CBS, Nautilus 1/2 speed DIGITALLY mastered LPs

I own Michael Jackson's Thriller and ELO's Time on CBS half-speed master vinyl and they sound excellent even on my modest Technics SL-5 table with Grado cart. I cleaned them at an audio shop (DB Audio, Berkeley) years ago on their commercial-duty machine (VPI?) using LAST cleaner/preservative so they are dead quiet. Would love to spin them on a high-end analog system some time! -jz

One of the best Nautilus recordings I ever heard is John Klemmer-Straight From the Heart. The version of Arabesque will give ya chills.

I have the CBS 1/2 speed master lp's of Oldfield/Tubular Bells, Santana/Abraxas, Pink Floyd/Wish You Were Here & Willie Nelson/Stardust. They are spectacular, and very natural sounding, not all pumped up on steroids like the MFSL's can sound.

I have a few digital mastered Japanese Mastersound LP's

Roger Waters: The Pros and Cons of Hitchiking
Pink Floyd: The Final Cut
Pink Floyd: A collection of Great Dance Songs
Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here (as a Nautilus Import)

The Pros and Cons, and The Final Cut LP's are really spectacular. The vinyl is dead quiet and the bass is very good.

I have Born to Run, Billy Joel's-The Stranger and 52nd street and Journey-Departure all on CBS half-speed masters and they all sound great.

I don't know about the CBS stuff but Vlado Meller has a reputation for squashing music with compressors/limiters. I have a fairly good Tower of Power album done by him (still squashed but not totally destroyed) whilst I have some Red Hot Chilli Peppers stuff where he got heavy handed and KILLED the sound.

Sadly there are many people who like what he does - the squashed sound comes out clearer on a crap boombox or crap car stereo or on on open earphones with an iPod or in a pub (all environments where background noise is likely to be higher and where the dynamics of the playback system is lousy to begin with).

The major labels like it too - the harsh sound catches consumers attention with increased chance of sales - better still consumers tire of the awful sound quite quickly and move on... (just what the labels want...more sales)

I am sure Vlado's style could do a lot for classical - you know - give it a lot more zip - even it all out by getting rid of all those annoying quiet passages and squash those all too nasty crescendos - give the sound some consistency - consistently tonally monotonous of course!

The worst of it now is that most sound engineers follow the likes of Vlado. Today it is not a question of whether it should be mastered HOT (compressed) - that is no longer open debate as it is a GIVEN - of course it shlud be hotter then HOT - what mastering boils down to today is how hot and punchy to make it and still not sound too obviously harsh. You know - can the genius at the console get the dynamic range down to less than 6 db without it sounding awful - that is what the best of the best do today!!! Go figure....