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Reviews and Commentaries for TAS Super Disc Recordings
Super Hot Stamper sound on BOTH sides!
This later label Vanguard pressing has CLARITY and TRANSPARENCY that I would be very surprised to hear on the original Stereolab LP. There is practically no smear to the sound of this side one, which means the texture of the strings and the bite of the brass are here for all to savor. Old school tube mastering, the kind that would have been used to make the originals, rarely manages to avoid smeary sound.
Of course Tubey Magic and smear go hand in hand, so this more modern mastering can’t give you all the Tubey Magic of the originals either. These are trade-offs to be sure. But this pressing sounds RIGHT in a way that not many original classical recordings from 1960 ever do.
This record sounds, for lack of a better word, ACCURATE. The instruments in this orchestra sound correct to my ear. I like Tubey Magic as much as the next guy, but when everything else is so good, as it is here, I can live without it. I don’t need it on every record. It’s a nice coloration, but it IS a coloration let’s not forget.
Side One
A++ Super Hot sound! Not all the richness one would hope for, but it does sound rich in its own way. So clear and so 3-D, this is what modern mastering (from the ’70s, not the crappy mastering of the last twenty plus years) can do amazingly well. It’s so TRANSPARENT you can hear all the way to the back of the hall, with layers of depth clearly delineated.
Side Two
A++, as good but different (of course). Big bass, bigger than the bass on side one. Very dynamic too. The horns are a bit shrill at the start but they calm down soon enough. Overall very similar tonality and spaciousness. A great record!
Heavy Vinyl — Not Our Thing Since the ’90s
Acoustic Sounds remastered this recording back in 1991 (actually Doug Sax did) with mediocre-at-best results. Smeary, thick, lifeless, boring and not really worth the trouble of placing it on your table.
Longstanding customers know that we have been relentlessly critical of most audiophile LPs for years, since the early ’90s in the case of these Analogue Productions releases, back when the Acoustic Sounds jazz reissues first started coming out. Michael Fremer loved them, I hated them, and he and I haven’t seen eye to eye since.
Hey, here’s a question for you. When was the last time anybody said a word about those Heavy Vinyl pressings, so badly mastered by Doug Sax. (No real presence, bloated bass, pure audiophile smile curve trash.)
They’ve rather fallen from favor, have they not? I wonder why. Could it be because they were as ridiculously bad as I said they were, and it just took the rest of the world a little longer to recognize that fact? Perhaps audiophiles are making progress. It’s just taking them a long long time. (Hey, it took me a long, long time, so who am I to talk?)
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Suite from The River
The Old South
Industrial Expansion in the Mississippi Valley
Soil Erosion and Floods
Side Two
Suite from The River (contd.)
Finale
The Plow That Broke The Plains
Prelude
Pastorale
Cattle
Blues (Speculation)
Drought
Devastation