Doggie, despite what i had heard and read about how bad the lost highway
pressing of shelby lynne was, i bought one standard pressing and one
audiophile pressing (I sorta hate to encourage audiophile pressings, if i can
avoid them, and have been digging through original issues of lot's of stuff,
finding it sounds better sometimes). Anyway, the lost highway 'standard'
pressing is, as many people have said, virtually unlistenable, it is noisy, it
sounds like misstracking, and although I thought this had been brought to
the attention of the label quite a while ago , and thought they 'fixed' it in
later pressings, the standard one i bought through Amazon a week ago - it
was on clear vinyl- was awful. The audiophile pressing is totally fine. So, it
seems like in some cases, you have to pay the premium for new vinyl to
get something that is useable. And despite what people say about lousy
original pressings and better mastering on the new issues, many of the
older original pressings sound great, even if they are 'thin' vinyl and were
pressed off by the tens of thousands when the medium was still a
mainstream commodity.
I also get a kick out of how many times some of these audiophile
warhorses get reissued. Tea for the Tillerman 19? (Like a bad horror
movie). My island pink label which i bought from a homeless guy on the
street for a dollar or two, sounds better than the UHQR (which I bought
new) and every other reissue of that record i have heard.
best,