Tour De Force CD's (Page 2 of 3)

That's cool! Please, share your system setup - very interesting!

I hear you...I have spent thousands on headphones and headphone amps......more bass is not better bass 

I just got the new Tour De Force Royal Albert Hall show. I loved the DVD and feel it is a stronger show than the first RAH. I was really looking forward to the CD. But, I am disappointed in the fade outs after each song.

Some of these fades are 4-5 seconds long and very noticeable. Why on earth do that?? I think it just started with the Amsterdam cds. The first cd, mostly acoustic is the most noticeable. The song completely ends and then there is another 2-3 second gap in the music after the music ends - on some tunes the fade is even longer than a studio album.

Some of the fades make no sense - like the end of Mountain Time has Joe telling the audience "good night" and it fades out as he is talking! On the DVD he introduces the band and then plays Sloe Gin. But, there is no band intro and the song starts right up! It sounds odd to me on the CD after watching the DVD. Why no band intros?

Why did Kevin do it like this? I would just like to know the rationale and why he has only recently begun doing these fades. But, these fades seem longer than on the new Beth & Joe live CD.

Maybe this is a mistake? a disc flaw??

SBS

I'm having trouble uploading  the Borderline CD to I-Tunes.    It only accepts Disc One and Two separately, won't put them together as it does on the other three CD's .     And while it downloads album artwork for Disc One,  I-Tunes tells me it can't find the artwork for Disc Two.    Very strange.

Its been my experience, that CD's made from DVD's, where they've separated the audio and video streams,  won't have the best sound quality.

You can fix that.

The two albums have to have the exact same name, without "[disc 1]" and "[disc 2]". To change that, select all songs, and use command-I on a Mac, or right-click on a PC. Then edit the album name so the both match. You should also see that one disc has a field for disc number, and one will be 1 of 2, the other 2 of two.

When you have it right, the two albums will be shown together in iTunes with a single album image.

I have the set, and found I had to fix a couple names too, as I didn't want a Jockey full of Burbon, nor a Lask Kiss. :-) (that was the first RAH disc)

Gracenote will accept submissions from publishers. These look like they took consumer submissions for this set.

I have received the TDF Albert Hall CD as a Birthday present.
Musical content is similar to his UK tour in Sept.
The production and sound quality are excellent.
One slight criticism is that the production has lost the live feel of the original concert.
It sounds just like a studio album with the addition of some 'audience backing'.
Haven't quite decided whether that is a good thing or not.
Love the heavier version of Sloe Gin and Midnight Blues is quite simply brilliant.
Black Lung Heartache, Jelly Roll and Jockey Full of... are the highlights of the acoustic.
Well done Joe and Kevin.

Personally, I like the music of the CDs I have bought (Borderline and RAH) But, you do lose the experience of the concert with the banter and I am dismayed at the fades. Maybe that's why the CDs are not being reviewed very much like the DVDs were.

I am thinking the fades were for the downloaders who pay 99 cents for a handful of tunes they want. Then, they cut and paste songs to make their own cds. I confess that I am that way and have downloaded a lot of individual songs. That's the only logical thing I can think of. Other releases did not have these fade and left concert banter in.

I would not post a bad review of Joe on Amazon but I think on this blog we are freer to give criticism. We are all Joe fans and when hard core fans don't review a CD then something may be wrong. The DVDS were much enjoyed and well reviewed here and on Amazon. But the cds are not being reviewed much at all. Except most mention the fade outs.

OK, now some positive stuff - the music of the Borderline show is fantastic. I wanted to hear Joe with a 3 piece again and he has not lost a step. His fingers and blurs. I loaned my 4 dvd set to a friend and he thought the Borderline was his favorite show. The cd has all the music and is well produced - except I too hate the fade outs and miss the short talk with the audience.

The Royal Albert Hall show is better than the 2009 RAH concert in my opinion. I love the music on the cd, but I cannot tell if it was recorded at the RHA or Nowhere in Particular. You lose the experience of being there.

But, I think it had to have been done to sell to the downloaders - people who pay 99 cents to download a few songs rather than $20 for the entire 2 disc set. That would make sense for J&R.

I bought 2 of the shows, but I will likely just get a neighbor to rip the dvds of the other two. I have already bought two of the cds and all four of the dvds and I have everything else Joe has done. That's enough for now. But, if the editing had been better on the CDs then I would likely have bought all four of them. That's my honest feedback for J&R as a fan who has bought everything they produced - until these last two cds of the Tour de Force.

SBS