Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now
I have a very long history with Bells Are Ringing, dating back to the 90s. My friend Robert Pincus first turned me on to the CD, which, happily for all concerned, was mastered beautifully and comes highly recommended if you want to work on your digital playback or other non-analog aspects of your system such as your room, electricity, speaker placement and such like. (More recommended CDs here.)
Back in the day we often used it to test and tweak some of the stereos in my friends’ systems.
Playing the original stereo pressing, all I could hear on my 90s tube system was
- blurred mids,
- lack of transient attack,
- sloppy bass,
- lack of space and transparency,
- and plenty of other shortcomings too numerous to mention.
All of which I simply attributed at the time to the limitations of the vintage jazz pressing I owned.
A classic case of me rather foolishly blaming the recording.
I know better now. The record was fine. I just couldn’t reproduce it.
Well, things have certainly changed. I have virtually none of the equipment I had back then, and I hear none of the problems with this copy that I heard back then. This is clearly a different LP, I sold the old one off years ago, but I have to think that much of the change in the sound was a change in cleaning, equipment, setup, tweaks and room treatments, all the stuff we prattle on about endlessly on this blog.