CD-Charts Position 1
Average Rating:

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The Essential

by: Ida Cox

Release Date January 20, 2003
I bought this double CD to listen to some music for a course of study I was following and it was adequate for that. But whilst it might be of some historical interest, the simply atrocious sound quality means that it is just about impossible to enjoy listening to the music presented on these CDs. It is not clear from the very scanty sleeve notes exactly when the songs were recorded, which could have been any time from the late 1920s to the early 1940s, and I know that sound recording techniques were somewhat rudimentary during that period. However, despite claiming to have used "state of the art digital re-mastering" techniques, the sound of this music is mostly very thin, muffled and distorted.