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Dark Side of the Moon 30th Anniv Album

I purchased two copies of the recently released Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon" 30th Anniversary album. According to the sticker on the album it is pressed in Holland. Our initial listening impressions are that it is lacking in "spaciousness" in the high end details and sounds boomy. Thinking it might simply be my system we put on a MFSL recording of Eric Clapton's first solo album; it sounded fine....crisp, clean bass, good soundstage. The Dark Side went back on; dull, boomy. We then tried some jazz albums like Coltrane and Modern Jazz Quartet with the same results.

Anybody else have a listen to this album yet?

Carl
c123666
ben_campbell
1,164 posts
 
Some people are talking about vinyl on this thread and some people SACD/CD.....
swingman
30 posts
 
Good point, Ben. I think I was up too late and didn't reading carefully before I posted. Upon the light of day, I think I'll leave this one to the vinyl guys.
c123666 OP
871 posts
 
This is a rare case where my CD of DSOTM sounds better than the vinyl. I am fortunate to have picked up that very limited edition of DSOTM that some fellow was trying to tell me is worth 300 bucks; ha.
nrchy's avatar
nrchy
2,111 posts
 
I have the LP and the SACD and neither of the mention Alan Parsons being involved. I have not listened to the LP yet, but SACD has some interesting things on it. I have heard things I did not notice before, but that doesn't mean it is better.
I did find it odd the AP wasn't involved in the process though. I can't believe he has any rights to or say about what Pink Floyd can do with their own music. Maybe they liked the other tapes better.
Maybe Pink Floyd sold the rights to their own music. I guess it worked for the Beatles!?!
EDIT: I listened to the LP yesterday and was very impressed with what I heard. It does seem to be vaguely different than the original. There are definately many improvements. I was able to understand several things which in the past were too muffled to hear clearly. The talking in the airport was finally clear enough, and the footsteps seemed for the first time to be running in circles rather than just back and forth across the soundstage.
I did not listen to the original and the new Holland pressing back to back so I can't make a valid comparison, but if nothing else this LP is a fresh look at a musical legend (like it or not.)
I was wrong about Alan Parsons, he is credited on the LP as the engineer.
jameswei
795 posts
 
There's an interesting analysis on the Stereophile web site that compares the CD layer versus the SACD layer. JA's measurements suggest that the CD layer was compressed and the dynamics were often clipped. Not so the SACD. The observation was that the CD layer sounded louder and punchier, but had fatiguing distortion versus the SACD layer. The Stereophile writers wonder if this was deliberate, to make the SACD layer sound better to audiophiles, or perhaps it reflects typical CD production policies.
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