But that was not what got my attention. When I opened it up to analyse it, it looked horrible.
You can see the overall waveform in the video "Mastering Audio Issues # 10" that I just put online.
One of the consequences of squashing the life out of the music was intersample peaks that were 1.75 dB
above the 0 dB limit. And there was not just one; there actually were 6,644 clipped samples in the left channel, and 4,139 in the right. That is quite a bit for a four and a half minute song.
Just for fun, I took the mangled track and fixed all the clipped samples, but that was not really a challenge or rewarding. The original version of the song from 1976 was much more interesting to me and so I decided to work on that and bring it up to modern levels, just as a challenge.
The result is a great song that now kicks even harder than it used to.
The LUFS of the original was -13.2 dB with 0 clipped waveforms.
The LUFS of the rerecorded version was -10.6 dB with thousands of clipped waveforms.
The LUFS of my version is -11.9 dB with 1 dB extra headroom and 0 clipped waveforms.
I think you will agree that in addition to being 1.3db hotter than the original, the sound is better overall.
I actually knew the Seawind guys when I lived in California, and I saw and heard this song done many times live, so I am quite familiar with it. I never heard a band sound as tight and punchy in person as
theirs, and I am sorry that more people did not have the privilege of seeing them live.
They played in small jazz clubs around L.A. and you would be sitting or standing just a few feet from them. It was very loud, but not obnoxious as live music is today. The playing was as tight as it gets,
which is why some of them ended up working on the Thriller album of Michael Jackson. Pauline's vocals were at that time as strong and as beautiful as she was. They just never were willing to completely throw their hat in the ring of popular music, which is why they never achieved fame. Jazz is a hard taskmaster.
The good news is that the old Seawind albums are available again online, and I highly recommend them as an important addition to your listening collection.
So we are still in the seventies, but maybe next time, we will get to the 80s...