Dick's Picks

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In the 1990s and 2000s, the Grateful Dead released numerous live concert recordings from their archives in three concurrent series. The "From the Vault" series are remixes of multi-track recordings made at the time of the concerts. The "View from the Vault" series are also multi-track remixes, but are released simultaneously as albums on CD and as concert performance videos on DVD. (The first three volumes were also released on VHS videotape.) Both of these series are included in the "Retrospective" live albums list above.

The third series of concert releases is Dick's Picks, which are based on two-track concert recordings. Because the options for remixing two-track recordings are much more limited than for multi-track recordings, the sound quality of the Dick's Picks series, while generally very good, is not quite as high as that of the other official releases of live recordings, as explained in the various notices on the CD boxes.

The Dick's Picks series, which started in 1993, was named for Grateful Dead tape vault archivist Dick Latvala, who selected shows with the band's approval and oversaw production of the albums. After Latvala's death in 1999, David Lemieux became the Dead's tape archivist and took over responsibility for the Dick's Picks releases. Latvala and Lemieux worked with recording engineer Jeffrey Norman, who was in charge of mastering the CDs.

Volume 15 and later were released in HDCD format. This provides enhanced sound quality when played on CD players with HDCD capability, and is fully compatible with regular CD players.