2. music
  3. 1101718392

Candidates for Re-mastering?

What would be your recommendations for great music, but not the greatest sound quality recordings (at least what is commercially available)...and thus would be at the top of your lists as candidates for re-mastering, or finding the orginal tapes to be reissued, SACD re-issues etc etc? The 'to die for" lists in stereophile and audiogon don't take this into account. Digital formats only.

Here are few of mine to get things started.
Beatles: Abbey Road, Sgt Pepper, Rubber Soul (if ABKO can do it for the Rolling Stones, can someone else do it for the Beatles, please!)
Weather Report: Heavy Weather: SACD available but done poorly in my opinion.
Led Zep IV
all of James Brown (especially Funk Power!) and Sly Stone recordings
henryhk
theduke
372 posts
 
Van Morrison: "Moondance"
r_burke
212 posts
 
Totally agree with Neil Young's early stuff and Moondance and would add the following:

Van Morrison: Astral Weeks
Savoy Brown: Looking in and Raw Sienna
raquel
841 posts
 
Dear Jax2:

Joni Mitchell "Blue"? I think the quality of the recordings of her entire catalog is excellent (I would even say unusually high for pop recordings). In addition, the entire catalog was reissued in HDCD a few years back, and they are wonderful. There are DCC reissues on vinyl (and probably CD) of Blue and Court & Spark (and perhaps others) that are 'smokin good. I have an original pressing of For the Roses that is so good that I use it to show off my system. Even her 2001 big band album is top-notch sonically.
jax2
3,031 posts
 
Raquel - I have a standard issue CD of "Blue" (one of my favorites by the way) which is sonic garbage to my ears. I had the LP which I'm sure I wore a hole in which was far superior. I don't think I have the HDCD recording of Blue though. Can you give me the vitals on that one...I'll look for it. Court & Spark and For the Roses are great, I'd agree...no problems there.

Thanks in advance!

Marco
meisterkleef
146 posts
 
Jax2 - I have the DCC remastered version of 'Blue' on CD and it is so obviously better than my ancient non-HDCD original CD release. My original CD copy dates back to the mid-80s. I cannot speak to the quality of any remasters other then the DCC. The main difference is that there is actually some treble information on the DCC remaster. My old CD sounds like it was mastered from a 5th generation production copy. The high freqs are just completely washed out. Luckily Joni's voice is still well preserved on the original CD, but her acoustic guitar seems to have lost its top two octaves. In this case DCC clearly did a better job in tracking down low-generation source tapes to master with. Additionally, the DCC CD remaster is so good I will never need another two-channel version of this recording. The same can be said for Weather Report's 'Heavy Weather' CD which received Sony's Mastersound 20bit SBM remastering a few years ago. It is so good I'll never need another two-channel version. If you're interested in Weather Report on SACD check out 'Mysterious Traveler' which I do not believe has been remastered in the past. Probably my favorite SACD release.
More to discover