#1 85-91 CD remasters of 1970s Material...Yeeugh!
Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 3:36 pm
I've not bought a CD for around 15 years but I have recently acquired a CD/DVD rewriter for the Mac Mini so I was able to import a lot of stuff from my old CD collection into the computer.
I wish I hadn't bothered with some of it. I did secure bit for bit rips with XLD so the rips could not have been much better, but compared to my iTunes downloads I found quite a lot of them severely wanting.
The chief culprits are 80s/ early 90s mainstream record company remasters of old 1970s albums. I found them with few exceptions (Pink Floyd being one such exception) to be thin, weedy and lifeless shadows of how I remember their counterparts on LP. Now it's well known around these parts that I hate vinyl, but I have to qualify this by saying I only started hating it when I fell for the flat earth bullshit, which I've never really recovered from. Most of the 70s vinyl I used to own, was played on a Pioneer PL12D with Ortofon FF15E cartridge so I remember the nice, cuddly analogue warmth, my old Bowie, Elton John, Purple et al produced.
I was able to compare these CD rips with iTunes downloads of the same album and I'm afraid the iTunes versions in 99% of cases just blow these rips into the weeds. Solidity, dynamics and presence from iTunes, thin, scrawny, bass light and boring from the rips.
Artists contemporary to the 1990s such as the Lightning Seeds albums "Sense" and "Jollification" sounded wonderful, as did all the jazz rips from Linn/Blue Note; new at the time or old stuff remastered. Also 1960s soul reissues from the smaller specialist labels were fine.
It's interesting that a triple CD of "The Rolling Stones singles Collection" A and B sides from the Decca/London era I bought around 1997 sounded stunning all the way from "Come On" to Sympathy for the Devil" Seems that during the 1990s they took a lot more care over reissues of 1960s material than 1970s. Remastering of older recordings, if iTunes is anything to go by, appears to have improved substantially since the 1990s.
Digital these days seems a lot better than it was 20 years ago.
I wish I hadn't bothered with some of it. I did secure bit for bit rips with XLD so the rips could not have been much better, but compared to my iTunes downloads I found quite a lot of them severely wanting.
The chief culprits are 80s/ early 90s mainstream record company remasters of old 1970s albums. I found them with few exceptions (Pink Floyd being one such exception) to be thin, weedy and lifeless shadows of how I remember their counterparts on LP. Now it's well known around these parts that I hate vinyl, but I have to qualify this by saying I only started hating it when I fell for the flat earth bullshit, which I've never really recovered from. Most of the 70s vinyl I used to own, was played on a Pioneer PL12D with Ortofon FF15E cartridge so I remember the nice, cuddly analogue warmth, my old Bowie, Elton John, Purple et al produced.
I was able to compare these CD rips with iTunes downloads of the same album and I'm afraid the iTunes versions in 99% of cases just blow these rips into the weeds. Solidity, dynamics and presence from iTunes, thin, scrawny, bass light and boring from the rips.
Artists contemporary to the 1990s such as the Lightning Seeds albums "Sense" and "Jollification" sounded wonderful, as did all the jazz rips from Linn/Blue Note; new at the time or old stuff remastered. Also 1960s soul reissues from the smaller specialist labels were fine.
It's interesting that a triple CD of "The Rolling Stones singles Collection" A and B sides from the Decca/London era I bought around 1997 sounded stunning all the way from "Come On" to Sympathy for the Devil" Seems that during the 1990s they took a lot more care over reissues of 1960s material than 1970s. Remastering of older recordings, if iTunes is anything to go by, appears to have improved substantially since the 1990s.
Digital these days seems a lot better than it was 20 years ago.