Couldn't wait...

[Stephen Swann]

Yes, I'm following up my own post, before somebody asks me what the
hell I'm babbling about here:

In an apparent stupor, I wrote:
>
> Anyway, my point is that Sony's "SuperBitMapping" technique used on
> the Black Sabbath masters appears to have the quality of preserving
> the sound of the original recording as much as possible (noise,
> harshness and all), rather than blunting the edge of the music in the
> interests of making it sound "cleaner" (like Mobile Fidelity does
> sometimes on really old, bad recordings, and EMI did with the Hawkwind
> remasters).

Actually, I have no idea what technique was used to remaster those
Sabbath albums.  A cursory scan of the case art and liner notes
doesn't appear to say how the remasters were done, or even what party
was responsible for them.  SuperBitMappaing has been used on some
other remasters that I'm fairly impressed with, but not on these,
which I'm _really_ impressed with.  Old, low-budget recordings like
this have no business sounding so good.  Of course, in another 10
years, when my stereo budget (hopefully) increases by another
10-fold, I'll be back to dis these, too.  ;-)

And my phraseology needs some re-working here:
>
> Frankly, after much listening with the new system, I've decided that
> my personal favorite CDs of the early Hawkwind albums are One Way, who
> appear to have done the least muddling with the sources.  The worst
> are Griffin, which are positively muffled, and sound like they're
> wallowing in syrup.

I wort of switched topics in mid-sentence there.  I started out
talking about early Hawkwind releases, and then paused to take a
backhanded swipe at Griffin, which is totally unrelated.  In fact I
was thinking of how bad the Griffin _Live Chronicles_ was.  I
always thought that it wasn't as bright a recording as the other
Live Chronicles CD, but now I can hear that it's actually muddy
and dull sounding.  :(

Steve
swann at plutonia.com