Analogue Productions announces May 21st release of ultimate Kind Of Blue LP

@jafant: It was about two hours long, Mike Hobson, Bernie Grundman, and the plant manager at the QRP pressing facility doing most of the talking. In part of the show, there is a camera on the QRP employee actually running the manual LP pressing machine.

It takes about 2 minutes for him to make each LP, so that’s 30 per hour. They run the press 10 hours a day, so that’s 300 LP’s per day. Compare that with an automatic machine in a "normal" LP pressing plant! Chad Kassem said they have pressed about 7500 KOB LP’s so far (iirc), and are being held up on the rest of the 25,000 by the delay in getting the record jackets from Stouton. Acoustic Sounds has already sold more than twice that number, and the title will surely be sold out by the end of the week, if not sooner. I bought two copies. 

The video is up for viewing on YouTube, on the 45 RPM Audiophile "channel". Just go to YouTube and do a search for "45 RPM Audiophile", and the video freeze frame will appear. Click on it and the video will start. I watch it on my TV rather than computer; I don’t think the two behave any differently.

bdp24

Thank You for the follow up. I will certainly check out the "show".
We could never own too many copies of K.O.B., in any format.

Happy Listening!

Addendum: I just learned that when Bernie Grundman did the speed-corrected new mix and remaster of Kind Of Blue for Classic Records in 1997, he ran the 3-track 1/2" master tape right into the mastering console, bypassing the normal step of mixing the multi-track master and making a new 2-track production master, which is then send to the mastering console. That’s one reason why the ’97 Classic Records pressing of Kind Of Blue sounds as good as it does.

Add to that the fact that the upcoming Analogue Productions LP’s is being pressed with Clarity vinyl, and done at QRP---which produces LP’s superior to those made at RTI (where the Classic Records KOB was pressed), and there will soon be a new standard in KOB sound quality.

By the way: For those who always make the argument that an LP now pressed from a 60 year old tape cannot possibly sound as good as an original pressing made when the tape was new, know this: during the round table chat on YouTube, Grundman explains that most multi-track masters---including those of Kind Of Blue---have been run only once since the time they were recorded, and that was when they were played during the mixing of the 3 (or more) tracks onto a 2-track production master. After that, master tapes are stored and never again touched, the 2-track production master being used forever more for all purposes.

Grundman then goes on to explain that master tapes, stored properly (as Columbia Records and now Sony have)---do NOT deteriorate from the mere passage of time. Please re-read that sentence; the common wisdom that magnetic tape deteriorates with the passage of time is a MYTH! The only thing that causes magnetic tape deterioration, said Grundman, is replaying it on a tape machine. The KOB 3-track master tapes have sat untouched and unused their entire life, with the exception of when Sony brought the tapes to Grundman in ’97, when he did the mixing and mastering for the Classic Records reissue. There is no reason the upcoming Analogue Productions reissue of Kind Of Blue will not easily surpass not only all previous reissues, but also Mint original pressings.

If you don’t think an individually-handmade LP, mastered and plated by masters of the art and science, and manufactured out of Clarity vinyl pressed on a machine which has been lovingly optimized for ultimate sound quality, and separated from the Earth on vibration isolation products (discussed and explained in the video), if you don’t think such an LP can and most likely will sound better than a mass-produced LP, made out of garden-variety vinyl in a facility optimized for units-per-hour yield, then perhaps this LP is not for you.

Well gents, the Analogue Productions UHQR Kind Of Blue LP sold out yesterday. 25,000 copies in less than a month! 25,000 copies of a $100 record; AP generated 2.5 million dollars in sales with one release! If you wanted a copy of your own I hope you didn’t procrastinate too long; now that it’s sold out it’s gonna cost more than $100 to obtain one. I haven't yet received either of my two copies (one ordered at Acoustic Sounds, the other Music Direct), but it shouldn't be long now. Has anyone received a copy?

Got the email today that mine shipped and I can’t wait. I have an OG mono and stereo but both a bit noisy and also the Classic records version a friend bought for me in a used record store, because he was sick of my complaining about my noisy copies, which is excellent. I was recommending he buy it… but he handed it to me after he paid. Neither of us really knew what it was at the time and I think he secretly has always regretted it since.

So we will grill some steaks and play the new release and I bet he goes home with the second copy I bought “by accident”. An accident because the feeding frenzy on day of release caused me to log into two devices with the hope of securing at least one. I took no chances because I was burned three times with the Craft Yusef Lateef release and missed out.  As Pete Townsend says… I think ‘21 is gonna be a good year.