Dick's / Dave's picks

I think there are plenty of Deadheads here, but most probably prefer to discuss the group and their music at other more dedicated (hah!) music forums

Two From The Vault is from 8/23,24/68 and has an excellent New Potato Caboose.

As far as "big label" releases, the primary criterion is not performance quality but rather sound quality.  The vast majority of the major label releases are from multi-track masters rather than 2-track, and vice-versa for the Picks series.

It's not Dan Healy who has the reel masters ("Betty Boards") of the missing May '77 shows (and many others as well), but the anonymous buyer of 2 steamer trunks worth of reels auctioned off in 1985 from Betty Cantor-Jackson's storage locker.  Then there is a third trunk which included the Academy of Music '72 shows (released officially from DAT copies of the reels; those reels are also missing from the Vault), and even a 4th batch (!) recently "uncovered", some or all of which may be returning to the vault.

Not to take anything away from Charlie, but he only very very rarely does any "mastering" in the traditional sense.  He will try to clean up recording or transfer mistakes (clicks, pops, dropouts, volume irregularities, etc) but does nothing else (e.g. EQ, compression, etc)

Perhaps not so hopeful, as the owner of the first 2 Betty batches, the ones with the most desirable shows and best physical tape condition, isn't willing to part with them except for a ridiculous amount of money.  That part of your post was unfortunately quite correct.

If you want to get the shows in 16/44.1 or better resolution, archive.org won’t let you for soundboards. There are a number of bit-torrent trackers where the sbd’s can be freely downloaded. www.bt.etree.org, www.shnflac.net, www.gdvault.com, www.dimeadozen.org are a few. www.db.etree.org is a much easier place to search for specific shows and the various recordings of each one. There are built-in links there to the show pages at archive.org and bt.etree.org

After over 45 years of listening to live Dead recordings, I'm not in the whole show camp at all (and actually haven't been for a long time!).  There are whole shows I listen to, of course, but probably less than half the time even if I have the whole show available.

JMO of course

I think you'll get more useful information in a music forum like the SH Forums, or at a GD-related site like deadnetcentral.com.  Many posters at places like those have extensive listening experiences.

I'm pretty sure there is no transfer or remastering of the 5-8-77 Betty done by Charlie Miller.  The circulating MSR>D copies all come from Dougal Donaldson's PCM (on VHS) copy made at the original (and only, so far!) transfer session.  Bob Menke has an all-analog version on Beta HiFi but I don't think anyone has transferred that to digital.  Rob Eaton then dbx-decoded a DAT transfer (from Dougal's PCM) using his studio equipment.  Since the original is at 16/44.056, there is unlikely to be an advantage to using a higher digital resolution IMHO.

Most subscribers got their copies Thurs or Fri.  Sound quality is a bit disappointing but better than the previously circulating SBD.  Disc 2 contains one of their best jam/medleys