Audiophile Pressings

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Flatcoat
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Audiophile Pressings

Post by Flatcoat »

Audiophile Pressings
I will soon be getting a new Majik LP12 after a period 22 years without a turntable (was LP12/Ekos/Troika/Lingo). My experience in the past was that audiophile pressings like MFSL were rarely any better than the standard LPs at that time.

You can now buy 45 rpm versions of LPs and obviously MFSL LPs.

My question is it worth paying the extra ?
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lejonklou
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Re: Audiophile Pressings

Post by lejonklou »

Back to vinyl again? That's cool, please do keep us posted on your impressions!

Regarding your question, my answer is No.
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Tendaberry
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Re: Audiophile Pressings

Post by Tendaberry »

And I absolutely agree with Fredrik here; I haven't heard one "audiophile" pressing, that plays the tune better than a good original pressing. Most of the time, the sound isn't better either, in my experience often worse.
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Re: Audiophile Pressings

Post by Ianw »

Some are better and some are worse, some of the MOFI are particularly poor.
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ThomasOK
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Re: Audiophile Pressings

Post by ThomasOK »

I'm not generally fond of remasterings in general, and of audiophile ones in particular. There are some exceptions as my standard remastering of Frank Sinatra's Wee Small Hours is quite good and compares very well to an original. Also my Satchmo St. James Infirmary, which is a 45RPM single audiophile remastering is stunning. But those seem to be the exceptions that prove the rule.

A recent remastering of the Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto with Artur Rubinstein, Fritz Reiner and the CSO was absolute dreck compared to the original version and a recent Fleetwood Mac Rumors pressing was totally boring compared to a few early pressings. I also did a couple of comparisons on here recently of audiophile recordings done in 33.3 RPM and 45 RPM on two sides of the same record (designed to show the superiority of 45 RPM). I believe it is safe to say that pretty much everyone preferred the 33.3 RPM recordings.

In most cases the most musical LPs will be first pressings in the country of origin. Unfortunately everybody knows this so the pricing for them can be exorbitant, especially for popular groups or albums.
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