milleflyli

Fly Like An Eagle on Capitol Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classic Rock Albums Available Now

This Capitol Records Limited Edition 180 gram LP from the series that Robert Ludwig mastered is the worst sounding version of the album I have ever heard, bar none. It was cut with the azimuth off, which smears all the high frequency transients.

How anybody could put up with that crappy sounding LP is beyond me, but I have never read a single word complaining about the sound.

Granted, the MoFi has a bit more going on up top, but the blurry bass and lack of presence fail to bring the music to life the way a properly-mastered, properly-pressed copy will. 

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Steve Miller Band – Fly Like An Eagle

More of the Music of the Steve Miller Band

  • F
  • Here is a vintage copy with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from start to finish – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • A surprisingly difficult record to find with good sound and quiet surfaces – they pumped these out by the millions and most copies aren’t worth even the bad vinyl they’re pressed on
  • The sound is clear, full-bodied and detailed with tremendous space, critical to reproducing the recording’s spacey (and pretty cool) effects
  • The title track and “Take The Money And Run” both sound excellent (but so does pretty much everything else)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The key is focus, even on an album as stylishly, self-consciously trippy as this, since the focus brings about his strongest set of songs (both originals and covers), plus a detailed atmospheric production where everything fits.”
  • If you’re a Steve Miller fan, or perhaps a fan of mid-’70s Classic Rock, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own.

On this copy, you get richness and warmth, front and center immediacy, extension up top and down low, and loads of energy. The synths have texture, the guitars are full-bodied and the bottom end is nice and meaty.

The soundfield is especially open and transparent, with three-dimensional space that brings out the trippy effects the band threw in all over the place. When they sound this good, they really work some Seventies Analog Magic. (more…)

Fly Like an Eagle – Decent at Best on Mobile Fidelity

More of the Music of Steve Miller

The top end of this album is a problem on most pressings — dry and somewhat brittle — but on the best pressings the highs are extended, sweet and fairly natural. The soundfield is open and transparent with three-dimensional space that brings out the “trippy” sound the band threw in all over this album.

The MoFi has a bit more going on up top than most domestic pressings (forget the dubby imports) but the combination of blurry bass and compressed, lifeless sound fail to let this album sound the way you remember it in your head from back in the day.

Finding a good sounding copy of this record is not easy. Most of them sound like they’re playing underwater.

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