Hello Everybody.

I am new to IMWAN so I hope I am asking these questions in the proper place for this site.

Here goes:

In 1992, I purchased the Frank Sinatra Concepts box set on Capitol. In 1995, I purchased the Frank Sinatra Complete Reprise recordings in the brown trunk. Recently, at Borders books, I saw a mini box set of Frank Sinatra's Concept albums that you can only buy at Borders. This got me doing some homework, and I see where in 1998 the box sets I bought were re-released. The Capitol edition had a rectangular black box, and the Reprise edition had a cream-colored linen cloth cover. Additionally, the individual discs were remastered as part of the "Entertainer of the Century" series. Finally, the Reprise linen cover set from 1998 has a greater second-hand market price on amazon.com than my 1995 brown trunk set. This particularly suprised me since I have the original set. Therefore, my questions are as follows:

1. Do my sets from 1992 and 1995 not have something that the 1998 sets have?
2. Do the 1998 sets have much better sound, or isn't there much of a difference?
3. Is the mini-box at Borders from the Capitol / Reprise 1992 Concepts discs or the remastered 1998 discs?
4. Can anybody provide me with a comprehensive listing of the "Entertainer of the Century" series CDs on Capitol and Reprise? I am having trouble nailing down which discs comprised this series.

If the 1998 sets and discs are all better and have more material, then I either missed the boat, or I jumped too quickly in the early / mid-90s.

Can anybody help me?

I apologize if this was addressed somewhere here a long time ago.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Mike in PA

Hello Mike, and welcome to the forum. The unremastered Sinatra CD's are supposed to have better sound, but I don't own any of the "Entertainer of the Century" CD's so I can't say for sure, it's something I read on the Hoffman board.

From reading the Steve Hoffman board...and then listening myself...I can say that from what I've heard, everything that has Larry Walsh's name in the credits is pretty much the best you're gonna get. And he was responsible for the Capitol Sinatra catalog from (I'm roughly guesstimating) 1987-1992. There might have been some overlap, or another engineer or two...but basically any of the original, un-remastered CDs are actually the best sounding.

Anything that has Bob Norberg listed as the mastering engineer is TO BE AVOIDED. Unfortunately that means pretty much everything that is currently available on Capitol. This man is the king of noise reduction and brickwall limiting.

I have the 1991-mastered The Capitol Years 3 CD set, and compared to the same tracks on the 1998-mastered Complete Capitol Singles 4 CD set the 1991 one wins HANDS DOWN, IMO. The single CD Capitol Collector's Series comp from 1989 is great too.