No problem Dan. What the deal was that Japan was the only country, as far as I know, that received an analog copy of Reckless. A few months later and over the next year or so the digital master was sent out to mastering facilities in W. Germany, the UK, Canada and the USA as their own pressing plants opened.
Only because the MFSL becomes slightly bunched and muddy sounding in the busy instrumental passage of Singing Winds/Crying Beasts where on the Japanese 1st it does not.
general consensus ??? I only see this on this forum when it comes to CD's mastered by our dear host... For anything else, it seems it is most often a lot of different opinions, which is a great thing. Once you got to know the different forum members and are able to start judging their "general taste", you have to take recommendations from there. It comes out to evaluating other people's recommendations for yourself. For examle, about half of the people on this forum prefer the Led Zeppelin remasters over the original versions. I don't. Thus, a recommendation regarding another CD mastering issue (e.g. remastered vs. non-remastered) from a forum member who's taste seem to be different from mine (i.e. who prefers the Led Zeppelin remasters) is less valuable to me than a recommendation from a member who also prefers the non-remastered Led Zeppelin versions. This doesn't mean one person is right or wrong, but you finally have to evaluate the available information/opions for yourself. I love this place just for that. Roland
This is why I like the long threads that DONT turn into fighting matches, because then you have numerous opinions to go through and compare them to other reviews they did and get a feel for what you will like.
I'd be the last who would not allow different opinions (I would not use the word disagreement, because there is no need to agree on opinions). I might actually learn and benefit from them. That is . Roland
What reason have we to believe that the Anniversary remaster, which is the most recent one, *wasn't* from the OMTs?
And how do you know that you are where you think you are? For example, have you ever tried to independently verify that something you think has a 'hollow' midrange, has in fact got less energy in the midrange than your presumably full-bodied reference? Compression is not a *must* in digital mastering. Which might explain much of your results. Ears might get you in the ballpark of a match, but they're easy to fool too. But if you match them by ear until you can't tell them apart in say 17/20 blind trials, then by definition you've hit the goal. I kind of doubt you've gone to such lengths. Btw, Katz' K system for mastering, and replaygain perceptual matching, are based on study of human hearing (psychoacoustics).
So you are saying that there are two master-tapes, one analog and one digital? Or are you saying that there is a analog tape and they are using a digital copy.
There are only two ways that I know of to get that particular type of sound. By increasing the top and bottom ends (the likes of the MFSL The Wall) or by reducing the midrange frequencies (MFSL Jethro Tull Thick As Brick as evidenced by side 1 being on the DCC gold Original Masters) where this is not the case at all. Really, and how do transfer an analog recording to digital then? As far as I know compression is a must in digital recording and even analog recordings. To this my friend I throw down the gauntlet. I invite anyone to bring over to my house their UDII copies where there is a UD copy and attempt to fool me blind-folded. Another thing to note is this. The human hearing can be fooled over time duration of repeated listenings and is why Steve told us along time ago to only listen/compare at 20 sec. intervals betwen different masterings. To do 17 back to back comparisons completely defeats the purpose of comparison listening where fooling is possible.
What I'm saying is that a majority of the labels/owners of the master tapes have embraced the digital era by creating a digital master that will technically last longer than any analog copy of the masters they send out to mastering facilties and therefore be much more cost-effective in the long run. In the very begining of the CD pressing era the digital master was in its infancy stage and some CD pressings were sourced from analog master tape copies as opposed to their later digital master production copy cousins.
Dave, what tapes are these? I know of no digital tape that keeps practiced and re-useable integrity past 5 years.
Sckott, no not the digital tape copies. I'm not certain if they are exactly the same, but essentially they look like a CD-R to me at least on the few I've seen that I was told were flat transferred production master copies to be sent out to the mastering plants. I'm not really too certain on what happens after this point and if it is the way everyone does things as my exposure is kind of limited to observations and question asking. What's your take as you may have more info. than I do?
Dave: I had my disagreements with you over the original Thresholds sounding better than the latter mofis. I called LDV and other ones,flat and muddy. Steve said the better your system the better it will sound. I don't have the same system I had when I had the original cds, and bought MOFIs. I tried out some old thresholds(Prelude)and listened to them a little louder than I usually do and they do have a warmer sound and they do sound better. Thanks Steve\Dave. BTW I still like Something\Anything on MOFI over Rhino, but I would love to hear the Japanese 20K? versions to compare it with. I tried Born Under A Bad Sign on Stax 2002 today and I prefer it over the MOFI version. Less =qualisation.
Dave, Could it be that the Japanese first pressing used a poor dub of the master, and the tape hiss is a product of the dub and not on the original master? That sort of thing happens a lot.
