Post #447565 by OnyaBirri on Thu, Apr 16, 2009 5:35 PM

I listened to the bonus tracks first - They sounded fine, not the best thing I've ever heard, but by no means archival. They are stereo tracks from the film.

The album portion is on now. Both the Master and Barbarian album are in stereo, mastered from the tapes given to Varese in the 70s (unclear on the source). I need to listen closer, but with dinner and the cat screaming and the washing machine running, they sound fine. :wink:

I'll get back to you with more detail on the sound. If it's mastered from vinyl, the last track on each side will provide the dead giveaway (inner groove distortion). But mastering from clean vinyl is better than mastering from trashed tape.

The liner notes say, curiously, that in the MGM vaults there were quarter inch tapes with mono mixes of the LP content, but they don't specify whether they were from vinyl for master sources. The CDs are definitely stereo, but I'll let you know about the source when I spend some quality time with headphones.