Fly! Acetate

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What is an acetate?

An acetate is a transitional stage between the master tape and the finished cd. The acetate is used to assess whether the music has been successfully transferred to disc. It is checked by the sound engineer. There may be only one copy made of a particular recording, sometimes more are cut and sent to the studio and band members for approval. The acetate comes before making the master, and allows the sound to be checked without great expense. It is unusual for more than a dozen to be manufactured, so from the collector's point of view an acetate is a rare find indeed! If the recording is rejected the acetate may be the only record that survives. The rejected cut may simply be poor quality, however the artist may have opted to use a different take of the song, if so, the acetate becomes much more precious.

The Dixie Chicks Fly acetate was produced by Whitfield Street, Mastering Studios for their UK release (listed as Fly! on the cd). Here is what is definitely different:

1)absence of track 13 (the 7 second song clip)- on the acetate, track 13 (and the final track) is Let Him Fly
2)Song times- every song on the acetate is 2 seconds longer (this is using my digital stereo for comparison length) AND Cold Day in July is 3 seconds shorter, Heartbreak Town is 9 seconds longer (!) and Let Him Fly is 1 second shorter.
3)Song quality- some folks complained when Fly was released that it was mixed poorly- that the bass was "dull". The music on the acetate sounds much crisper.