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Guess Who I Caught Selling Q-4 Upmixes from Stereo CDs and Back-Transfers from SACDs etc

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ndiamone

600 Club - QQ All-Star
Joined
Jun 13, 2008
Messages
659
Location
Silicon Valley (but I don't own it)
Too Many.

I turned em all into eBay Safety and Security and Discogs and etc especially since I know where they got their ``blank'' e.g. Drake-Chenault et al radio programming labels at.

Some of these guys didn't even bother to re-arrange the cuts on their e.g. Magic Moods of the 70s CDs from e.g. Reader's Digest or Warner Special Products or wherever.

BOY did I hear about it on all the other forums with guys talking about ``Hey that ain't no different than the radio production library companies used to do in the 80s where I used to work. Houses were still sending out 4-track discrete upmixes til `86 or `87 that THEY MADE through analog QS decoders in their own studios from their own or another label's 2-track 15 IPS library masters.

Radio stations would re-encode through their own Dolby Surround encoders and sometimes turn the rear channels up in comparison to the front channels so it would sound different than the e.g. normal stereo hit single mix it came off of.

I did the same thing for the guys hawking their 3/4 speed AEI cassette tapes (where you can get an hour on a side of a C-90 times 4 monaural programs gives you the same 4 hours as on the B-size 1-7/8 or C-size 3-3/4 IPS endless loop cartridges) and the 15/16 IPS one-direction 4-track MUZAK versions of the same thing where each track is 90 mins on a C-90.

Guy was selling em as ``Promo/Review Copies'' the same way the music service company brass would have received theirs to do quality control in their offices. One guy ran off all kinds of different colored AEI cassette labels from a black and white label slick he found someplace with the blank spot on the lower front to rubber stamp the release number - and then used a normal handheld glorified office ``date stamper'' to dial in the (invented/nonexistent) catalog number.

He knew he didn't have to worry abt genre as each genre had its' own color code and he also knew that for 99% of the people he didn't have to worry about somebody Googling the list of legitimate AEI tapes produced - but I told the guy `is there or is there not a lot of better ways to waste your time, energy and money?' and he said `You wdnt BELIEVE the number of guys that buys these. I financed my whole Christmas man-cave shopping off of the proceeds. I said (rolleyes).

But all my days of reporting the violators did was get the guys to put in the same blurb they put in when they are selling dubs of master tapes: ``Sold as Blank Tape. No Rights or Guarantees of Content Fitness for Use Expressed or Implied''.

eBay says it's alright because the blank Chrome tape the guy is using leftover from wiping out various Contemporary Christian commercial cassettes and re-housing them in the nine-cent normal bias 5-screw cassette shells would cost more just being sold as ``loose Chrome cassettes'' than he is charging with the AEI or MUZAK programming on it.

Same thing for the 10-1/2-inch 3-3/4 or (occasionally) 7-1/2 IPS reel to reels. He's using a ton of leftover EE tape from the 80s which is designed to give 7-1/2 fidelity at 3-3/4 or 15 IPS fidelity at 7-1/2 - eBay says `The blank tape is worth what he's charging' so they don't say anything.

So all I'm saying is Just Watch Out.
 
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