2. music
  3. 1153422845

Are there any GOOD Dylan SACD remasters?

Wow, I've bought a few SACD only and HYBRID Bob Dylan remasters, and unfortunately all but Blood On The Tracks has been a let down? Is it that the engineers doing the remaster think they need to make it clearer, and therefore add top end? To me, it would seem you would just issue the same recording, same mix, same levels, on the new medium WITHOUT SCREWING WITH IT?? Isn't getting it in SACD going to give us better sound anyway?

Am I alone in this? Correct me if I'm wrong, the original master tape offers sonic's obscured by conventional CD technology. So an SACD allows us to hear the original master tape more closely to it's actual sound. Where in this process does it say that some rookie comes in and tries to make it sound better?

Jesus! Bob is in his 60's, and even if he was present on the remaster that wouldn't make me happy. All I want is more of what was originally recorded, offered naturally by SACD. It was a good recording to start with, and Bob can't hear as well as he did 25 years ago!

Yeah, some of my favorite later Dylan needs some help, Time Out Of Mind sounds like Bob is singing through a meggaphone frequently, extremely nasal vocals, and not even well recorded to begin with in my opinion. No remaster is gonna solve this. So how does the SACD HYBRID sound? Tom
trich727
kthomas
911 posts
 
I have nothing to compare them to, and really never paid much attention to him - his peak was somewhat before my music-loving youth. But I really enjoy the SACD versions, especially getting them for six bucks from BMG, and marvel at what an incredible string of albums he put out back in the day.
theo's avatar
theo
2,331 posts
 
Bought the 15 disc set and find it very good. I feel some of the older releases were not as good as the newer, but that is to be expected. Maybe the BluRay audio format (if/when) will be better but the master tapes can only deliver so much resolution.
ben_campbell
1,164 posts
 
I don't think the masters are different although they've probably been eq'd again.

This thread just shows how subjective audio quality is.
meisterkleef
146 posts
 
The 'Slow Train Coming' SACD sounds excellent to these ears.
trich727 OP
67 posts
 
Thanks for the replies. So far I have Blond On Blond, great in parts, Blood On The Tracks excellent, Highway 61 OK, Bringing It All not impressed. And my comment of nasal, I was being kind, so nasal through a meggaphone on Time Out Of Mind, sounds so bad on cd compared to vinyl. I'm not even sure it has been SACD'd, but I thought I would ask on here to see if it is even worth buying any more Dlan titles. Sounds pretty mixed so far. It states on the cd's that they have been remastered from the original master tapes, which I would think would entail more than just re-EQing, possibly not? I would also guess the latest noise reduction was also applied.

And that may be my problem with these, I don't know. But when Robert Fripp remastered the Crimson stuff, he killed them with noise reduction. Fortunately the later remasters in the digi-paks saved the day for me (note this is pre SACD days). The Dylan is different, Fripp killed all the top end, the Dylan remasters seem thin for lack of a better word (except BOTT for the most part).

So far the best I've heard on SACD is track 12, Tin Pan Alley in the bonus tracks on SRV's Texas Flood. Every instrument has air and space, imaging is perfect with lots of depth.

In the non-SACD department, a gem of a recording I've recently discovered is The Best of Canned Heat on EMI Manhattan CDP 7 48377.2 from various sources, all but two tracks are excellent recordings. And the 24 bit remaster of Johnny Winter's Progressive Blues Experiment is also great, big improvement over the original killer lp too. Tom
More to discover