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Great Music/Bad Vinyl - 2010 Edition

You know it, you dread it -- a great performance but a crummy sounding LP. This is even worse than a crummy performance because you want to listen, but it's painful and offends our highfalutin' audiophile sensibilities. Yes, I know it's all about the music, but 'fess up; it hurts a bit to hear how bad that recording sounds.

Hope others chime in and share their tales of vinyl woe and help others avoid our expensive mistakes. Nominees should be restricted to vinyl you've actually heard and not water cooler scuttlebutt.

Without further adieu, my nominees are (drumroll...)

The Raveonettes - 'In and Out of Control'
Recorded too loud with no dynamic range.

Phosphorescent - 'Here's To Taking It Easy'
Imagine the sound of mid-60's Motown; this was worse.

The Dead Weather - 'Horehound'
Actually anything on the Third Man Record Label could be on this list. Jack, please, hire a real engineer. Please.

Special Award for Disappointment/Expectation Ratio:
Elvis Costello - 'My Aim Is True' (MSFL re-issue)
jazdoc
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
7,964 posts
 
I am really glad to hear Xiekitchen point out Close to the Edge as a terrible CD transfer. I used to enjoy listening to it on LP. The CD is without exaggeration unlistenable. Once every couple of years , I think to myself, it couldn't be that bad and I put it on. Within 2 or 3 minutes, I can't take any more of the screeching high frequency distortion and gross compression. What a shame for such a good work.
synthfreek's avatar
synthfreek
627 posts
 
But that has always been the sound of The Raveonettes. I think it's purposely squished.
palasr
526 posts
 
Yup, too bad about the Phosphorescent (I tried to warn you but alas too late). Easily my pick for poorest vinyl transfer of 2010.

The Analogue Productions release of Yes' Fragile has to be one of the most sterile transfers ever done - all the sounds are there, but the patient is dead, lying flat, utterly lifeless. My late 70's Atlantic pressing easily surpasses it in every aspect.

Mastodon - Crack the Skye is a muddy awful mess. The mastering is utter shit. There are so many good metal albums sonically, but this isn't one of them though musically it's quite good.

The recent transfers of the first few Ben Harper albums are somewhat disappointing as well, almost as if they were transferred from a digital source (albeit the fact you can plainly hear the tape hiss, especially on Fight For Your Mind which ought to have been a vinyl lovers dream, but it isn't).

There are, of course, many more.

jazdoc OP
365 posts
 
Richard - I was warned and you were right. What kind of re-grind did they use for Phosphorescent? CD is good.

Synthfreek - This was my first Raveonettes LP...do they really all sound this bad?

Mofimadness - My copy of Elvis is so bad that the first time I spun it my reaction was to quickly shut down my whole system thinking something was blown!

Appreciate everyone sharing their tales of woe!
theunderlyingtheme
90 posts
 
Palasr: "Mastodon - Crack the Skye is a muddy awful mess. The mastering is utter shit. There are so many good metal albums sonically, but this isn't one of them though musically it's quite good."

You must not own the 45 rpm double LP? It sounds pretty damn good to my ears. Plus, you have to consider that there is a helluva lot going on within those songs. The music on CTS is pushing in all kinds of directions - unlike, say Norah Jones.

Can you give me some examples of metal albums that you think are sonically great? I know a few, but they're pretty scarce in my collection.

And Mastodon did record CTS on analog tape, in case you're interested:

http://www.eqmag.com/article/double-fantasy-adversity/may-09/95529
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