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The Band on MFSL

I stumbled upon "The Last Waltz" on PBS the other day and am falling in love all over again with The Band. I've got an early 80s MFSL "Big Pink" which I listened to end to end the other day--magnificent. I'm wondering if/when their self-titled sophomore effort will be released on MFSL. I've seen reference to it in TAS (reviewers using it at shows) and thought I saw a March 31 anticipated release BUT I called Acoustic Sounds today and they don't know anything about this title coming out on MoFi. Does anyone know anything about this release? Also, I'd be interested in hearing what people think about the MoFi "Rock of Ages" LP which captures The Band live. Fremer wrote a positive review but gave it an "8" for sound quality, which is pretty low for him. Anyone care to comment on the sound quality of this LP (and the performance too)?
128x128dodgealum
qdrone
1,039 posts
 
I own The MFSL,a RL Original lime green label pressing and a Simply Vinyl pressing  of The Band and on my system I prefer the Original RL pressing.
The Simply Vinyl pressing is a dog, avoid at all costs.
Also rumours that although MFSL claims their pressing was culled from the original analog master the original analog master was lost years ago.
I will say that the 24 bit cd re master is excellent and shows no sign of digititas.

bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,953 posts
 
Yup, the S/T brown album masters are missing, and have been for a long time. Steve Hoffman’s credibility and reputation were damaged when his CD mastering of the album for Audio Fidelity was claimed to have been done from the masters. They were not. Neither were the new MFSL, but the Capitol RL were.
slaw's avatar
slaw
22,070 posts
 
From my perspective, all of this confirms what I eluded to....

An early original copy, most likely will sound best.

A later original copy will be marginal in relationship to the former.

What is important, an evaluation by the end user, and what attributes from either version are more in tune to him/her personal preferences.

One can chime in saying, "I like the sound of the original, lime green, RL mastered copy...but has this same person had access to an early pressing of the same lp...even more, have they taken the time to evaluate the best original to the latest MFSL?

Personally, I despise the SF forums. I prefer to find things out for myself then report. To me, this is part of the (fun) in this hobby.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,953 posts
 
Something else that makes for no simple answer is that the MFSL vinyl and pressings are much, much better than the original Capitols. It may be that the relative quality of the vinyl and pressings may have more effect on the sound of the LP’s being compared than does the tape that was used to master with. And, the current MFSL playback machine, which has been rebuilt to audiophile standards by Paravicini, may actually allow the tape available to MFSL sound better than the original did on whatever machine Robert Ludwig had to use back in the late 60’s!
tostadosunidos's avatar
tostadosunidos
1,197 posts
 
I would have sworn that my original copy of Big Pink had the rainbow label.  But it's been many years, so...
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