Chris it's funny you should post about these Real Gone Jazz sets today, as I just got a shipment of four more sets, Hank Mobley, Stan Getz, The Modern Jazz Quartet and Dave Brubeck Vol. 2.
These sets are a great value, but have to be looked at with the following caveats. These sets came about when a bunch of the 50s jazz albums went Public Domain because of their age. This made them cheap to produce but it also means that some of the material is from questionable sources from a SQ basis. I have read that most of them were mastered from copies of other CDs. But I can tell you that atleast some of them were mastered form vintage LPs with all of the LP defects coming through loud and clear. Not that the defects sound horrible, but you are just not used to hearing record whooshes and pops on a CD. But as I said in my post about the Julie London set, if you found a vintage LP copy of one of these albums for under two dollars that had that amount of surface noise on it you would be thrilled. The SQ is also no up to the the standard that can be found on other CDs. For example I have an OJC CD of Coltrane's "The Last Trane" album and when compared head to head to the Real Gone pressing it is clearly better from an SQ perspective. But keep in mind that this is only better from an audiophile perspective, the Real Gone does not sound bad by a long shot, just not as good as it could. However, a new copy of the single OJC disc would have cost me more than the 8 album set from Real Gone. The SQ on the RG sets while not optimal is at least acceptable for play on an audiophile system and is more than adequate for play in the car or on an ipod.
The bottom line is this. You can get better sounding copies of these albums, but for the price, you cant beat these sets for getting you exposure to a wide range of classic jazz music at a bargin basement price. The way I figure it, If I find something on these sets that I really like that much I can always go out and search for a higher SQ pressing of that particular title.
Also, it would be a good idea to check the reader reveiws on these sets before buying one (I usually look on Amazon.) There are a couple of the sets (Dave Brubeck Vol 1 comes to mind) that got really poor write-ups from an SQ basis and I have avoided them. But all in all I think it is a nice series and a great way to build your jazz library without spending big bucks for collectable type albums.
The Groove Inc site that Chris mentioned seems to have some of the best prices on these sets (and free shipping for orders over $27
) but their site does not tell you which albums are included in each set, but that info can be found on Amazon. I haven't ordered from them ( yet...
), but the prices look good.