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Audio Recording Companies - always first & always forgotten

Topic started by RaGa (@ 202.185.131.2) on Mon Apr 5 04:44:37 EDT 1999.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Dear friends,
we obviously have had detailed discussions on MD's, vocals, etc. But there is a small itch that "Have we forgotten the guys who spent a fortune on bringing to us these starlets to the oustside world, where some have hit the peaks and some have disappeared in twisters?

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: e.hari (@ hud04a01.ml.com) on: Thu Apr 8 09:29:03 EDT 1999
  
  raga and mano,
  I have more than 30 echo casettes, except one, others do not have any details in the album cover.
  Can u list, which one you got?
  Raga, I agree that, new audio companies are not good in accurate details. But something is better than nothing :-), right.
  
  There are few cool combination casettes from echo. The one i have and like to recommend are
  punnagai mannan & nayagan, anjali & pudupudu arthangal, neengal kettavai & niniavellam nitya,
  agni natcharam & poonthota kavalkaran, verri vilha, & udaya geetham, MMKR, kilaku vasal and
  eeramana rojave and the best one, kadal oviyam and
  idaya kovil. I also have some assorted collections like kamal hits (love from kamal), ragas of raja( good one), yesudos hits. Except anjali, all other album covers are blank :-(.
  
  Avm relased few IR albums in early 90s. The quality of casettes R not great, but they are good in providing album details inside.
  
  hari
  
  
• From: Mano (@ gear112.uwaterloo.ca) on: Thu Apr 8 11:08:22 EDT 1999
  
  hari! I've the selections, about 22 titles. They provide all the details. inside the cover, there is a sleeve notes that tells something about the singer, MD etc.
  
  AVM CD quality is okey too.
  
  
• From: e.hari (@ hud04a01.ml.com) on: Thu Apr 8 13:37:53 EDT 1999
  
  mano,
  R they single albums, or combinations?. Where did u buy them?. Most of them I bought in madras.
  Can u list few films, u got?
  
  hari
  
  
• From: neruppu (@ conklin.tch.uc.edu) on: Thu Apr 8 13:41:47 EDT 1999
  
  hari,
  i agree with you regarding quality of echo recording. The cool combinations especially have poor quality. i have a feeling they rehash old cassetes as i hear a mushy sound in the gap between songs. as regards the credits, some of them had and others din't. but those which have are pretty detailed and give correct information.
  
  
• From: neruppu (@ conklin.tch.uc.edu) on: Thu Apr 8 13:44:35 EDT 1999
  
  again, i bought about 25 of those cool combos during the december season sale at alwarpet-madras. unfortunately,the quality of most of them in echo were bad.however, the johny-priya combination(i dont remember the company) was good.
  
  
• From: e.hari (@ hud04a01.ml.com) on: Thu Apr 8 14:38:38 EDT 1999
  
  neruppu,
  inreco, I guess, released Johny-priya combination.
  
  hari
  
  
• From: kiru (@ surf0004.sybase.com) on: Thu Apr 8 15:12:15 EDT 1999
  
  I have some Echo cassettes and it sounds very good even after some extended use. But I do not have good opinions about Oriental Records' transfer to CD. If you listen to these CD in good revealing systems,the tape hiss is too much. Also, one song from the movie will be in mono while the others are in stereo.
  
  After I put together a somewhat good music system in the US I got sick of the bad quality of these CDs. This prompted me to suggest that we remaster IRs old songs in the 'We can sponsor an IR album' thread.
  
  Pyramid is very good. I think Oriental did not spend much money on marketing or on their equipment. Pyramid is one of the aggressive companies whose marketing muscle has helped them reach volumes and there by improve quality of their output.
  
  (For eg, Even IR said in an interview that HTNI or NBW CDs
  
  I also think IR is not very business savvy. Probably ARR would have made more money in the few movies he scored than IR in all his career. some market economics is also involved, I guess, as more people can afford cassettes/CDs now than early IR days.
  
  
• From: nakkeeran (@ inet-fw5-o.oracle.com) on: Thu Apr 8 15:15:20 EDT 1999
  
  i agree that echo cassettes do not provide enuf details. worse, the cassettes never had the movie/album name printed! i guess they made generic cassettes, and just dub the songs from the master-copy. if you happen to keep more than one cassette out of the covers, you are lost in identifying what is what! btw, this is not that big a problem. but, i just felt they could've done it better. oriental records has been doing some decent job of improving audio quality while making CDs out of '80s songs. i have three albums from them, and all were good, except 'kaadhal oviyam'. they still imitate echo in providing details!!
  
  but, i'm totally pissed off with the new media companies, like bhasky, ramy, and all that. their translation is very poor, tamil and english both.
  many times, they made me wonder if i'm looking at a tamil album! in my opinion, Magnasound has been
  excellent in terms of quality and providing clear information. in fact, isn't it Magnasound that started issuing the song-booklets along with the cassettes? i think it started with pudhiya mugam.
  
  let's hope things will improve over time !!
  
  
• From: kiru (@ surf0004.sybase.com) on: Thu Apr 8 15:47:14 EDT 1999
  
  contd from prev post ..
  
  (For eg. Even IR said in an interview that HTNI or NBW are not recorded well)
  
  
• From: Mano (@ gear107.uwaterloo.ca) on: Thu Apr 8 16:35:34 EDT 1999
  
  Echo recording is poor?
  I don't know about madras, here the cassettes released by oriental records are excellent quality. No compaines provide like the quality Oriental Records provided. The best albums (IMO)
  1. Enchanting Jesudoss
  Some of the songs tops even the Pyramid quality. Remember these were recorded in mid 80s.
  2. South India's Golden Tenor, SPB.
  Wow, great album.
  Look at thangamalai thirudan songs.
  3. Bewitching Duets of SPB
  4. Memorable Melodies of KJY
  5. Singing skylarks
  6. Musical Melody 88
  Radha Azhaikiraal song is excellent....
  should I have to continue? If someone say pyramid has good recording, I just want to ask them:
  on average, how many albums produced by them are great?
  Reasons:
  1. Some of the recordings were poorly handled, like Jeans, Minsaara Kanavu. you have to really increase the volume to listen it.
  2. So many of the album contains repetive songs, which is really bad.
  Remember one thing, so many companies reproduced Oriental Records in Late 90s. I paid around $18-20 per album at that time, now days, it's only just $10 each. As far as I know the first company in South india that utilized Digital recording is Oriental Records. Don't forget that RangaSaamy Paartha Saarathy, Owner of Oriental Records composed music for films in Late 60s.
  MS is great, I loved their albums, but they rarely release albums. They even repeat so many songs. I have Thirudaa thiruda/puthiya Mugam. However, this was repeated in Pasum Pon/Hits ARR. Just a waste of money, the quality is high.
  
  there is nothing to rave about Bhasky and Ramiy's albums. They are poorly handled. They are also pirates. Ramiy even once released 'Singing Skylarks'. When you buy the cassettes, did you look for the oriental Records sign?
  
  
• From: RaGa (@ 202.185.130.184) on: Thu Apr 8 22:58:25 EDT 1999
  
  Are singing skylarks really pirates. I really did not know about this till now. When I meant echo was bad it was really the cassette mechanism that was so bad which had marginal difference between the pireated (T-Series) ones' then. That was the only reason for lower sales of the cassettes earlier and the price difference was nearly double the cost of the normal ones. IMO echo could have done much better by decreasing the price of cassettes then to have produced more of the cassettes to have had those memorable collections intact even till today. Does anybody have idea whether any company is on the process of resurrecting the songs of the past (other than Rex) to master them digitally for sale?
  
  
• From: neruppu (@ curbow.tch.uc.edu) on: Fri Apr 9 12:03:58 EDT 1999
  
  Mano, yes. MS has released very few tamil movies and since that restricts their rights, they have to repeat the same few songs in their combinations also. But some companies do get into arrangements and release combinations including songs from movies for which the rights are held by another company. For example, lahari has(had?)the rights for thalapathi which meant it always came in combination with annamalai. but now i see a few other combinations also. It would be great if MS can do something like that and come up with better combinations.
  
  
• From: Mano (@ tesla.uwaterloo.ca) on: Fri Apr 9 12:15:22 EDT 1999
  
  neruppu!
  Yes Lahari has copy rights for 'Dalapathi' and pyramid has copy rights for 'Annamalai'. I haven't seen any companies released Annamalai/Dalapathi combo. It could be by pirates.
  
  
• From: RaGa (@ 202.185.131.104) on: Fri Apr 9 12:44:43 EDT 1999
  
  neruppu
  you're absolutely right. I also feel that ms can start its re-entering the market atleast to provide quality music to the TFM listeners.
  
  
• From: MS (@ 129.252.22.112) on: Fri Apr 9 14:11:51 EDT 1999
  
  I have recently got a pck of New CDs from India plaza including (..Guess...)
  
  GURU!!!!!
  
  Oh mann... The recording is wonderful!! I think India plaza is the only site in the net which shelves this fabulous CD. I was moved to tears when I listened to guru charanam (inspite of having heard it a million times before ). Guess what !! there are two bonus hits from MY DEAR KUTTICHCHATHTHAN. These numbers are amazing too. I shall give links here to the songs of MY dear. you can have a preview and then decide (to buy this CD). these songs are also just fabulous.
  
  (1)http://members.xoom.com/praveen_mohan/chirakat.ram
  (2)http://www.pendulam.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/pendulam/rajukebox.cgi?file=http://pendulam.com/jkg/ra/light5/aalipazham.ra
  
  The first needs G2.
  
  There is yet another film which comes with GURU - Nee varuvolam, MDed by His Highness fame _ravindran. They are also pleasing.
  
  for all those who want GURU the details:
  
  Visit WWW.indiaplaza.com . Search for GURU. You can easily locate. The product id no is 8260. I sincerely wish the DFers buy it soon as I had to get it after sufficient fight.
  
  With GURU I have got the other mallu albums of IR too. I will write a review soon.
  
  
• From: M (@ marconi.uwaterloo.ca) on: Sun Apr 11 21:51:29 EDT 1999
  
  Did anyone check MS home page lately?
  They have released some oldies, but I'm not sure whether those albums are available on CDs.
  
  here is the URL: http://www.music-from-india.com
  
  

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