Conference cookie::notes$archive:cd_v1

    Goodby Yellow Brick Road is available and it is great.  Funeral
    for a friend is the kind of song that CD's were made for.
    
    Greatest Hits has decent sound quality.  Haven't seen any others
    yet.
    
    							Doug

    I have the "Madman across the water" album and also that one
    is quite good quality. There is also a special "Best of" album
    which is remastered specially for CD. I have it and it sounds good.
    
    Svein
    

    Let me second the recommendation for Good Bye Yellow Brick Road.
    
    Steve
    

I have all of the following Elton CDs:

	ELTON JOHN (the one mentioned in .0)
	TUMBLEWEED CONNECTION
	MADMAN ACROSS THE WATER
	GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
	DON'T SHOOT ME, I'M ONLY THE PIANO PLAYER
	CARIBOU

The sound quality is good remastered analog quality (i.e., some hiss).

--PSW

    I have FIRE ON ICE.  It is OK, however I've heard better from EJ.
    
    		-John

    Does it sound anything like "Ice On Fire" ?
    
    - M

    
    I have the  following EJ CDs:
    
    	"Madman Across the Water"	- good
    	"The Superior Sound of EJ"	- very good (remastered from
   						     original tapes
    						     much better than
    						     Greatest Hits cds.)
    	"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"	- very good
    	"The Fox"			- good
    
    
    Any comments on "Love Songs by EJ" cd?
    
    walter
    

    
      I'd like to know where 340.4 found Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The
    Piano Player.
    
                Dan
    

                AARRGGHHHHH !!!!!    I live in southern N.H.  and 
                have spent the  last  three  days  checking every 
                record  store between Manchester  and  route  128 
                looking for the YELLOW BRICK ROAD album.  I can't 
                find it.  help !!!!!!!

    We (er, actually my wife) has the Yellow Brick Road double CD.  It is
    packaged as two seperate single jewel boxes, which I personally find
    much better than the clunky double/triple/quad jewel box.  Also we have
    "Tommy" by the Who which is a two CD set in seperate jewel boxes.
    
    I would be interested in knowing if Yellow Brick Road is still offered
    in the two-jewel-box package (if you ever find it that is!). 
    
    GAS

    I picked up YBR last Wednesday in the two jewel box configuration.
    
    BTW -- Sorry people, 1) I'm in Colorado Springs and 2) it was
    the last one.
    
                                Roak
    

    Try one of the following locations:
    
    1) Rockit Records - Daniel Webster Highway, S. Nashua
    2) P.C. Records - Amherst Street (Exit 7W), Nashua
    3) Strawberries - Nashua Mall (Exit 6), Nashua
    
    One of these places should be able to order it for you if they don't
    have it.
    
    Steve
    

                Thanks, Steve.    I  tried  all three but none of 
                them  had  it   (somehow  I  wasn't  surprised!).  
                Anyway, I ordered it  (they have no idea how long 
                it will take), but if  somebody  sees  it  in the 
                meantime, please let me know.
                
                Warren

                At    the    risk    of    replaying    an    old 
                tape...er..uh..CD, the store from which I ordered 
                GYBR keeps telling me,  "It  should be in any day 
                now".   (I was never  interested  in  buying  any 
                bridges either.)
                
                Please,  oh  please,  has  anyone  seen  this  CD 
                anywhere?    Yes I'll go to Harvard  Square  even 
                though I live in N.H.
                
                HELPPPPP!
                
                Warren

    I have seen it at Eastern Discounts in N. Providence, R.I. I buy
    many of my CD's there as they sell for $12.99 for most CD's.
    (Only problem is the selection is usually very limited)
    They are located on Mineral Spring Ave. (Take 95 south to Rt. 146
    Mineral Spring Ave. exit, proceed right approx 100 yards to light.
    It is directly left of the light. I'm not sure how much it is but
    my next CD purchase will be this (these?) disks.
    					Tom Testagrossa

      I purchased a copy of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
    the other day and noticed that there are a couple of tracks that
    have quite a bit of noise, sounds like static. Has anyone else
    experienced this? I'm wondering if it's worth taking it back for
    a new copy.
    
          Dan Sears

    I have not noticed any upsetting noises on the Captain Fantasic
    CD.  In fact, I think that it sounds quite nice.  If you are having
    problems maybe you should replace it (or clean it first).
    
    /walter

    Anyone check out the Live in Australia CD yet?  It's really great!
    It's DDD and over 70 minutes long.  Most of the stuff are ballads
    and the only "hits" are "Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word", "Your
    Song" and "Don't let the Sun go down on Me", but it does include
    one of my favorites, "Tiny Dancer". It's recorded with the Melbourne
    Symphony Orchestra and the string are really impressive.  

    Yeah!!!!  This CD is great!!!  73:58 is the time and the sound
    is very clean.  The CD contains everything I would have hoped
    for on a live release:  The King Must Die, Burn Down The Mission,
    Madman Across The Water, Sixty Years On, The Greatest Discovery,
    Candle In the Wind, and my personal favorite Have Mercy On The
    Criminal.  Another great thing about this is that he uses all
    of the original Paul Buckmaster arrangements.

    The baffling thing about this CD, however, is the price.  As
    a vinyl release it is a two LP set, as is Yellowbrick Road
    But, as a CD Yellowbrick Road is nearly 30 dollars compared
    to the 14.99 I paid for this live collection; each are on one CD.  
    Where is the justice?  Furthermore, what's the logic?  Did MCA
    get confused???
    
    =ken

I found such a good deal at Rock 'n Mania that I bought the vinyl on this one. 
 I'd like to point out that it is impeccable.  MCA definitely has their act 
together finally, across-the-board, and their prices are very competitive too.

It's probably not appropriate to discuss this here, but I was EXTREMELY 
impressed by this album.  NOT "101 Strings Play Elton John", but rather a VERY 
tasteful and soul-wrenching experience from start to finish.  Elton's voice 
has never been filled with more honest emotions, and the material really 
worked well in this setting.  First pop album with strings, in awhile, where 
the strings were neither syruppy or discofied.  It's hard to describe, but 
there were almost Mahlerian overtones to the string backdrop.

Quite personally, I think this is already my all-time favourite Elton LP!

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road should be coming down in price, as MCA has dropped 
the prices significantly on all of their CD's (even new ones are competitive). 
 The copy you saw probably had been sitting in the store awhile, with the 
older price tag.

				Mark

    re 18-20
    
    Well I picked up the new Elton John CD, Live in Australia.  I guess
    I don't totally agree with 18-20.  Maybe I was expecting more because
    of all of the build up here.  I'm not saying it's a bad CD, I guess
    I'm saying it's not on my top 10 of favorites.  You can certainly
    tell that Elton was headed for throat surgery as he was straining
    throughout the whole concert.
    
    Maybe my evaluation of this CD will change with time as I play it
    more and get used to it!?
    
    Fire away!
    
    Don

        Re: .19
        
>    But, as a CD Yellowbrick Road is nearly 30 dollars compared
>    to the 14.99 I paid for this live collection; each are on one CD.  
        
        My two year old `Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' (Polygram 821 747-2)
        was issued on two CDs, and I believe it is to long to fit
        on one CD.  Did they chop something and reissue it?
        
        					B.J.

    As I have not yet purchased Yellowbrick Road I was 
    merely judging from the packaging that I saw which
    looked like there was no more than one disk.
    
    So, what your telling me, is, that for the extra 2
    or 3 minutes it will cost me 15.00 dollars.  Makes
    sense to me.
    
    =ken

GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD comes on two CDs, packaged in two individual jewel
boxes (as opposed to a double jewel box).  The two are packaged end-to-end in
the same sort of box that single CDs come in.  The top half of a normal CD
cardboard box is empty.  For GOODBYE, it has the other CD in it.

--PSW

        They changed the packaging, my old copy came in a double jewel
        box.  I guess it makes more sense to use two singles and have
        the same shape cardboard box. 
        
        The `double' jewel box only becomes significantly better when
        used for three-CD sets.  I have at least one classical set
        packaged this way (Bach: Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue
        [Archiv Produktion 413 643-2]), but don't know of any
        non-classical 3 CD sets using that package. 
        
        					B.J.

    Okay, uncle.  No contest.  I believe everyone.  It does come in a 
    set of 2 CDs.  My attitude of disgruntlement comes from the fact
    that I'm being charged twice as much for very little, not how many
    disks I get.
    
    My major complaint in comparing the live in Australia disk to the
    2 disk set of GYR is that for two more minutes the cost increase
    to me is an additional 15.00 dollars simply because the music is
    longer than one CD will allow.
    
    I'm not stupid enough to even suspect that pricing schemes by record 
    companies are even remotely related to a time per disk ratio.
    However, when buying vinyl I know that when I purchase a double LP 
    set that most cases support  a SUBSTANTIAL increase in the total
    time of music I will purchase than what I will get on a single slab 
    of vinyl.  So increasing the price by double is not as much of a 
    burden to understand.
    
    In this particular case, however, I'm paying 15.00 dollars more for 
    two minutes worth of music simply because time constraints dictate 
    that GYR needs to be on two disks.  The manufacturing process is 
    bighting us in the pocketbook and the current price structures
    are antiquated beyond belief when considering a new format of
    recorded music.
 
    =ken

    re:.26
    
    Yes, and its unfortunate that the technology could have *easily*
    circumvented this problem.  When they were deciding what the maximum
    time on a CD should be, they went by the longest classical pieces
    that couldn't be broken up, and came up with 74 min.  But they could
    have easily put over 2 hours on a disc had they forgone the "for
    future use" bits which are supposed to support still video frames
    or whatever interleaved with the audio data.  It now looks as if
    these extra bits (which correspond to nearly half the total storage
    capacity) are not going to be used at all.  Well, I guess we're
    stuck with the standard for years to come.
    
    	Steve

    Re/ .27:
    
    This month's "Digital Audio" magazine had a suggestion that the
    subcode bits on the CD be used for carrying the title of the disc,
    and of the various tracks.  Imagine being able to program a disc
    (or several discs, in a changer) by title instead of track numbers.
    
    -pd

	 The note 340.27 by Steve Strange is quite unclear to me.

	 The "Reserved for future use " bits is not quite equal to
	 half  the size of a CD as Steve stated. 
	 
	 This is the information I have:

	 A CD contain 19,918,878,200 bits of information.

	 Each "Frame" contain 588 bits (Close to 34 millions of them)
	In Each Frame , a few sync + data + correction +
	 1 Byte of 8 Subcode Bits called P trough W (1.4% total)
	 	P bit: used for lead-in, lead-out and for playable passages.
	 	Q bit: Track and index #
   >>>>>>>>>>>>	R,S,T,U,V and W are for future use.

	 
	 In my calculation: 6 bits x 34,000,000 = 204,000,000 Bits "Unused"

	 Then:    204,000,000 divided by 19,918,878,200 = 1.024%

	 Then close to 1% of the disk NOT 50%.

	 Also, what decided that a CD would be a little over 74 mins, is:
	 (I read that in a French scientific review) 
	 
	 Once upon a time....  			Mrs. Sony, the wife
	 of the Sony big boss, wanted top hear Beethoven 9th without
	 flipping or changing disk.   Mr Sony (And other big bosses in 
	 Audio) sat down to finalyse the Philips CD Standards Years ago.
	 Originaly the cd was designed at 10 Centimeters for 60 minutes.
	 But Mr Sony told them that Mrs. Sony that was desapointed, so Mr.
	 Sony told the board that he wanted a little more, they agreed for
	 size of 12 Cm.  
	 So, Mrs Sony can now hear the full 9th on 1 CD.
	 I seriously read that in a serious review... (Not in these exact
	 words, but close.)

	 I hope this clarify the concerns of this note,  Now what does
	 Elton John was about again ?

    While out perusing the racks tonight for the latest Beatles cds
    I stopped by the Elton John section and noticed new colored boxes
    of Don't Shoot Me and Captain Fantastic.  Look, there, on the 
    price tag...10.99 US.  If this is representative of MCAs new 
    price structure then I can't wait to see what new price they 
    eventually put on Yellowbrick Road...that is, if they do put a
    new price on it.
    
    At Independent Records, not a favorite place of mine to shop for
    LPs/cds, they are, oddly enough, the ones that forced cd prices 
    down to 12.88 at the other major record dealer around town, Sound
    Warehouse.  Even though IR sells most of their cds for 12.88 they
    are marked at 14.99.  This leads me to believe that the two EJ LP/cds
    are representative of the new MCA price structure.  At least I hope
    so.
    
    =ken

    re:.30
    
    Yes, many other MCA discs that have been released before at
    "full price" are now marked at $9.99-10.99. Same with some
    CBS discs.
    
    The general policy for a few of the record companies seems
    to be to release new material at "full price" and older
    material at the "nice price".
    
    --- jerry