Allman Brothers Band
Great Woods Center For The Performing Arts
Mansfield, MA
1989-07-03

Source:  FOB Nak 700 > PCM by Steve Rolfe
Transfer: PCM > Sony SLV-M20HF VHS > Behringer Ultramatch Pro > Tascam DA-3000 (WAV @ 16bit/44.1kHz)
Master:  Wavelab 10.0 (remove DC offset; levels/panning; drop-out removal and error correction; tracking) > FLAC 16/44

Thanks to Steve Rolfe for the PCM tape and Charlie Miller for the transfer.

Set I
01. Set I crowd
02. Don't Want You No More >
03. Not My Cross To Bear
04. Statesboro Blues
05. You Don't Love Me
06. Please Call Home
07. Blue Sky
08. I'm No Angel
09. Trouble No More
10. Midnight Rider
11. Blues Ain't Nothing
12. Duane's Tune
13. Southbound

Set II
14. Set II crowd
15. In Memory of Elizabeth Reed
16. Done Somebody Wrong
17. Stormy Monday
18. One Way Out
19. Rock Bottom
20. Just Before Bullets Fly
21. Melissa
22. Dreams
23. Jessica
24. Whipping Post
25. crowd

Encore:
26. Les Brers In A Minor

This is a killer show, more than 3 hours long, with some incredible music and a great setlist.  It's also light years better than the poorly documented audience recording that circulates now, which is so bad that I can't bear giving it a SHNID.  This is a huge upgrade!

The recording does have some issues.  There were a handful of PCM dropouts, mostly during Jessica and at the every end of Les Brers.  Many of these were repaired seamlessly but the longer ones couldn't be eliminated.  There is no acceptable patch material and even if there were, stacking together 5 or 6 300 ms patches in quick succession sounds awful.  Rather than leaving the dropouts, I filled each gap with nearby audio, using something that blends enough to sound like a small glitch or stutter.  Wavelab is pretty good at doing that sort of thing.  You'll hear these artifacts if you're listening closely, but they read more like a tape glitch than as an error.  There was also a long gap (tape change?) in Jessica, where at least 10 seconds is missing, probably more.  It's now trimmed to a lean 2 seconds.

The stereo image was also all weird.  Probably, the taper was very close to the speakers.  Set I is panned hard left and stays that way until about 1:07 into Elizabeth Reed, where suddenly the panning centers itself.  The entire recording is somewhat more mono than stereo, too, and the levels and loudness change several times.  Usually the left channel was quieter, but not always.  After spending a lot of time trying different ways of sorting everything out, I settled on stopping after after using the Ozone 9 Imager to rebalance up to the beginning of Elizabeth Reed.

Don't let any of this put you off.  Instead, crank it up and enjoy!

--mhg :: 2021-04-27

