Another comparative listening; on-the-fly remastered vinyl LP vs. remastered CD: Bill Evans jazz piano trio, analog recorded in 1977; remastered (2021) vinyl LP (45-RPM 188-gram) vs. its CD release
Hello friends,
I am happy sharing again my recent audio listening enjoyment here in this post.
This post is a follow-up of my post
here (#688) and
here (#722) regarding comparative listening of on-the-fly vinyl LP versus CD release using my
DSP-based multichannel multi-driver multi-amplifier audio system having
DENON DP-57L TT plus
DENON DL301MarkII MC Cartridge connected to
AUDIO-TECHNICA AT-PEQ30 phono preamplifier into
TASCAM US-1x2HR audio interface (ADC); please refer to my post
here (#688) for the details of the revival of vinyl LP TT in my audio setup.
Several weeks ago, my “that” serious jazz fanatic friend (please refer to
post #438) kindly came again to my home, and we fully enjoyed our 6-hour audio listening session. This time, as he has promised before, he kindly brought a 2-LP album of 45-RPM on heavy and thick vinyl of 180-gram each (so indicated on the jacket). Using my present on-the-fly LP listening setup (
#688 and
#697), we listened to only the first two tracks of the LP and I was very much impressed by the sound and music performance. After he left my audio room, therefore, I quickly ordered the 2-LP album together with its exact CD release at Amazon Japan site and they arrived on my desk a week ago.
Even though I am not a serious jazz enthusiast, I know that the 2-LP album is very famous among the jazz lovers.
Bill Evans (piano), together with Eddie Gomez (bass) and Eliot Zigmund (drums), recorded (fully analog tapes) the album
"You Must Believe In Spring" in August 1977 at Capitol Studios, Hollywood, CA, U.S.A., and the original LP album was release in 1981 which was the first memorial/mourning release after Bill passed away in September 1980. I heard many people recognize this recording as one of the Bill's
Schwanengesang performances
.
Here I dare not say much about the self-destructive (long-year semi-suicidal) life of genius jazz musician Bill Evans.
In 2021, the 40th anniversary year of its first LP release, Mr. Paul Blakemore of Concord Mastering very carefully re-mastered the album from the original analog tapes, and Mr. Kevin Gray of Cohearent Audio took the remastering cut pressed onto two 45-RPM180-gram heavy-thick vinyl at RTI. The 2-LP 45-RPM album (made in U.S.A.) was accordingly released under the label of CRAFT RECORDINGS in 2021.
2-LP: CR00455 CRAFT RECORDINGS, Made in U.S.A.
Very fortunately,
the 2-LP of heavy-thick vinyl arriving on my desk “looked” perfect with its nice jacket and inner envelopes, very clean with no bending at all. I actually measured the weight of the LPs, and found it is really 188-gram each!
Before putting the LPs onto my audio rig, I carefully and rigorously washed them with aqueous (distilled water) diluted neutral pH kitchen detergent and a hard plastic brash; after complete drying-up, I further cleaned the LPs by actual 86-RPM trace with 3.5-gram stylus pressure using NUMARK PT01 portable TT for five times (see
#695). Of course, each time I cleaned-up the PT01's cartridge stylus with a small fine brush and pure isopropyl alcohol. These are my “routine” cleaning procedures for old LPs as well as newly purchased LPs.
Together with the LPs, the exact CD release was arrived on my desk containing three bonus tracks (the bonus tracks were separately remixed by Mr. Seth Presant).
CD: UCCO-5612 CRAFT RECORDINGS, Made in Japan:
Using dBpoweramp CD Ripper (release 17.3 64-bit), I carefully ripped the CD into non-compressed 16-bit 44.1 kHz AIFF format, and the CD album was incorporated in JRiver’s SSD music library.
(Please refer
here for my SSD digital music library organization.)
Then, we (myself and my wife) went into intensive comparative listening sessions for the LPs
vs. the CD with our audio rig in exactly the common/same configuration parameters (
i.e. common Fq response settings).
Having the first on-the-fly listening to the LP, we were deeply impressed by its “physical quality” and “sound quality”.
We hear no audible pop nor scratch noise all the way through from the silent lead portion of the LP, music tracks, the silent interval between the tracks, and end silent portion; we could only hear very subtle scratch/pop noises in final loop of the silent end portion in each of the two LPs which is quite common in many other LPs and no problem at all for our listening enjoyments.
Thanks to the very well manufactured (and well QC-ed) 188-gram thick-heavy vinyl with no bending, we hear no audible wow-flatter nor off-center (eccentric) sound fluctuation. Of course, these are also greatly attributed to the still-excellent performances of
DP-57L TT and
DL301MarkII MCC as well as to my “routine” intensive LP cleaning procedures.
Furthermore,
the merit of the “45-RPM sound quality” pressed on high-quality vinyl material is just amazing; it would be rather difficult describing it properly by words since English is not my mother language. I would like to suggest you, therefore, just trying this 45-RPM LP if you have excellent HiFi LP listening audio setup. It is very much interesting and impressive looking at the track-7 of only-6-minute music actually occupying the whole surface of the B-side of the second LP; what an extravagant/luxury cutting and LP press!
The total sound quality of wonderful music performances is just perfect and stunning felt as one of my best on-the-fly LP listening experiences; I would dare not say too much about my subjective impression, but you would please imagine the heart-ease reproduction of the slightly nostalgic 1977 analog recording in really wonderful total sound balance, low distortion, high S/N, of course no clipping, suitable and comfortable 3D sound stage of the stunning jazz piano trio performance. We could hear and much appreciate the excellent and successful re-mastering and re-mix engineering.
You may easily understand my preference and fascination to this album when you would notice that I have all the CDs of Karel Boehlee Trio; please refer to
my post here on this thread.
On the other hand, what was our subjective impression on the remastered CD listening?
Again, the total sound quality is really very nice; nice reproduction of slightly nostalgic 1977 analog recording. We (myself and my wife), however, could easily hear/distinguish the CD sound, in comparison with LPs, having a little bit of edge and gain enhancements in piano sound which maybe, I assume, intentionally remixed adjusting to contemporary low-end to middle-end HiFi audio gears and/or headset/earphone listening (using smartphones?)
Of course, our such hearing “observation” would greatly dependent on the difference of LP playback sequence and ripped SSD CD digital library sequence even all the audio configuration including the Fq-response remained unchanged for both of the LP and the CD listening settings.
It was interesting for us finding that the CD sound became “almost” identical to the on-the-fly LP sound by reducing the midrange Beryllium driver (500 Hz to 6 kHz) in 1.6 dB (
i.e. change the standard -17.0 dB down to -18.6 dB with
ACCUPAHSE E-460’s digital gain control)
and reducing the tweeter + super-tweeter (6 kHz to 21 kHz) in 2.0 dB (
i.e. change the standard -17.0 dB down to -19.0 dB with
SONY TA-A1ES’s digital gain control).
Even we could/can apply such fine relative gain tuning for the CD sound, however, at least with our audio rig and room acoustic environments, we always do prefer the LP sound over the CD sound for very much impressive heart-ease listening to the wonderful music by Bill Evans Trio throughout our intensive comparative listening sessions.
By the way, we two really do not like the three bonus tracks in the CD since these three tracks have very different music style and recording quality in quite “heterogeneous” with the original release’s seven tracks. Even we listened to the three bonus tracks only one time, I have quickly deleted them from my JRiver digital music library.
In summary, I highly recommend the 45-RPM 188-gram heavy-thick 2-LP album,
CR00455 CRAFT RECORDINGS,
Bill Evans Trio: “You Must Believe In Spring” if you have proper HiFi LP on-the-fly listening audio setup.
At least in my audio rig, this gem 45-RPM 188-gram 2-LP album should serve as one of (or the best?) golden reference(s) for on-the-fly real-time LP listening enjoyments.
