Springsteen's "Magic" on vinyl, opinions?

I agree with you the CD version sounds bad, so bad in fact I thought I had a bad CD. Anyway liked the music so I got the LP. The vinyl is an improvement but IMHO not a great recording.

There's another post here that confirms Brendan O'Brien ruined an otherwise fine album with poor production and mixing. The consensus is he mixed the album to be played through iPod earphones. Vinyl isn't much of an improvement: Garbage in, garbage out.

I am actually glad to have confirmation from you guys that this CD is poorly recorded. Magic, the song is not bad, but the rest of it is pretty poor. I thought I had some bad tubes in my amp/preamp until I played Wilco's "Sky blue sky" to confirm it wasn't the tubes. Maybe they were going for a grunge sound, but it didn't work, vocals are really bad! Don't know how Bruce allowed this?

Sounds awful on CD or vinyl.

I own both. The cd id horrible, I threw it away. Haven'y gotten to the vinyl yet, sorry to hear its not much of an improvement.

I am a huge Springsteen fan, but for the life of me can't understand why his records sound so terrible. He obviously has money for production and control over his music at this point in his career. I have purchased a couple of his "newer" LP's and don't listen to them because the sound is so bad.

OTOH, it's funny how Nebraska is so enjoyable for me to listen to..... I love old country blues music too, and it has that kind of spooky Robert Johnson in a hotel room/field rocording thing going..... A "low-fi" before low-fi was cool vibe if you will.

CHris

I am glad that I'm not the only one reacting to the bad sound quality of the Magic cd. That said, I need to own it, right?

I think the Seeger Sessions record sounds quite good, don't you? Haven't heard Magic. Agree with Cmo about Nebraska--love that record and the sound is appropriate for the material.

Rosedanny - I have the Seeger Sessions on LP and I think the recording is good.

Seeger Sessions sounds good, not great. Far more listenable than "Magic", however.

Not magical

Bottom line, very few of his albums sound good.

I agree. None of Bruce's albums sound very good. It's a shame, because his music is exquisite.

Cheers.

Just weighing with my concurrence that Magic sounds bad. I'm a huge fan, and "big" audiophile. It's a shame, as I know I would enjoy the music a lot more if the sound were better. I also agree re the sound of many of Bruce's releases, including Seeger being good but not great. Magic easily stands out as one of the worst, however.