The 1990 Beach Boys Capitol twofers are no-noised, while the 2001 twofers are compressed - pick your poison. This info is from the Hoffman site.

Having bought both sets upon their respective releases, when i a-b'd them i ended up keeping the 2001's (and of course no doubt i'll now be informed that the 1990's were the better of the two). It seemd, to my ears anyways, that they had an edge over the 1990 ones, although i preferred the heavier stock and less smudge-prone booklets of the 1990s as well as the listing of tracks on the face of the cds (i did swap out the booklets though).

Let your own ears be the judge - the Hoffmanites bitch about the sound quality of most CDs manufactured after 1985 or that aren't mastered by you-know-who. Your own ears will tell you what's good and what isn't.

Exactly! Sometimes I think some of those guys must have the hearing of a dog. They throw away CD's cause it "hurts" Thier ears, or gives them a headache. C'mon, no ones hearing is THAT sensitive...

Jeff

What I find most curious about the Hoffmanites is that they will sample every known edition of a CD in order to find the best audio quality. Think of all the other CD's they will have to do without in that quest for perfection.

I have all the Beach Boys two-fers from the early 90's. I never upgraded (or downgraded as the case may be) not because of any perception that the earlier ones were better -- I was just too darn cheap!

Most of the Hoffia's discussions seem to be more about convincing themselves why they shouldn't spend money re-buying upgraded releases ~ I think it's more a question of budget concerns, or just music collecting burnout, than it is about genuine considerations of sound quality. If you watch their threads nowadays, 99% of them follow the same predictable pattern:

~ New remaster is announced.

~ Five guys immediately jump in to explain why the new remaster will be worse than the pressing they already own ... without having actually heard the new version, mind you! ... no, it will "definitely" be junk because it's mastered by Evil Engineer X or manufactured at Bad Pressing Plant Y or distributed by Uncaring Label Z, all of which have already been "proven" to be of poor quality through some combination of lectures from Hoffman and waveform maps generated by CoolEditPro.

~ Then to underscore the point made by the previous five guys, a sixth one will add that he "doesn't need the bonus tracks anyway, since all albums should be no more than 27 minutes in length".

I stopped paying attention. They're just talking in circles at this point, and it's not helpful information for collecting music in the '00s.

P.S. Another vote for the 2001 versions of the Beach Boys two-fers.

Want to think of something funny? How is it that I got corrected by somebody over there after I told them about my hearing impairment and the fact that my right ear (the worse of the two) suffers from a hypersensitivity to certain frequencies when the sound is jacked up? I mentioned to this guy and the Forum over there that anything that Joseph Palmaccio has done (the PIR Soul individual album remasters and the Redbone Hits package) just slaughters my ears. The guy actually responded to me that his work was absolutely wonderful. Then, in other posts, he would go on and make insinuations about CDs and people's hearing like it was a joke.
There is supposedly a philosophy of keeping things peaceful there. How do things become peaceful when everybody is so militant over there?

I can see both sides of this. Many current cd's are over compressed with really crappy compressors. The cd fomat's shortcomings already tend to boost the 1k-4k range. Rock recording engineers boost it more for car stereos. When overdone compression gets thrown in, it is pretty ridiculous & unpleasant.

On the other hand, many 1st generation cd's sound like a prerecorded cassette. They were made with early, inferior mastering equipment & often from 3rd & later generations safety masters. Early digital recordings were also usually awful; the obsession many classical music fans have with "DDD" recordings is laughable; as most digital recordings before the early 90's were AWFUL, & really didn't become acceptable until the mid 90's.

While Hoffman tends to do good work, others do also. We have digital mastering equipment today that can make cd rival vinyl if done right.

I wonder that sometimes myself, although I post there as well as here.

There are some good people there, to be fair. Ones who can listen objectively and with open ears. However, the ones that tend to get noticed are the ones who debate ad infinitum a four second passage of a track, replete with waveform comparisons, etc and after a few posts, I lose interest in the thread and tune out.

There was a Genesis thread that had something like five pages of db and waveform comparisons and that's when I had to say "check, please" and abandoned that thread. I was curious because I have been seeking out the Genesis CDs in their original mixes because they've been replaced by the new remix/remasters.

Everyone hears differently and has different sensitivities to sound.

What angers and puzzles me is the way they won't acknowledge our forum, or other music forums. The only time they mentioned ICE was last year when our old board was shutting down. One poster there was actually gleeful and snide about it. I wanted to thrash him/her in a post, but I decided not to because I would have let him (or her) have it and probably been banned...or "gorted" at the very least.

I like the Hoffman board, but I consider ICE/IMWAN to be my music "home" and you guys and gals to be my partners/friends in music obsessing/geekery.

I bought some of the 2001 remasters based on info from the Beach Boys camp, which stated that the remasters were a significant improvement over the 1990 releases. The ones that I bought did sound somewhat better but were not dramatically improved. The 1990 discs were very well done, so improvement would be hard. However, IMO, Sunflower has not been captured properly on any of the digital releases.

I liked the 1990 Beach Boys remasters, except for Pet Sounds. The intro to "Wouldn't It Be Nice" sounded really muffled because of the noise reduction. There's none of that on the remaster.
Chip

Well, if i'm getting a nod from Linda on this, i feel like i'm in good company. It's nice to know that someone of such discriminating musical tastes heard things the same way. I also appreciated Chris and Jeff's comments about trusting one's own ears

The comments/insights into the Hoffman folks was very interesting as well. It's somewhere i've never visited, and i can clearly see now that i'm on the right track there. At least here you get plenty of varying opinions to reflect upon. And by and large folks are very nice.

As to what Charles said, for all those years i had/listened to the 1990 ones, i was always more than impressed, and couldn't imagine them ever sounding any better. But after listening to a 2001 disc, as amazing as it was, there did seem to be some difference (and i concur with Warren, the difference may not be dramatic; but for me any degree of improvement was worth the upgrade).

Another thing i have heard, although i don't know if it's true, or if it is, what specific tracks are involved, but i'd heard that on some tracks there were differences from the 1990s discs, such as augmented intros (perhaps a count-in or take # announced) and extended endings. Can anyone comment on this?

In regards to The Beach Boys, are there any records that have still not been released on CD at all? Or for whatever reason has gone OOP and is now hard to find and/rare?

Thanks

Rich

The Japanese edition of "Rarities" and "Summer in Paradise". And of course, the legendary "SMiLE" remains unreleased to this day, except for the eight tracks on the "Good Vibrations" box set. But the main catalog remains in print, and that is good.

Thanks. I don't collect any Japanese pressing of anybody. I do have many but just by cahnce or it was a cool set; but almost always on vinyl.

However, what is the Summer disc? Did it ever come out here?

Not counting Smile, your saying every record of theirs that came out on LP is on CD now? If so, then cool. I have some work to do.

Thanks again

Rich

"Summer in Paradise" was the last full Beach Boys album, although with no Brian involvement except for a re-recording of "Surfin'". It is really for completists only, as it contains only one outstanding track, the title track itself. The European edition is better than the American edition.

Rich, I take it you are only interested in the full band releases, in which case the following may be OOP:

Summer in Paradise
Still Cruisin'
Stars and Stripes vol.1
Perfect Harmony
Mike Love, Bruce Johnston and David Marks of the Beach Boys Salute NASCAR
Hawthorne, California
Rarities
Ultimate Christmas
Endless Harmony
Songs From Here & Back
Lost and Found (1961-62)
Ten Years of Harmony
United we Stand

If you include solo albums, the list would be longer. Happy hunting!

For some reason, I felt compelled to hang on to my CBS/Caribou CDs of the Beach Boys 70s & 80s albums. I don't think they sound better than the Capitol reissues, but they do seem to be collectable.

The Made in USA comp from 1986 got roasted at the time, but strangely now seems to be in good favor with the Hoffmanites. And, of course, the DCC gold CDs of Pet Sounds, Endless Summer, and Spirit of America (all remastered by Hoffman) are highly prized. Hoffman's work was also used on a 2-CD comp issued by Razor & Tie. There was a feeding frenzy on this title once the Hoffmanites found out about it, and now it can command big bucks.

I've also kept my CBS/Caribou CD's. "Made in USA" contains the exclusive track, "Rock'n'Roll to the Rescue", otherwise only available as a remix on the "Still Cruisin'" CD single.

Not only do I have the two catlg releases I also kept the single titled Japanese discs.
(And I wonder why I am running out of room) :}

Rick A.

Too close to truth. I am a member of both boards. I was with Ice until it folded and then jumped to Hoffman because i need my fix. I still enjoy both boards but sometimes I thing some of these guys make up what they think sounds better because the charnces are its a older copy that not a lot of people will have and they have Dups lol

The only Cd that ever "hurt" my ears was the very first CD I ever got. It was the orignal pressing of All Things Must Pass and I thought I had a ear infection because it sounded "stuffy". I almost swore off of Cds right then and there but thank God I had also got a copy of Zappa's Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar. That convinced me.

PS Nice to be back.....