In the award winning (!) video Geoff Edgers produced for the Washington Post (linked at the end of this post), a sequence has me listening to a copy of Quiet Kenny that I had never heard before. The record sounded decent enough, better than the ERC mono pressing we had just heard.
When told that it was an Analogue Productions release, I say something along the lines of “Then it’s the best record Chad ever made, because it’s not terrible.”
True, it wasn’t terrible, but I didn’t think it was very good either. It had the kind of sound Kevin Gray, the mastering engineer responsible for it, can be relied on to deliver. I didn’t know who cut it until after I’d looked it up, but knowing The Reliable KPG (his rapper name, mine is The Notorious TTP) was involved fit perfectly with my opinion of his work in general, which can be summed up in one word: workmanlike.
There’s nothing wrong with that, and Kevin is a nice guy. I’m sure he means well.
Based on the comments left on their site, the off-the-cuff remark quoted above seems to be a sticking point with many of those who watched the video from the WAPO piece, as well as those who watched the interview.
With the above in mind, allow me to make a formal request of those commentators taking me to task for saying that Chad has never made a good record in his life.
Although I certainly cannot name one, apparently many of the commentators think they can.
Funny how not a single title has been offered. At least I have not seen one. I looked really hard too.
Be that as it may, let us get down to brass tacks.
Please post a short — the shorter the better — list of the best sounding records Analogue Productions has produced to date.
I expect we can all agree it would be worth knowing what our fellow audiophiles and self-described Heavy Vinyl aficionados think are the best of the best that our friend Chad has to offer, since many youtube video channels appear to be devoted to these kinds of pressings.
We have reviewed about two dozen of his analog productions to date, and tried to be as specific as I could about their shortcomings. Our reviews can be found here.
On the list you submit, you may want to include information about the other pressings you’ve played against the AP titles so that we can all gain a better understanding of the process you used to determine the superiority of his releases, and of course feel free to add what you like most about the records you mention.
I hope to learn something! And I may even get a few of his records in and give them to my crew to spin. If I do, you can be sure I will post the findings on my blog.
This should be fun. And educational. Let the games begin!
TP
P.S.
Here is what a good Quiet Kenny sounds like.
Heavy Vinyl Overview
The better Heavy Vinyl pressings can be found in this group, along with other Heavy Vinyl pressings we liked or used to like.
The bad Heavy Vinyl pressings can be found in this group. And those in the middle end up in this group.
Audio and record collecting (they go hand in hand) are hard. If you think either one is easy you are very likely not doing it right, but what makes our twin hobbies compelling enough to keep us involved over the course of a lifetime is one simple fact, which is this: Although we know so little at the start, and we have so much to learn, the journey itself into the world of music and sound turns out to be both addictive and great fun.
Every listing in this section is about knowing now what I didn’t know then, and there is enough of that material to fill its own blog if I would simply take the time to write it all down.
Every album shootout we do is a chance to learn something new about records. When you do them all day, every day, you learn things that no one else could possibly know who hasn’t done that work, comparing thousands of pressings with thousands of other pressings.
