Started in January 1999 and spanning nearly five months, the Eighties Project assembled over one hundred of my favorite 80s tunes into a seven-CD collection.  Favorites of other contributors were added on to a pair of supplemental discs.  An extra data session on audio disc seven includes the lyrics to the collection songs as well as other miscellaneous files (this one among them).  Additionally, an MP3 version of the full collection is available which fits on a single data CD.  The comprehensive collection thus spans ten CDs in all.

Though a low-budget endeavor, I have tried to maintain high quality standards for the audio.  All source recordings are from compact disc.  At no time during the archiving or re-recording process has digital-to-analog conversion or downsampling occurred.  For quality purposes, source discs were borrowed from private collections whenever possible.  Efforts were made to scour the crud from public collection (e.g. library) CDs to totally eliminate skips and reduce crackle and pops to a minimum. 

For the MP3 collection disc, in order to fit all MP3 recordings (143 tracks in all) on one CD and maximize quality, the project used variable-rate encoding set to average about 128 kbits per second.  Encoding experiments indicate that the actual encoding in practice was very close to this rate, and a total size of about 580 million bytes for all MP3 files has been realized. 

Limitations in the digital audio acquisition software led to problems in cases where the source recordings had no inter-track pauses.  Many compact discs, especially older ones, place two-second gaps between music tracks.  Those that don't have this gap cause Adaptec Easy-CD Creator (v. 3.01) to stop the audio copying process about one to two seconds too early near the end of the track.  For song recordings that do a slow fade at the end, the end-of-track clipping could have gone unnoticed.  For recordings that end on a strong note however, this is a more serious problem.  To get around this problem, I went back, re-borrowed and re-recorded dozens of tracks using a second audio extraction utility (Audiograbber).  Furthermore, every track was examined and edited prior to the final burn on the masters to ensure that the ending was unclipped and buffered against clipping in the production phase.  Despite these extra measures, it should be noted that on some tracks in the collection I have implemented fades that are different from the original recordings (these tracks are so marked in this HTML collection list).  In the vast majority of cases, this is a very subtle change.  For a more detailed description of the audio mastering procedures, see the project details document.

Since there is no objective standard for what constitutes "proper" level adjustment in a CD recording, the listener will notice changes in volume from track to track on a number of occasions.  Different CD publishers use different methods to set the volume on their recordings, and since this compilation changes sources almost every track, these differences in audio levels will sometimes be evident. 

Most of the raw lyrics acquisition is courtesy of Thomas C. H. Mueller.  Though accuracy cannot be absolutely guaranteed and most of the lyrics were gleaned from the notoriously inaccurate (at the time, 1999) World Wide Web, much work has gone into improving these files during the project.  After the raw lyrics were acquired, every set of lyrics was given an initial inspection, mainly for broad formatting and the elimination of obvious typos.  Later, during audio mastering, every lyrics file was compared against the audio of the song itself at least once (often several times) and checked for accuracy.  It is hoped that these efforts have virtually eliminated gross typos and wild mis-transcriptions.  The one major exception to the above procedure is the Haysi Fantayzee track Shiny Shiny, for which there was absolutely no lyrics info to start with, and the initial transcription of which was mostly guesswork.  It should also be noted that in many cases backup vocals are not documented on the web.  Guesses were made in the lyrics files where they seemed plausible, and omitted where interpretation seemed impossible.  Examples include Perfect Way and The Ghost In You, but also see these lyrics disclaimers. 

Regarding information in the detailed project track listings (PDF) (HTML), debut dates for the tracks are based mostly on Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles (1994), which are reference summaries of the Billboard Music charts.  Most of the tracks were singles at one time, and the progress listing shows the date of the release of the single, top position of the single on the charts and the number of weeks it was charted.  For those tracks that were never released as singles, the debut date is that of the album (as listed in Top Pop Albums) on which the track first appeared.  These dates are distinguished by italics, and by the fact that they don't have 'Peak' and 'Weeks' field entries next to them.   Exceptions: The date for The Proclaimers I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) is the album release date, because the single wasn't issued until four years later when the movie Benny and Joon returned the track to prominence.  The exact date when Trio's Da Da Da appeared is also not known, as the song was apparently not charted.  The charts are ordered by disc number and track (denoted by 'D' and 'T').  Also, a letter 'y' in the 'Redid' column of the PDF version instead of an 'x' indicates a track that has a fade-out that is different from its original recording. 

Please see the acknowledgments for the names of those who helped with various aspects of the project.