioned reasons.
Looks like this is as HiFi as it gets given the limitations of original recording techniques. At least for now I doubt you can get much better quality sounding Django.
Really accurate report Buco. I have both the Integrale Fremeaux and the Label Ouest discs. while Integrale Fremeaux sounds already better than most recordings available (they are a bit cleaner), Label Ouest offers a better sound of each instrument.
I was not convinced at first (as you say I was thinking it just marketing), but the price was not high, they had nice charts offered with it (for unusual songs). So I bought and was convinced.
If you are interested in how they achieved that, they have technical notes in one of the sets.
Comments
Speaking of this set - I have one for sale, listed elsewhere on the forum. No bites so far - make me an offer if you have been pondering it.
I've listened to this set in its entirety probably over 25 times. That's about 500 CDs worth of listening. Fortunately I have done this via digitizing it into iTunes so the disks remain pristine. The thing to remember is if there is anything missing - it isn't much and 40 CDs worth of music by one artist in all of its wonderful renditions and varieties should be more than enough for most.
Lets hope we discover more but the "How complete...." argument seems a little to disparage this magnificent collection as if it was a poor attempt or falsely claiming to be "The Complete Works by..." It will never be complete given the possibilities of what might be later discovered but for my purposes it is complete enough!
I am just on to different things and listening to different musicians. I'll keep my iTunes version but no longer want to keep the disks as I begin to downsize. I'll be listing a bunch of other CDs eventually.
I would gladly buy it for a reasonable price. Unfortunately (as I mentioned earlier) shipping costs alone makes it pohibitve. Then again, the discussion about how much the sound is improved from the Nevers work to the Label Ouest editions is still open for me.
With the Label Ouest editions, you can really hear the different instruments. In the Fremeaux set you hear Django and a poum tchak sound with sometimes a bass note (it is exaggerated but you get the idea).
There have always been those of us who sort of obsess over having "everything" - it was certainly true for me at one time even if I'm done now. But there are others still at work on this admirable pursuit - we'd be missing a lot of great things in every style of music if there weren't obsessive people out there looking for missing recordings. Back in the 60s, people went door-to-door in black communities in the south looking for old blues 78s and the vast library of these recordings we have today owes a lot to the guys who did this work - just as we owe the people who searched the markets in Paris for jazz manouche recordings. The continuing search doesn't diminish in any way earlier work. The search continues because as Casey says, there may always be more - like those recordings from the Savoury collection. I have a pretty good collection of old jazz manouche recordings but I know for a fact there is much I will never have. But it exists.
I'd still like to know more about this 5-hour concert with Dizzy Gillespie. This is the first I've head of this...
That's what I keep reading. My question is: how can this really be? You're working with mono sources that can (at best) be painfully cleaned in a computer for x given times. How much improvement can you really have? I think at least 50% of what we read it's just hype to resell a product.
y
You can get get the whole set from Europe ebay for under $200 dollars with free shipping (argentina not excluded in the fine print I saw). You have to order the collection in 3 sets which are priced around $65 each
Thanks for the tip. The thing is 200 dollars are right now a third of my monthly income (and I have a pretty good salary for local standards...) I guess I'll stick to my mp3 copy for now ;-)
I don't have the Integrale collection. I compared the Samy's remasters to the JSP set and these were my notes from a different thread:
I got them in mail yesterday. I listened to a few songs and compared them with some other reissues of the same. I used a pretty good headphones.
Well mastered, all instruments are in front and present. Some background noise but well controlled, much less than on other reissues but not detrimental to music like some that have all the noise removed but the music sounds awful.
It's very detailed, some things jumped at me that I didn't notice before. When I go back and listen to other recordings they're there but just didn't get my attention before. I wanna compare more with the Bluebird Djangology album but for now I think on these remasters the sound has more body to it. I compared Tears from JSP chronological set and this new one is better again for all the above mentioned reasons.
Looks like this is as HiFi as it gets given the limitations of original recording techniques. At least for now I doubt you can get much better quality sounding Django.
Update: seems to work only if you pay the subscription to youtube music.
Really accurate report Buco. I have both the Integrale Fremeaux and the Label Ouest discs. while Integrale Fremeaux sounds already better than most recordings available (they are a bit cleaner), Label Ouest offers a better sound of each instrument.
I was not convinced at first (as you say I was thinking it just marketing), but the price was not high, they had nice charts offered with it (for unusual songs). So I bought and was convinced.
If you are interested in how they achieved that, they have technical notes in one of the sets.