Obscure Vinyl: 1977 - Realistic (Radio Shack) Stereo Music Demonstration Record

"A Superb Collection of Recordings Especially Selected by RADIO SHACK as the Finest and Most Exciting Examples of Recorded Musical Sound"

0:00 Supersax: Ko-Ko
3:25 Red Nichols and the Five Pennies: Hot House Rag
6:09 Peggy Lee: You'll Remember Me
9:25 Jackie David (Hammond Organ with Trombone Choir): Yours Is My Heart Alone
12:49 Shelly Manne, His Men and Orchestra (Arranged by John Williams): I Could Have Danced All Night
15:27 The Stone Poneys: Evergreen
19:03 The Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra (Conducted by Alfred Newman): Stars and Stripes Forever
22:37 The Hollywood Pops Orchestra (Arranged & Conducted by William Loose): Satie: Gymnopedie No. 2
25:52 The Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra (Conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky): The Carmen Ballet (Bizet-Shchedrin) Changing of the Guard and Toreador Music
30:30 The Toulouse Chamber Orchestra Conducted by Louis Auriacombe, Georges Armand (solo violin): Vivaldi: "Winter" from The Four Seasons, 1st mvt, Allegro non molto
34:11 The New Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra (Conducted by Rafael Fruhbeck De Burgos): Carl Orff: Carmina Burana Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Finale)

Ever see the scene in Boogie Nights where Buck Swope is trying to sell his customer the TK421 modification? It was "a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank. Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right?"

Buck could have used this LP in his demonstration. After all, it was 1977.

The back jacket tells us ABOUT THIS RECORD: "Each selection in this album has been carefully selected from the Capitol Records library of master recordings and reproduced from the original master tapes. The sound has been transferred from tape to master disc with the use of the world's most advanced mastering facilities, as shown below."

I admit, I find this record boring as hell. I'm just not into this kind of music, but I can see why they'd want to use it to demonstrate the dynamic range of a stereo system. Remember the very early days of CD, when the discs came with warnings about how the great dynamic range of CD, going from low levels to instantly loud levels could damage your speakers? I guess they were wanting to demonstrate that kind of range in the showroom as a selling point. And although I'm not a fan of the record's contents, the detailed description they give on the back jacket is pretty interesting:

1: The master tape on this album was played back on this Swiss made Studer tape machine. There are two playback heads on this machine. The first head, located before the head which feeds the console, scans the recorded information for loud or soft passages in the music. The information programs the computer on the cutting lathe to allow for proper spacing of the grooves. The Studer tape machine is a precision instrument capable of handling tape gently at any of the currently used speeds. It is built with the precision of a Swiss watch.

2: The second of the two playback heads on the Studer tape machine feeds the sound into this Neve console, which is the quintessence of anything available today. It has been custom build to Capitol specifications by the English based firm and specifically designed for disc mastering. The high quality workmanship in this piece of equipment has resulted in extremely low distortion and noise. As it is being fed through this console during the tape to disc transfer, the sound is adjusted and modified as desired.

3: From the Neve console, the finally adjusted sound is transferred to the master disc on this German made Neumann cutting lathe, which is legendary for flawless and dependable service. This particular Neumann lathe is also equipped with the Neumann SX-74 cutting head and a video groove-scanning system. The groove impression being made by the cutting head is scanned by the small camera mounted above the turntable and is monitored on the screen in the upper left of this photo.

4: This is the heart of the entire process, the point where the first disc impression is made. The job of this cutting head is to transfer perfectly the electrical information into mechanical movement which is engraved onto the master disc by means of a small sapphire cutting stylus.

Album Director: Ernest K. Dominy
Art Direction: Roy Kohara
Capitol Special Markets SL-8083