JACkory's Listening Room

I don't know why I haven't listened to all the rare archival concert recordings on Wolfgang's Vault...but that has changed now as it has finally dawned upon me that I can record them onto CD with my component burner. If I weren't quickly approaching senility I would have made that realization a long time ago.

As a result I have embarked upon amassing a voluminous collection of high quality concert discs. Last night I burned an AWESOME Psychedelic Furs show from 1981. Nothing but material from the first two albums. Duncan Kilburn's sax work is so good, surely he quit the group and was not kicked out. Those guys would have bee utter fools to have fired him, as he was so integral to their sound at the time,

Right now I am burning a concert from 1978 by Peter Gabriel. He was promoting his second album at the time. Still doing his own take on progressive rock, he had not yet delved into the world music styling that would turn him into an internationally recognized superstar. This show is is loaded with tracks from the first album which, surprisingly, fit in very nicely with the more stripped-down material from the second.

There is one problem I've encountered burning the Gabriel concert. It's my CD burner that is the culprit. It's got this stupid feature where it makes it's own track separation based on sound levels. In other words, if there is a silence (or a even a very, very low level of sound) that lasts longer than 6 or 7 seconds, a new track will begin, so if your silence or low sound continues for another 6-7 seconds it will do it again...and again...and again until the sound level becomes constant again. When there are gaps between songs in concert recordings, when the crowd settle in and quietens down, you get useless tracks. For example, on this recording I'm doing right now there have been 16 songs so far. But there are...get this...FORTY-SIX TRACKS!!! It's no big deal if you want to hear the concert from start to finish. However, it is a major pain-in-the-ass if you want to hear individual tracks, and making track lists is EXTREMELY difficult.

It's one of the most useless features there could be on a component burner. Honestly, I cannot fathom a reason for it. There is no way to disable it, either. I can't complain about anything else about this burner (the Sony RCD-W1). I have owned it for 7 years. It has burned at least 3000 CDs and is still kicking (knock wood). I've always had luck with Sony products and this is no exception. But I didn't know about this "automatic track separator" when I bought it. I very well may have purchased a different model and maybe even another brand.