@dogberry
What you have is a 1976 reissue. They switched to the blue rim orange palm tree label for that reissue.
Showing 17 responses by flash56
@billpete The RD might be someone who was etching it. Who knows? The dead wax matrix catalog is far from complete. There are many variations that have not been recorded. Many times you just have to combine all of the information along with the closest match to the matrix that you can find. The blue inner sleeve was a clue. That is why it is important for you to study the photos and compare them with your album. There can be subtle differences in the covers. Or the labels. Like the missing hyphen on one of the pressings. So click on the link that I sent. Read the information under Notes: Many times they will tell you about little things that you should look for. And click on photo in the upper left hand corner. It will bring up additional photos. Usually at least the front and back cover and both labels. And if it is a gatefold. It will show the inside. Sometimes the inner sleeve. Carefully compare looking for any discrepancies. I think that there is a good chance that the link that I sent is your pressing. But without having the album in my hands. I cannot be sure. The smallest difference could lead me to the right one. Missing printing where there should be printing. Anything. That is, if you even care to know the exact pressing. Otherwise we have it narrowed down to pressings done between 1971 &1972 And as far as the Island pressings sounding better than the A&M. You are far from alone in that opinion. I have read that many many times. There are numerous reasons that that could be the case. Depending on the facility that pressed it. Their equipment may not be maintained as well, or is old. Plus, those production metal pressing plates do have a life span. They do wear out. That is why first releases are sought after. You know that the plates were new. The more pressings the more toll it takes on the plates and the less likely that the pressing will sound as good. The US is a big market. A&M would have had multiple facilities pressing that album. For example, some will prefer a Monarch pressing to a Pittman pressing. All of those factors come into play. However, it is still unclear to me if the solid Pink labels were pressed correctly and the others weren't. I am highly skeptical of that being the case. Simply because those original production plates were being shipped all over the world just as fast as they could produce them. However, I am not familiar with their work flow. They could have produced multiple production tapes from which to make the metal pressing plates. And maybe only some of those tapes were flawed while others weren't. And like I said. Some countries were using solid pink labels at the same time that other countries were using pink rim labels. I must do some research of the difference of a repress and a reissue. Does a reissue use new production plates? Whereas a repress is just another batch of pressings from the same plates? What is the standard for the maximum number of pressings before the plates should be replaced? Is there even a standard in place? Many questions still are unresolved in my mind. If I could get my hands on a solid pink label UK 1st pressing. Then I would be able to tell within the first song. However, I don't have the cash to take that gamble. And there are no NM solid pink label UK pressings for sale anyway. I still stand by what I said. It is a beautifully recorded album. I just want to make sure that I am hearing all of its beauty and not a technically flawed one, simply because someone forgot to flip a switch. |
The overture of The Who's Tommy. Japanese pressing. Mostly for Townsend's acoustic guitar work and Moon's drums. Who's Next, Japanese pressing: Behind Blue Eyes. For the vocals and Townsend's Electric guitar. Court and Spark 1980 Nautilus half speed remaster. Mainly, because I am so familiar with the album. Anything from the Louis Armstrong/Duke Ellington sessions: 1999 Classic Records remaster. For the detail, Armstrong's voice, and the heavenly sound of the clarinet. Karajan conducting the Berliner Philharmonica: Beethoven's 9th, 4th movement. 1963 pressing. Mainly for the extreme dynamics. And the cello/double basses near the beginning of the movement. Cat Steven's "Where do the Children Play" from Tea for the Tillerman. Mainly because it is such a beautifully recorded song with great dynamics and very large lows. The Pretender's unplugged "Isle of View". Broadcast live on BBC television in 1995. An incredible performance. Chrissie Hynde is at the top of her game. And the recording is superb. The inclusion of The Duke String Quartet iin the arrangements works very well. Although getting your hands on a vinyl pressing can be challenging. Since it was only released on vinyl in the UK. My vinyl copy did not come cheap. But CDs are readily available. And anything that has well recorded cellos. Elenor Rigby comes to mind. |
@billpete Thanks for the advice for "Tea for the Tillerman". I am actually in the market for a better copy of the album. I had been considering Analog Productions 200g remaster. But they were a limited edition. And are now quite expensive. I currently have an A&M 1973 reissue that has seen its better days. I have read many good things about the Island pressings. Based on your experience, I will abandon the AP 200g idea, and search for a pristine Island pressing instead. You just saved me from an expensive disappointment. Thank you. I find many remasters to be a disappointment when compared to the original pressings. I have a 1981 Mobile Fidelity half speed remaster of the Stones' Sticky Fingers. It is an abomination when compared to my 1971 original pressing or my 1974 reissue pressing. MoFi managed to remaster the life out of the album. And that is pretty difficult to do to an album such as Sticky Fingers. I am not saying that all of the 1980s MoFi half speed remasters are bad. But they are certainly hit and miss at best. And they didn't even come close to the target with Sticky Fingers. Just a side note to your album art remark. I have heard Joni Mitchell say in an interview, that she did not consider music to be her native tongue. That she considers painting as her native tongue. She is an avid painter. And all of her albums have her original artwork on the covers. She also did the album artwork for CSNY "So Far". I have never heard of her selling any of her paintings. But she has done quite a number of them. I believe that you are correct about Cat Stevens doing his own album artwork as well. At least I am quite sure that Tea for the Tillerman was painted by him. |
@billpete Blue is the classic Joni album. She once said that it was her favorite because there wasn't an insincere note on it. I got a chance to see her perform. Right before an intermission, she sent the band offstage and sit with a dulcimer in her lap and sang "A Case of You". Just as it is on the album. It was a magical moment. "Miles of Aisles" her live album is also good should you run across it in your collection. Yes I also grew up in the 60s. Unfortunately through my teenage and 20s years. Many of my albums got trashed. My stoner friends would "borrow" them without asking. But fail to return them, or return them ruined. I could not convince them to put them back into the covers. During parties, people would even set their drinks on them. Spill there drinks on them. You name it. As far as streaming goes. It is really quite impressive if you stream through Qobuz, who exclusively streams FLAC files. Just like with everything else. Apple refuses to play in the same sandbox, and has developed their own version of "lossless" compression ALAC. It is inferior. I would not recommend Apple Music. The term "lossless" is a misnomer. As impressive as FLAC is. It is not "lossless". I worked as a sound design engineer for PBS for 30 years. A friend of mine released an album and sent it to Apple Music. I ask him for the uncompressed LPCM files. The exact copies of what were delivered to Apple. Apple converted them to ALAC for streaming. I compared the ALAC stream to the uncompressed LPCM files. It was night and day. Lossless my a##! As far as digital is concerned. Anything LPCM with a bit depth of less than 24 bits is in no way as good and definitely not better than analog. CDs are 44.1K/16bit. It simply does not have the resolution ability. Which causes the imaging to collapse among other things. CDs are an archaic delivery method for digital. It was necessary because at that time, they did not have the bandwidth ability to stream more information than that. I am frankly surprised that CDs have not faded out of existence. As the technology advanced with the arrival of DVD the bandwidth pipeline was many times larger. DVD Audio, and SACD (which is DSD) came on the scene. DVD Audio was capable of streaming 192K/24bit uncompressed LPCM. A 16 bit word has a resolution of 65,536. A 24 bit word has a resolution of 16,777,216. That is a huge difference. 256 times greater resolution. And then if you increase the sampling rate by a factor of 4. You have 1,024 times the resolution of a CD. I would be hard pressed to argue that uncompressed digital audio of today isn't superior in many ways to analog. And yet DVD Audio and SACD failed to take hold and fell by the wayside. But CDs are still being manufactured as the standard. Why? When it comes to streaming via the internet, the bandwidth pipeline is smaller than even CD. And now the new buzz word "HiRez" is being haphazardly thrown around. Since there is no standard in place to define what constitutes "HiRez". And with the use of "Lossless" compression codecs capable of reducing the stream to the size that the internet is capable of delivering. We now have "HiRez streaming available. Don't get me wrong. FLAC is a truly impressive codec. ALAC not as impressive. I am a fan of streaming. It delivers amazingly quality audio. However. It does not sound as good as quality vinyl. I have did A/B tests between the two. It is getting close. You can stream 196k/24 bit from Qobuz using FLAC compression. And it can sound amazing. When the time comes that the pipeline becomes large enough to stream uncompressed files, then we will be there. Because let's face it. Even the older analog albums that are being remastered and pressed to vinyl today are being delivered to the remastering facilities as extremely high resolution digital files. The actual analog tape masters are too old, fragile, and valuable, to allow them to leave their home. Unless it says "Analog remastered from the original Analog Masters", which they are doing with some of the Jimi Hendrix collection. It More than likely has been converted to digital at some point. But I must disagree with the premise that ALL FORMS of digital media is as good or better than analog. It simply isn't correct. As for vinyl. It isn't just the warm sound of vinyl that intrigues me, and puts me in my happy place. It is the entire tactile experience for me. I am a certified vinyl junkie in that regard. Sorry for the long digital tutorial. |
This is incredibly fascinating! I am very familiar with Dolby A, B, and SR. And the headaches involved with having to deal with tapes that have been dubbed with the wrong settings. Sometimes multiple times. Virtually rendering it to garbage. I would use Dolby SR when recording with my Studer 2" 24 track. It was a godsend. But not if it was not decoded. Incorrect encoding and decoding of Dolby A was an issue in the audio/video world for years. I say video, because the 1" helical scan video machines were also equipped with Dolby A encoding and decoding. I am also familiar with Ovation guitars since I am a guitarist myself. I am not sure, however, that I am following the chain of events correctly. Exactly which pressings were pressed with Dolby decode incorrectly engaged? Are the original pink inside label Island pressings correct? Or were they pressed with incorrectly mastered plates also? And if I am understanding you correctly. The Analog Productions pressings were mastered correctly without Dolby A decode incorrectly applied? I just want to make sure that I have this sequence straight. So that I will purchase a correctly mastered pressing. There is nothing worse than a Dolby A encoded tape which has not been decoded. Other than a tape without Dolby A encoding, with Dolby A decoding incorrectly applied. And thank you for the information about this. This is truly an amazing revelation. And one enormous f**k up on many levels. |
You don't have to convince me. Now that you have pointed it out. I can hear it. Obviously, the sound of the guitar. The pick across the strings. The songs that I listened to didn't have much cymbal hits. A small crash cymbal here and there. But the drums themselves were very revealing. The initial impact of the stick hitting the head of the snare or toms is very revealing. Also, the vocals are affected quite drastically. It reeks of Dolby A decoding an unencoded recording. The best way that I can describe it is that it sounds as if you are squashing the highs out by applying too much compression. Not allowing it to breathe. If that makes any sense. Being a sound engineer, I have been guilty of that mistake a number of times. That isn't a great description. But, you get the picture. It sounds dull and subdued. I got on Qobuz. Many times they will have the original and the remasters. The only original that they were streaming was TFTT. Which they were streaming at 192K/24bit. All of the other albums were the 2020 remasters. And are being streamed at 44.1K/16 bit??? They had to be supplied with a digital copy of the original production master. Because it is evident there as well. However, the 2020 remasters do not have that problem. They also have the 2020 remixes of the albums. Which if I am not wrong were only available on CD in the 50th Anniversary Box set. Yusof/Cat was very involved in all of that. The 2020 remasters, at times, sound more like a remix than just a remaster. In any case, I am almost certain that it was remastered digitally, not that that matters. But it would have had to come from the original master tape. And I am certain that they were aware of what Grundman had discovered. And did not make that mistake twice. And, of course, the remixes had to come from the original multi-track tapes. Which wouldn't have been subject to the decoding blunder. My point is that Cat Stevens' guitar and his voice and the drums, all sound the same in the 2020 remixes as in the 2020 remasters. Have you ever had a chance to listen to the Analog Production remaster, by any chance? Now I am definitely going to have to get my hands on a copy. Out of curiosity if nothing else. Now the biggest question for me becomes: Was TFTT the only album where this blunder was made? I do not have an extensive Cat Steven's vinyl collection. However, I do have a 1973 A&M reissue of Mona Bone Jakon. And after checking it. I will bet you lunch that the same thing occurred with that album. In fact, it does more harm to MBJ than it does to TFTT when comparing it to the 2020 remasters. I have only one more Cat Steven's album that I can compare. A 1974 A&M CRC release of Buddha and the Chocolate Factory. I have not yet had time to hear if it also suffers from this expanding blunder. The only remaster that has been done with MBJ prior to the 2020 remaster. Was done by Island Records in 2013. Which would have been two years after the Analog Productions discovery was made by Grundman. However, with TFTT. Mobile Fidelity released a 1980 half speed remaster from the original master tape. And a UHQR box set in 1982. Did they make the same mistake? Does anyone know? There have been numerous remasters for CD. The only other remaster pressed to vinyl prior to the AP 200g. Was done by Island Records in 2008 on 180g. And distributed in Europe. Is that remaster flawed. Did they even use the original master or a flawed production master? @billpete You originally said that you had a 200g Universal remaster. And then you said that actually it was 180g. Are you certain that it is not 200g. The only pressings that I can find tied to Universal are the Analog Productions remasters. And I can only find the 200g release in 2011, and the 200g double lp 45 rpm release in 2015. Is this the remaster release that you own? https://www.discogs.com/release/3101375-Cat-Stevens-Tea-For-The-Tillerman And I agree whole heartedly with you as far as reference goes. When you have only one reference that you have been given. That is what you expect it to sound like. Had @bp24 not made me aware of this. I would have considered that to be the sound that the album was meant to sound like. With only other flawed pressings to compare it to, you will choose amongst your choices as to which one is best. It is a shame that your remaster pressing has the spindle off center. That is not the first time that I have read about that problem with some of those pressings. If it were playable. I would ask you to consider giving it a listen from a totally different perspective and tell me what you think. But you certainly can't judge anything if the spindle hole is off center. BTW, NM pink copies for sale are few. And scattered around the globe. And not inexpensive. And if they are also pressed from the flawed production masters. What is the point? The thing that I find utterly amazing is that the sound of Cat Steven's that the world has become familiar with, is not the sound that Cat Stevens intended. Simply because of a simple technical assumption I apologize for the length of this reply. But this has lit a fire under my a**.. |
@billpete Does your remaster have this Barcode number by any chance? Barcode: 602517753129 If so, you have an Island 2008 "Back to Black" 180g remaster. Pressed in the UK. Discogs doesn't have photos of the labels nor any dead wax matrix info. It was only released in Europe. It should also contain a mp3 voucher. My vote is to drag this out until we get the correct information. We seem to have inadvertantly hi-jacked the original intent of the thread. @billpete, you are the OP. It is your thread. If you don't mind. I would like to get to the bottom of this. Or we can start a new thread. Here is another concern. Are we speaking of solid pink labels pressed in the UK? I ask because there were both pink label and sunray labels being pressed at the same time all over the world. For example: The Netherlands, Scandanavia, and Israel among others were pressing sunray labels. While, Germany, France and Argentina were pressing solid pink labels. All of them pressed in 1970. Those production plates had to be distributed throughout the world as fast as they could produce them. I think that it would be impossible to have a difference between the pink and sunray labels. Unless it is narrowed down to just UK pressings. The UK didn't distribute a repressing with the sunray label until 1971. If there is a difference between the two labels. I am inclined to believe that it didn't happen until the repressing was released in the UK in 1971. So in theory. You could have a 1970 Scandinavian sunray label that was pressed with plates made from the same production master as the UK pink labels. So I must ask both @billpete and @bdp24 where were your pressings made? And when were they pressed? |
@billpete I found it! It is not a remaster. It is a 2004 reissue on 180g vinyl. It may have included an insert advertising other Universal albums. Some did and some didn't. It was released in the UK and Europe. Is your regular Island copy of TFTT pressed in the UK? Is it a pink rim palm tree label? I assume that it is a gatefold. It will probably be printed in small font on the inside in one of the corners underneath the "I" logo which may be pink or white. If it isn't. It would be my guess that it is a UK pressing. There were many reissues with pink rim labels between 1971 - 1972 out of the UK.. A couple of them were not gatefold. If it was not pressed in the UK. It would be my guess that it would say which country somewhere.on the cover or labels. Thanks for taking the time to check for me. |
You definitely have a 1971 or 1972 reissue. Does it say anywhere who it was printed by? Possibly on the inner sleeve. But I am not sure. If it says who it was printed by that will narrow it down. Also does the ILPS9135 on the labels not the cover, have a hyphen ILPS-9135 or just a space ILPS 9135? That will narrow it down. Since it appears that only one issue did not have the hyphen on the labels. I would need the dead wax matrix info in order to pinpoint it. |
@bassbuyer I don't think that many people saw the early Steely Dan concerts since they quit touring very early in their career. I also saw the first tour after they released Two Against Nature in 2000. I saw them at "George at the Gorge" in Washington State. The outside venue sits right on the edge of the gorge that has been carved by the Colombia River. It is near the small town of George, Washington. Located in the south eastern part of Washington State. In the middle of nowhere. They released a live album of that tour. And the cover photo was taken from that show. I have since seen them a number of times. |
@billpete I believe that you said that it came with a blue inner sleeve. I know how difficult it is to read dead wax. Is there a chance that RD could be LH? The Sterling LH should be stamped not etched. Or can you find LH somewhere? In either case I believe that there is a good chance that this is your pressing. Take a look at the photos carefully and compare them to yours. If you find discrepancies note them and I will look further. https://www.discogs.com/release/1141587-Cat-Stevens-Tea-For-The-Tillerman?redirected=true |
@billpete I covet your Cat Steven's collection :) I managed to snag a NM 1970 A&M first pressing of TFTT for a decent price last night. It is on its way. I hope that it actually is in NM condition. I will just have to live with that for the time being. At least I will know that it was pressed with relatively new plates. If you should find that you have multiple copies of pink rim label Island pressings and would be inclined to part with one. I would be happy to take it off of your hands for a reasonable price :) Happy listening. |
@billpete I would be interested to know what you think of the dbx copy when you get around to listening to it. dbx is another form of noise reduction different than Dolby A. If Dolby A had been used already. Why would you apply noise reduction again? There is something about this whole "Dolby A saga" that doesn't play out correctly in my mind. One other question in my mind. Why is Michael Fremer making the decision? He is just a reviewer! If they had a question about it. Why did they not contact Yusuf himself? Why didn't they send him examples and ask him which one was correct? I'm sure that he would have been glad to help, since it is his music. And he was present during the whole process. It would have been the only sensible thing to do before going forward. And why is there not more information out there about this enormous screwup, that supposedly affected every copy made for 35 years? There isn't any information out there, that I can find. Some huge pieces of this puzzle are missing. And I am not buying into it at this point. |
@billpete @cleeds is correct. The album is dbx encoded. You must have a dbx decoder in order to listen to the album correctly. It works on the same principle as Dolby A, B, and C. Dolby A was created for professional studios. When cassettes overtook the old cartridge 8 tracks. Remember them?:) Dolby saw a marketing opportunity in the consumer market. And so they developed Dolby B and eventually Dolby C. Soon all cassette decks were being built with Dolby B and C encoding/decoding capabilities. dbx came out with their own version and went after the same market. You could purchase outboard dbx encoders/decoders. Some receivers would have dbx decoding built in. To listen to a dbx encoded recording without decoding it. You will get garbage. Like Dolby encoding. dbx increases the high frequencies in the recording. Since tape hiss is essentially white noise. It is most noticeable in the upper frequencies. When the recording is decoded. It decreases those frequencies in the same manner that it increased them. By doing so, it also decreases the tape hiss which resides in those frequencies. Causing the recording to be much more free of tape hiss and also the inherent noise caused by the electronics. Neither Dolby A, B, C or dbx is truly transparent. It is effective at reducing the noise. But it also affects the actual sound of the recording. So it comes at a cost. I was never a fan of analog noise reduction. Especially on the consumer level. Until, to Dolby's credit, they improved on the original Dolby A that was being used in professional studios. They introduced Dolby SR. The SR stands for Spectral Reduction. It was a dynamic form of noise reduction, that was capable of choosing what frequencies were enhanced and by how much on-the-fly. No one but Dolby knows exactly how it worked. It was a closely guarded secret. But it was truly remarkable. Instead of using it on the master mix down copy. You would use it on every channel of the multitrack recorder. I worked with a Studer 2" 24 track machine. At 15 ips (inches/sec) 24 tracks of tape hiss is a lot of hiss. If you ran at 30 ips it was even worse. I had 24 Dolby SR encoders in-line with the input of the tape machine and 24 Dolby SR decoders in-line with the output of the tape machine. The results were truly remarkable. At that time, I doubt that there was any recording studio of quality that didn't use it. It was a game changer. But it was relatively short lived. Because digital recording was beginning to raise its ugly head. Not just with the appearance of CDs on the consumer end. But in the studios as well. Sony introduced the first multitrack digital recorder around the same time. They were very expensive and very few studios could afford them. They recorded at 48K/16bit. I have already discussed what I think of a 16 bit word depth. But that is when you started to see albums that would say DIGITALLY RECORDED. It was used as a marketing tool. A big deal. Dolby was quick to realize that analog was going to be a thing of the past. And began putting all of their research into digital formats. Which was a very smart move. Because Dolby's AC3 format which they named Dolby Digital would be chosen by the FCC to be the standard audio format for digital TV. Within the years that followed, tape would give way to hard drives. And nonlinear editing. Such as ProTools. I was in charge of audio for a PBS facility. I did audio for video. I worked through the conversion to digital television. If you think that the audio world was impacted by digital. You should have seen what it was like in the video world. When the FCC announced that it was remapping the frequency spectrum and announced a deadline date when all television would be broadcast digitally. It impacted even the smallest TV stations. Rendering basically all of their equipment archaic and useless. It also impacted the consumer. Basically rendering their televisions archaic and useless. I worked through that transition. It was a nightmare. The technology wasn't even developed yet. And it would change from day to day. If a station invested in a piece of gear at the wrong time. There was a good chance that it would be rendered useless within a matter of months. Obviously, TV also includes audio. And so audio was impacted just as hard. It was my job to choose the correct equipment and when to buy it. The speed at which technology was changing the landscape increased to a point that it became impossible to keep up with it. From that point on it never relented. Up until the day that I retired. I knew that the day that I walked out of that facility that my knowledge of the landscape would be obsolete within months. It was a sad day for me when I was forced to wheel my Studer 24 track 2" analog tape machine equipped with 24 channels of Dolby SR out of the door to be taken to the garbage heap. I loved that machine. It was truly a thing of beauty. Once again I apologize for the digital history tutorial. I found your dbx copy on Discogs. But it doesn't have a date for the release. Do you happen to know when you purchased it? Without a decoder it is useless to you. Although I am sure that there are people that collect dbx encoded vinyl. So it might worth quite a bit. I didn't even know that they made dbx encoded vinyl. I thought that they had used the dbx encode/decode at some point in the chain before pressing it. And was just using it as a marketing ploy. Had I known that it was pressed encoded. I would have warned you. It wasn't until I found it on Discogs that I realized that it was actually encoded and that you would need a decoder. You might be able to find one on eBay for not much money. They are basically worthless. But who knows? Maybe they are coveted by collectors. If nothing else. It is a unique and probably rare album to have in your collection. I just checked on Discogs. There are only three NM copies for sale in the US. And one NM for sale in Bulgaria. They are selling for around $100 + shipping. In the spirit of this discussion. Last night I was thinking that we haven't yet heard the 2008 remaster that Island Records did and was only distributed in the EU. I looked and I was able to purchase a NM copy of it for $40. And so I did. Just out of curiosity. It sure beats the $200 that I would have to spend for an Analog Productions remaster. So I have both an A&M first pressing and a 2008 Island remaster on their way to me. It will be interesting to hear both of them and compare. Have fun with your new gear. I hope that you are happy with it.
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@billpete Please let me know if you can hear a big difference with the pink label. I would like to get the Analog Productions 45 rpm remaster. The 45 rpm albums that I own have remarkable frequency extension and a much wider image than their 33-1/3 counterparts. But it is a bit annoying having to turn the record over every 2 or 3 songs. However, I bet that the dynamics of TFTT would be amazing! The bass would be huge. TFTT is a perfect candidate for 45 rpm mastering. I can't think of a better candidate. But they are so expensive! |
@billpete I would assume the reason for splitting the album up into two vinyl disks with only two or three songs per side would be to avoid using the inner grooves of the record. The sound deteriorates as the circumference becomes smaller. The linear distance in which the information is carved is much greater at the outer grooves than the inner grooves. So it becomes more difficult carve the same amount of information into a smaller linear distance. The higher frequencies begin to suffer as a result. I believe it is known as "inner groove distortion". Someone such as Allan Parsons, an audio engineer himself, would be aware of that. And my guess would be that he chose to avoid that issue by splitting it into two disks. Thus avoiding the inner grooves for fidelity reasons. That would be my guess. |