[BOC] COTHM: re-WOW

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

Jon Jarrett wrote:
>         I have a more basic problem with _Imaginos_ which is that the
>sound is terrible. It sounds like they were trying to get the band into
>four fewer channels than were available on the mixing desk. Of course with
>some numbers that may have been the case which may be why you can never
>hear all the guitar orchestra. But it's like that with all of them. I
>remember Al posting to the effect that on the vinyl version there was a
>lot of compression applied so as to get it down to maximum vinyl size, but
>that doesn't excuse the sound on the CD version unless they used the vinyl
>master for it which would just be daft. But musically it is very fine
>indeed,. with the possible exceptionm of the title track.

I remember Al saying that they had mixed the hell out of those tapes.
It does show, but IMO the CD sounds rather better than the vinyl --
but more because it sounds a lot clearer to me than because I expect
it was decently mastered for CD.  While it is daft to cut a CD from
vinyl mastering, that isn't to say that it hasn't been the common
practice (from what I can tell)!  There's a reason CDs often sound
better when remastered ....  A lot of old classics were mastered
_terribly_ to CD, and still haven't been redone decently.

IMO, a good CD version of Imaginos would be a thing of glory.  I
don't give a toss whether Al, or BOC, or the Spice Girls made it: I
really like that album :)  It would have been better if it had been
taken all the way to it's (il)logical conclusion, but it's still got
a treasured place on my desert island list (though I'd rather have an
entire desert archipelago to store records :)

Cheers,
Carl

ObCD: Iggy & the Stooges, _Raw Power_ (the "remixed by Iggy" version :)