More of the Music of Stephen Stills
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Stephen Stills
The Classic pressing was a disaster. Can you imagine adding the kind of grungy, gritty sound that Bernie’s mastering chain is known for (around these parts, anyway) to a recording with those problems already?
It was a match made in hell.
Back in the day when I was selling lots of Classic Heavy Vinyl, this was one of the titles I refused to have anything to do with. This and Stephen Stills’ first album — both were personal favorites of mine and both were awful on Classic Records.
Is it the worst version of the album ever made? Hard to imagine it would have much competition.
Lots of rave reviews for the two of them in the audiophile press at the time though. I guess nothing ever really changes, does it? Played a Sundazed record lately? Well, there you go. How are these people impressed with such bad sound?
Of course I know exactly how it is possible to be impressed by bad sound. I spent my first twenty years in audio being clueless. Why should I expect the audiophile of today to have figured things out in less time than it took me?
I was a clueless audiophile record dealer (but I repeat myself) in the 90s, and I have the catalogs to prove it.
Falling Short
As a general rule, Manassas, like most Heavy Vinyl pressings, will fall short in some or all of the following areas when played head to head against the best vintage pressings such as the ones we offer:
- It will tend to lack ambience, size and space.
- It will tend to have more compression.
- It will tend to lack energy.
- It will tend to have more smear.
- It will tend to lack transparency.
My question to the vinyl True Believers of the world is this: Why own a turntable if you’re going to play records like these?
I have boxes of CDs with more musically involving sound and I don’t even bother to play those. Why would I take the time to throw on some 180 gram record that sounds worse than a good CD?
If you are stuck in a Heavy Vinyl rut, we can help you get out of it. We did precisely that for these folks, and we can do it for you.
The best way out of that predicament is to hear how mediocre these modern records sound compared to the vintage Hot Stampers we offer.
Once you hear the difference, your days of buying newly remastered releases will — we hope — be over.
Even if our pricey curated pressings are too expensive, you can avail yourself of the methods we describe to find killer records on your own.