Any ECM fans here?

yes

Thanks for the Jazz Times link. These were great years for Pat Metheny music.
I'm listening to the remasters and guess what... compression. To my ears they were trying to remove the tape hiss and went too heavy.
According to the article, they used 1/2" analogue masters as sources which must have  sounded so good.

Years ago, a lot of studios used to use Ampex 456 2 inch tape for the original recording process.  That was the standard for many years.

They would feed that into big Scully tape machines that would move the tape very fast.

The mix would go down to 1/2 inch masters.

In 1976-77 I went to Record Hunter on 42 and Fifth Avenue NYC twice and bought a total of 50 ECM LPs at $5.99 each. Excellent SQ and fine contemporary jazz! That was for my first high-end system!

@roberjerman those were the days...I lived near the east village and used to love going to the used record stores down there.  I found some real gems.