Big River | 1978-04-24 | Grateful Dead

2:40:55
Taper:
acetboy
Transferrer:
acetboy
SHNID:
gd1978-04-24.109177.aud.acetboy.flac16
Source:
Recorded on a small mono cassette recorder with built-in Wollensak 402 mic
Lineage:
First Generation Cassette>Tascam130>Pro Tools LE>wav>flac
Taper Notes:
View NotesIn my opinion this show is one of the greats from 1978.
Until now there has never been an audience recording of it. I had mentioned once or twice that I had this recording and it
was suggested that I should make it available. Unfortunately it's not the greatest recording.
It's listenable though.  I've heard worse. It's sounding better to me all of the time.
You won't want to throw out your 'Miller' though.

I recorded this and other shows I went to, for my own enjoyment and to have an audio reminder of what it was like.
I never really got into tape trading, this was for me. Although shortly after the show I did get together with a
few others guys and we had one of those listening/copying parties. So there would have been two or three copies made right after the show.
Now, I have no idea who those guys were.

This and nearly all of the shows I recorded are now only available as first generation tapes. The originals are gone.
I had this Wollensak 402 and later another different recorder.
When I took the tapes out of them and played them on my home stereo system cassette deck
the speed always sounded off.  So I would play them back on the recorder patched into my
deck on which I would listen to them and record what became the keeper tape.  Sometimes I would patch them through my Radio Shack equalizer on the way to my Radio Shack cassette deck.
And then I would eq them on my old Utah speakers.  Which were sometimes probably wired wrong and
out of phase.  I had no clue.  The original tapes were then used again or thrown away, usually used again.

After not listening to these tapes for many years I pulled them out. The first thing I noticed is that during the first set I faded out most of the applause
in between songs, Yikes! So for the first set I did cross fades, rather than always hearing those fade outs.
They're pretty seamless and makes the band sound almost professional, no long tune ups
between songs!  During the second set though there is a fade before 'Terrapin Station'
that's not so good because I didn't have enough to work with. The tape ran out towards the end of 'Around and Around'.
When it starts back up there is quite a difference in the sound.
I think that for most of the show I had the recorder in my lap covered up too much
by my jacket.  Then after I did that tape flip I left the recorder more out in the open.
So the sound went from muffled to un-muffled.

This is a mono recording.
When I prepared this I worked on it as a single mono track.
Then as a last step I duplicated the track so as to have a left and right
track.  That is why the whole show is 544 MB as flac files.  If it was true stereo
it would be twice that size.  When the flac algorithms see two identical tracks
it treats them as one.