Saving the world from bad sound you say? Hey, that’s what I’m about too!
The following is my reply to the friend who sent me the NYT article linked above.
He had been to my studio and heard for himself the sound of the Heavy Vinyl pressings that “The Wizard of Vinyl” produces. Up against properly-mastered, properly-pressed vintage LPs, they are rarely better than mediocre, and more often than not just plain terrible. (We actually play one of his remastered records in this video.)
Mr. Kassem can’t seem to stop stepping on rakes, no doubt because he never made any effort to develop his critical listening skills, which for some reason he thought he already possessed. As a consequence of this mistaken judgment, he literally has nothing to guide him, a fact that should be obvious to anyone who has played any of his company’s records.
My letter:
This “pure analog versus analog tainted with digital” debate needs to stop.
It completely avoids the only question worth asking: are these new records any good?
Who cares how they make them?
Only the deaf! Those who can actually hear know how badly they suck and could not care less.
You sat me down and we played a batch of modern remastered records. They all failed. (More or less.)
That is the only true test.
Put all of these new records to the same test! Please, somebody!
Somebody with a top quality system can volunteer to do shootouts for any and all of them and let the chips fall where they may.
Finding such a system may be impossible, but we can at least try. This talk of master tapes and pure analog sound is getting us nowhere.
There is no testing going on, just claims being made with almost nothing to back them up.
None of this matters. Literally, none of it.