How to evaluate new vinyl reissues

[colinB]

Sorry for the crap title but is there any sure fire way of knowing the recording quality of new vinyl reissues?
From experience i know with new recordings sometimes its worth buying the cd for peace of mind. Recent example is a LOW recording i bought a few years back.
The album sounded great on cd and is a favourite of mine ( Robert Plant covers two tracks on his new album ). I bought the vinyl and what a shocker. Flat dynamics and lots of distortion.

I also had an interesting example recently of buying Stephen Stills on back to black series. It was damaged and on return to HMV they only had the Rhino release which was £8 more!! It did sound better though, far more exciting, possibly because they do use well regarded remaster engineers.

The only reason i would buy these expensive reissues now would be if they have bothered to use the original tapes or if they have at least used a descent engineer to tune it for vinyl. How do you know though?

Im keen on buying the Shocking blue reissues on Music on Vinyl series that come out this week but on there site there is little info.
Does any one know of a dorky Discog site where you can find out these things?

[tannoy man]

Sundazed use original masters whenever poss, check out their site.

[colinB]

Now thats an interesting example. Sundazed Jefferson Airplane reissues, top quality. The "Love" reissues, rubbish.

[chris@panteg]

I find it helps if you know who is the mastering engineer ,also if the original artist is involved , some good reissue series i bought were the Jimi Hendrix albums (Eddie Kramer)
and the Doors (Bruce botnick) all sounding superb on 180gm though of course Hendrix and Morrison are no longer with us but the original engineers did the work.

Perhaps a better example was Disintegration ' The Cure ' Robert Smith was totally involoved in the remastering , and very good its sounding too .

[colinB]

I find it helps if you know who is the mastering engineer ,also if the original artist is involved , some good reissue series i bought were the Jimi Hendrix albums (Eddie Kramer)
and the Doors (Bruce botnick) all sounding superb on 180gm though of course Hendrix and Morrison are no longer with us but the original engineers did the work.

Perhaps a better example was Disintegration ' The Cure ' Robert Smith was totally involoved in the remastering , and very good its sounding too .

I like the Frank Arkwright Smiths reissues ( havent heard his New Order albums)
I just bought Kate Bush Hounds of Love remastered by Steve Hoffman.
Some tracks sound great but the busy ones all sound like upper midrange , the drums sounding like distant cardboard boxes. It was an early digital recording so it may have sounded like that originally , cant remember.

[chris@panteg]

Will be trying one of the New order reissue's soon .

Hounds of Love ' is a funny recording ' lots of processing .

[colinB]

I need to get Power and Corruption. They have done a great job of the art work, one of my personal favorite covers.

[tannoy man]

I like the Frank Arkwright Smiths reissues ( havent heard his New Order albums)
I just bought Kate Bush Hounds of Love remastered by Steve Hoffman.
Some tracks sound great but the busy ones all sound like upper midrange , the drums sounding like distant cardboard boxes. It was an early digital recording so it may have sounded like that originally , cant remember.

Hounds of love was masterd out of phase swap your speaker or amp connecters over at one end and the truth will prevail.

[colinB]

Hounds of love was masterd out of phase swap your speaker or amp connecters over at one end and the truth will prevail.

Youre kidding me:eek: Do you mean the original album?

[tannoy man]

ALL of them, even the CD.

[Reid Malenfant]

Hounds of love was masterd out of phase swap your speaker or amp connecters over at one end and the truth will prevail.

ALL of them, even the CD.
Oh my gawd, i was just thinking of putting some Kate Bush on to :eyebrows:

I have that CD album so i'll try inverting phase to one speaker (only way of doing it in reality) & see what happens ;)

What a right royal f**k up that is if it's correct :doh:

[colinB]

On Steve Hoffmans web site he mentions Kate Bush has to OK any remasters .
He has just finished Sensual World. Hope he keeps on going. The Dreaming?
Kick Inside? Yes please.

[chris@panteg]

Today i received 'Exile on main street' in the post , double 180gm reissue and had a listen to the 1st disc .:(

Very disapointed with the sound ' i know its not a great recording but the original had far more clarity and bite than this dirge , sounding muddy and compressed , Charlie's drums had some punch but still a touch soft.

First reissue in a while thats a duffer for me, better off with the CD version perhaps.

[chris@panteg]

Please ignore my last post regarding Exile' there was a glitch in my system now rectified.

The new Pressing of ' Exile ' is fine, though to my ears it sounds pretty much the same as the original , Chalies drums have a bit more punch perhaps.