HW: re: Help? Weird new L. Chronicles?

[Stephen Swann]

Andy Gilham writes:
>
> Have a look at Andy Dawson's HW discography page:
>
> http://www.adawson.clara.net/livechbo.html

Yep, it's looking like a remaster.  And once again, it looks to be by
the same folks (Castle/Essential) who did the Black Sabbath remasters,
which would be just what I've been waiting for.  On the Black Sabbath
rematsers, they did a beautiful job of bringing out the music,
while resisting the urge to "clean it up" too much.

I don't know how many people have bothered to do a serious listening
comparison between the GWR LP _Live Chronicles_, the original one-disc
Castle CD, and the Griffin 2-disc CD set... I have.  :-) And the fact
is that neither of the CD releases sounds as good as the LP.

On the LP, the upper frequencies are sweet sounding and balanced, and
the guitar sound cuts loud and clear through the mix.  It's really
a beautiful sounding album.

On the original Castle CD release, the high frequencies are way too
emphasized, resulting in a lot of the synth washes sounding almost
painfully bright.  Also, a lot of the guitar sound is sort of "mixed
down" (maybe just obscured by the overly bright high freq?).  Aside
from this problem, it sounds basically like the LP, which leads
me to believe that perhaps this CD was mixed using the vinyl-EQ'ed
production tapes...?

The Griffin CDs are just plain _muddy_.  They don't sound anything
like the LPs at all, in that they're notably duller, almost muffled.
I can't stand to listen to them anymore, except when I want to hear
the extra tracks.

So, hopefully this new Castle/Essential remaster will be what we _Live
Chronicles_ nutcases have been wanting all along (I'll let you know as
soon as I find some reputable web music dealer who carries it)...  :-)

Steve
swann at plutonia.com