Abbey Road

Kingrex said:
Where are the Reel To Reel tapes coming from. I don't see any listed for sale? Yet, people seem to have them and they sound great??????? I could see that if they were safety masters or made for production. I don't see it so much if they are a copy of a record.
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next time we get together i will teach you the secret handshake. :)

mostly (i'm guessing) the grey market tapes of iconic Rock era titles are dubs of safety masters sent to markets around the world for local pressings back in the day, that somehow found their way into the hands of some ner-do-well with a vision of what could be. or maybe a dub is made from a low gen safety when the rights holder turned their back. is it possible that they are dubs of vinyl or digital sourced? sure to both.......so.......what i do is.....

in each case what i do is compare them to the best vinyl i can find on my big rig. if they are clearly better then they pass muster and i buy them. no way to ever get any clear provenance on these. the proof is in the hearing. so the tapes simply have to be better than the vinyl.....assuming i like the vinyl. i've put considerable effort in having better sounding pressings of my favorite music. so i feel good about my process. i do notice as my vinyl front end gets better over these recent years that tapes that were superior in the past sometimes get passed by the vinyl. that is only logical.

some years ago one of my grey market tape suppliers multiple times brought collections of tapes he had purchased over to my place for me to compare to my vinyl for him to gauge whether they we good enough for him to sell, or sell copies. he might have 20 tapes and 25 or 30% were very good. others all over the board. he knew classical but not pop/rock, so i had to help him to know what music was valuable as well as the sonics. i enjoyed that process. some real gems.

it's work to assemble a tape collection, especially if you go after the better titles. you can't just buy them.

it's up to me to protect myself in terms of grey market dubs.
 
Hey Mile L, A little off topic, but what have you done with your vinyl of late that gets it to the final frontier. Do you have Joel's new tone arm?
 
Not a Beatles fan, but giving it a whirl on Amazon, not bad!
Of course I lack the imagination required to know exactly what an electronic/studio recording like this is supposed to sound like in absolute terms, so I'm just enjoying the music. Dashing all hope of ever being an audiophile I guess.
 
Kingrex said:
Hey Mile L, A little off topic, but what have you done with your vinyl of late that gets it to the final frontier. Do you have Joel's new tone arm?
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Rex, don't want to get too off topic so i'll try to be brief.

there has been a few changes over the last 4-5 months which have boosted my vinyl playback performance.

(1) yes, I did add the fabulous new Durand Tosca, a gimbal bearing tone arm. in addition (2) I've added a new turntable, the 250 pound, solid slate (slate with an 'L', not state), Saskia model two idler. it was built in 2016 (I'm the second owner) and came with 7 arm boards. I also have added 2 new cartridges; (3) the Ortofon MC Anna Diamond (see Fremer review), and (4) the vdH Colibri Koa wood Master Signature 1.1mv. Lastly, (5) I added one more Taiko Tana active shelf unit which allowed me to have an active shelf under each mono block dart amp, under my darTZeel preamp (includes my 2 phono's), my MSB Select II dac, and my NVS tt. so the whole signal path has Taiko Tana active resonance control. this seems to have broken some sort of code in terms of musical nuance and focus.

so the vinyl has really gone to a new level. I'm having fun.

I had spent the previous 2-3 years sorting out the digital, ending up with the MSB Select II and the SGM Extreme server, and then adding a third Studer A-820 RTR deck for dubbing. it was time to push the vinyl a bit. I'm getting to the end of that part now.
 
Wow. Still a little off topic but in sync with your comments. Really needs its own thread. I was having some fatigue issues when I turned up the volume. I new my crossover was shaking violently on the open baffle frame. A month ago I put it on a steel tube connected to the incredibly dense stand the speakers sit on. This reduced the vibration by maybe 85%. It was a substantial improvement. The fatigue dropped out until I am maybe 7.5 to 9 db higher in volume. At that volume I feel the crossover starting to vibrate pretry noticeably again. Point being, proper isolation is undervalued by many as it can really affect performance. When done right, it's not so much a tangible noise reduction. More a calm and relaxation that comes over the music. A lot less fatigue.

That may be partly why I like this album so much. I am able to turn it up more and really get the juices running on the songs.
 
I was in the UK the past 10 days and all day the beatles were playing on the radio. Superb. Funny, my apartment in London is on Abbey Road and I often see people taking photos on the wrong zebra crossing...:weird:
 
AJ Soundfield said:
Not a Beatles fan, but giving it a whirl on Amazon, not bad!
Of course I lack the imagination required to know exactly what an electronic/studio recording like this is supposed to sound like in absolute terms, so I'm just enjoying the music. Dashing all hope of ever being an audiophile I guess.
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You dashed all hopes a long time ago :)... I go by my ears... to my ears the new Abbey Road release is pretty amazing!
 
Audiophilehi said:
It is very good but not as good as my UK early pressing original. If I never listened to the original I would be very happy with the current reissue.
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Is it possible you simply prefer the older, more familiar "sound" version?
How would one know what this type of electronic/studio recording is supposed to sound like as a reference, to say this/that one is better than the other? Asking for an audiophile friend.
 
AJ Soundfield said:
Is it possible you simply prefer the older, more familiar "sound" version?
How would one know what this type of electronic/studio recording is supposed to sound like as a reference, to say this/that one is better than the other? Asking for an audiophile friend.
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Hi AJ....It some cases this might be so but not in this case. There are some things a prefer in the new version. For example on Here Comes The Sun I love that George Harrison’s voice is centered and not coming hard right. I also like that some of the music is a bit more up front an cleaner. That being said the original sounds more natural and more realistic to me. On Maxwells Silver Hammer the anvil strike is dull and buried on the new version. it’s loud and clean (more realistic) on the original. There are similar examples as well.

I’m sure on occasion I’ll reach for the new 50th anniversary copy just because it sounds different but my preference will be the original U.K.

Hmmmm.....maybe you are right maybe I prefer the original because I’m more familiar with it.

All that being said the The Beatles Abbey Road 50 Anniversary reissue is a terrific reissue.
 
Gotcha. Interesting about the vocal placement and how pronounced anvil is. I swear sometimes they remix just to be different.
Also a reminder of how artificially "constructed" stereo is! Some folks talk about it like it has magical properties. :)


Agree with the last part. As I noted in original post, not a Beatles fan, but my toes were tapping to a couple tracks. IOW, I was enjoying the music.

cheers,

AJ
 
I think this version is more enjoyable. Besides sounding fabulous, it just feels right to me.

The anvil sounds like an anvil on my system. Perhaps more towards the back of the stage but it’s still and anvil and it hammered Maxwell.
 
Finally found the time to listen to the 50th anniversary edition.

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I really like the multi-channel mix.
It makes me hear things I hadn't noticed before - in my 2009 stereo remaster.
I have yet to listen to the new stereo version.
And no, I haven't heard the LP. :)
 
crwilli said:
Ha! Yes, it was the Silver Hammer hitting an anvil! ;)
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I do believe that it is a Platinum hammer... shhhh... they just told you it was silver... the lying bastages :D....

I love the 50th anniversary download. The best I have ever heard The Beatles sound, in my view.
 
Kingrex said:
Where are the Reel To Reel tapes coming from. I don't see any listed for sale? Yet, people seem to have them and they sound great??????? I could see that if they were safety masters or made for production. I don't see it so much if they are a copy of a record.
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I have a safety master of AR. Larry
 
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