Why so low?

Yogiboy, I agree about the sound quality of Sheffield Lab recordings. I just wish they had produced more material to my taste. I have numerous of their recordings. However, I listen primarily to the Harry James trio of LPs.

Redglobe,I also have the Harry James(KING JAMES)and it is outstanding.As a matter of fact it was the first Sheffield I purchased about 35 years ago.

At some point in my life, I decided that I had had enough Lincoln Mayorga.
Harry James was at the end of his career when that LP was made, but I am sure it has better musical content than did the typical Sheffield.

You will find this 'low' in many of the early CD's, especially those issued in the 80's and early nineties before compression took over. I have almost every Sheffield LP, my favorite is Amanda Broom, The Rose.

While compression undoubtedly plays a part, I believe that most of the reason for the low level is because direct-to-disc are mixed AND CUT in real time. The engineer running the lathe that is cutting the master has to guess what the loudest signal will be on the recording. With analog tape if you guess wrong, the level exceeds 0 db and you get a little tape saturation. But the cutting engineer has to set the inter-track distance before or while the master is being cut. If you set it too wide, the maximum length that can be recorded is less. If you set it too narrow and the level exceeds what you expected, the stylus cutting the groove modulates through the wall separating the current groove from the previous ... and you start over. For this reason, I think the engineer fudges a little to give themselves more room for error. Of course this also affects the S/N ratio on the disc.