andrews27
Rocks Off Regular
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Wake up Bowie or we all through!!
Posts: 1,597
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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Seriously - go get the Blue & Lonesome SHM that's on D****oid, burn it to CD-R, and A-B it with the US CD. When I load both rips into Winamp on my computer, I can see on the display meter that the SHM is not brickwalled, while the US is brickwalled and loud to the max, which is bad medicine for this record.
I can't afford everything. All my SHM's are rips posted on the internet - and I'm thankful to get stuff of superior quality however I can. Though I have Emotional Rescue on the original 1980s vinyl, I ran across the Virgin CD remaster at a public library, and checked it out to play in my car. It played well at home, so I burned a copy to CD-R and enjoyed it a few times, congratulating Virgin on getting one Stones CD right. Then a couple of months later I saw the SHM disc on the net and grabbed it. It was obvious even on the computer speakers that this was the superior version, and on the "big stereo" rig I could hear distortion on the brickwalled Virgin CD that hadn't bothered me until I heard the SHM. (Like I said, this was one of the better Virgin CDs, so slack was cut at the time.)
It isn't just that the SHM CDs are made of better material. In Japan, they've built up an audiophile culture since the 1970s that goes from top to bottom of the buying chain, and Japanese engineers aren't preoccupied with only delivering volume. They remix and master to CD more faithfully to the sound of the original vinyl recording. I think it's because the Japanese actually care about their work, care about fidelity to the originals, and maybe despise the sound of western CD mastering. I don't blame them.
If you own it all (or almost all) on vinyl, it's great to have digital remasters that sound like the analog originals and don't suck. SHMs are more bankable than expensive Mobile Fidelity remasters on "gold" CDs, because Mo-Fi's trademark is to up the bass and treble while suppressing the midrange, which is just a more tasteful American infidelity.
I have no idea why western record companies disrespect their customers so - it's now gone beyond the need to cater to younger listeners discovering the back catalog, and into a darker sort of cynicism. To boot, they created that whole culture of noise by pushing brickwalled CDs and lossy .mp3 sound on the masses, selling AM radio-quality sound to a new generation, through tiny, portable radio-quality earphones. And if you want an upgrade, you can buy a pair of Beats (the Mo-Fi of headphones) and go deaf listening to bad mastering.
I've downloaded a lot, and all the bad CDs I paid for is the reason for it. I think that's the rationale for a lot of people: why pay for shit product when you can get it - or something better - for free? Wait, somebody's at the door....
P.S. - Crosseyed Heart is actually mastered acceptably on US CD, though I could always be surprised by an SHM upgrade. If Blue & Lonesome sounded as good, we'd have been blessed. The poster on this thread who said we should just wait a year for the remaster really nailed the culture.
P.P.S. - Google up the Analog Planet website. It'll give you a history of the misdeeds of digital mastering, mostly on vinyl but with many references to CD mastering and remastering.
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