Roots Archives Forum

Thanks for warning, though I just did order Mr Babylon plus String Up The Sound System. When listening to to those items at Juno Vinyl some tracks clearly contained audible distortion, but what the heck.

On the other hand those horrendous Abraham products are totally unlistenable.

On Dancehall Originals CD of Listen Up series sound quality is quite good and especially Mr Babylon is distortion free.
But after a few days I might be able to comment on Mr Ffffrench.

rokkimake wrote:Thanks for warning, though I just did order Mr Babylon plus String Up The Sound System. When listening to to those items at Juno Vinyl some tracks clearly contained audible distortion, but what the heck.

I listened again to my *String Up The Sound System* CD, I had only given it the one cursory listen before. It certainely isn't without fault, the top end is quite harsh, and it sounds like the result of modern style mastering, jacking up the treble. Very unnessecary, and this also brings out any flaws in the sources. There are two tracks by Robert Ffrench on it that are also on the new release, and the track "Single Life" definitely sounds worse than the rest though (the other, "Mother In Law", is better), it sounds like maybe the tape for this session is damaged in some way. The last track, by Frankie Paul, "Steady Skanking", also sounds very bad. If one or two tracks sound like this on a comp I don't think much about it, but a whole album with that sound would definitely be painful...

The tracks seem to be a bit all over the place timewise and therefore sound varies quite a bit. Also sources may vary, some are clearly from vinyl (while some have what sounds to me almost like artefacts from MP3s, if not it's some some kind of phase problem with the playback). So I guess I have to take back a little bit of what I said about sound when it comes to this one, but at the same time I am seldom this critical with my listening when it comes to Reggae releases, I have come to accept that sound is often imperfect. I am also not familiar enough with these recordings to judge if there are better sources or if they could have sounded much better with different treatment in mastering...?

rokkimake wrote:On Dancehall Originals CD of Listen Up series sound quality is quite good and especially Mr Babylon is distortion free.

I never bothered with those *Listen Up* CDs because I thought they were just samplers from their other releases. Looking at the tracks on some of them, maybe I was mistaken. Some of the songs come from other titles, but some seem to be unique, does it say anything about this in the booklet?

For some days I have been listening to Mr Babylon and String Up The Sound System and I must admit that those are the worst efforts of Jamaican Recordings that I've got.
The overall sound is kinda compressed and some tracks contain nasty distortion which makes one to think what the hell the mastering team had in their tea or is it only pure incompetence or indifference? Particularly because Mr Babylon and Bad Boy Posse tunes are much cleaner on Dancehall Originals CD, which booklet contain no information about the tracks.
Not to say that these records are unlistenable but near so and specially on the headphones.

Of the 18 tracks of SUSS the half are on other KS compilations and the rest are not so interresting - some digi crap smuggled along - exept Gimme What Me Want By Tony Tuff.
I have King Jammy's At Channel 1 (KSCD006) and Dancehall Classics Volume One (KSCD013) which are very good but then they are manufatrured under license from the King himself. Birth of Dancehall (KSCD031) also contains some nice tunes but Eradication by Ffrench is again somewhat distorted which makes one think of the quality of original recordings.

Because I'm a little bit worried about the well-being of the vast Bunny Lee clan, I acquired I Am The Gorgon DVD+CD. It's kinda funny to notice that tracks from the seventies on that cd are clearer and contain more headroom than those latest efforts by JR. Could it be that folks at the mastering have been more careful, 'cause it is about the Don himself and his music?