Vinyl more exciting?

[garymd]

Just to get an idea of what new pressings are available, you can go onto Elusive Disc's website and scroll through their vast vinyl section.

For jazz, I'm really impressed with Analogue Production's releases over the past few years. Art Pepper's + Eleven, Meets The Rhytym Section and Smack Up are fantastic.

I wasn't as impressed with the 180 gram pressing of Yes, Fragile I just bought a couple weeks ago. Although it is quiet as a mouse and the detail is great, it seems to lack the musicality the others seem to possess. I also bought the newly released 180 gram Rhino release of Joni Mitchell's Blue which sounds really nice. These are all 100% analog pressings.

[JBryan]

Indeed JBryan and I'm sure you are aware if you purchase 4 or more he sells these fine recordings for what I consider an honest price of $9.60 a piece[]

http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/index.php 

If you care for this genre this is one of the finest studio recordings I've ever heard. http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/cds/06552.php 

A very good bluesrock player on Mapleshade is http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/cds/08752.php 

You might like percussion driven folk/blues and this is stuning http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/cds/04252.php 

Thanks Kaiser - I have Midnight and Silent Bear's albums and will look for Al Lee. I don't have any recent CDs from MS but one of my favorites is the Clifford Jordan Quartet "Live at Ethell's". It was the first one I heard and the sound just blew me away - talk about 'being there"! I bought all of Clifford Jordan's offerings on MS and listen to them often and they are great examples when folks want to hear my system. I would also suggest Walter Davis Jr's. "In Walked Thelonious" and Consuela Lee "Piano Voices". Thanks again.

[Mallette]

JBryan: Actually, they don't. Had a brain mix up. However, my comments on his CD's stand. I'd love to meet him, as we have a LOT in common when it comes to purist approach to recording. I have no use for mixers whatsoever for recording pure acoustic events. They are nothing but easy ways out and amount to editorializing. If there is no place in the room where it doesn't sound good, you can't make it sound good. If there is a place where it sounds good, that's where the mikes go.

I'd still like to find out what his reasonsing is in using RTR as an intermediate step...but like I said earlier whatever he is doing is working.

I'd like to know what mikes he uses. Another point we share is that when a recording is REALLY good, you can tell it even on a boombox. That's why I say it's all about the SOURCE material. Your system can only make bad recordings sound worse...

Dave

[kaiser SET say]

Don't have Clifford or Walter but I did pick up Consuela, love piano and it was my fathers favorite instrument so I tend to buy a little ivory material now and again[]

Dave, I bet if you called Mr. Spey he would be more than glad to talk if he has a moment. I remember his review on Midnite (Reggae Roots Style) and the guys in Midnite were adement about making a super recording but they even stynied a little when he told them it would be a recording in the raw and un-amped[] As JBryan can attest it's a very good Reggae recording and I have no idea where Pierre pulls all that bass in!

[Klipsched with Yamahas]

I just recently order MFSL inner sleeves, imported outter protectors, and ordered the Rhino "Machine Head" Deep Purple 180g, and was told these are backordered as much as (2) months. I believe this applies to all RHINO 180g's, unless IN-STOCK

Just an FYI from MusicDirect

[Mallette]

I may just try to get in touch with Mr. Spey. I'd love to see what I can learn. If I do, I'll put the paddles to this thread and post the results.

Dave

[JBryan]

Mallette said: "I'd like to know what mikes he uses..."

Dave,

He uses various mikes to suit his needs and has even made his own but in most recordings, he uses Crown PZM microphones (modified of course). They are omnidirectional and can be placed anywhere from tabletops to floors to the ceiling. 

Here's a nice write up from CD Review..."If you're a serious jazz collector, you can't help but be deeply intrigued by a new jazz label whose improbable address is Upper Marlboro, MD. It's the stuff of cults and legends: a founder/producer/engineer/guru who once worked for the Pentagon as a weapons analyst and who helped design the F-16 jet fighter but who now devotes his life to recording jazz "without compromise"; a studio in a plantation mansion at the end of a long dirt road whose windows look out on woods and tobacco fields a setting where musicians are inspired to reach beyond themselves; a radically purist recording technique that results in jazz albums with sound to die for.

It's not a fantasy. The label is Mapleshade. The guru is Pierre Sprey. Something important is happening in Upper Marlboro.

If the challenge of recording jazz well is what Joe Harley has called a "juggling act" between sonic standards and musical values, Pierre Sprey is the most fascinating juggler now active in the field. To meet the engineering half of this challenge, he uses "the absolute minimum feasible number of microphones and tracks." Since he insists on minimum lengths of connecting cables, he can't use a remote sound booth: He employs headphones for monitoring the live mix. Sprey records analog (because he believes that digital is "crippling") on a much-modified Sony TC-880 two-track at 15 i.p.s. without noise reduction. He records as hot as possible to minimize tape hiss ("you lose so much pluck in the bass, and so much of the percussive sound of a piano hammer...when you use noise reduction"). The musicians are placed around a V-shaped wedge of two plexiglass panels, on each of which is mounted a highly modified Crown PZM pressure zone microphone. Sprey goes from the Crowns to battery powered preamps equipped only with gain controls to the Sony. There is no mixing board, no filtering, no compression, no equalization, no multitracking, no overdubbing.

Sprey is obsessive about the engineering and technical fine points, but he's even more focused on "providing an environment where musicians will want to play as well as they have ever played." What is special about the environment is its welcoming warmth. Musicians are "honored guests" in the mansion during the two or three days it usually takes to make an album. Sprey himself is the chef, serving excellent meals and wines. He wants the musicians to feel relaxed and comfortable, so that they "take chances and play with real fire." They are recorded in a live space the mansion's converted front parlor ó where they can see and hear each other. There are no drum booths or vocal booths because "they destroy the creative cohesion of a group."

To sit down with a small stack of your very first Mapleshades is a revelation. Sonically, they combine AudioQuest'sgut-level impact with Chesky's accurate rendering of space...."

[Mallette]

Haven't put up a pdf before. I am going to check it, then edit this...

Hmmm... Seems to be working.

First, the address is my old one and I have mbsdar.com offline since my move. That said, I couldn't help but put this up after reading JBryan's last post. It would appear that Pierre Spey and I are of like minds. I may have to make a pilgrimage to his place.

To those who bother to read it, PLEASE don't jump to the conclusion that I am suggesting somehow that all other approaches are false. The premise of this paper is that this approach will produce the purist surround (or stereo) consistently...not that some other way will not. While I prefer ribbon mikes in most applications, they require a bit more expertise in use and placement, while the PZM will produce excellent results for anyone if you get it anywhere near a good spot. And the PZM-epuipped SoundCube will produce a remarkable surround experience that precisely recreates the position it was placed in each and every time.

PZM's are HIGHLY under regarded, perhaps because they undermine the "high priesthood" of audio engineering by being too easy to use (just a guess...I really have no idea otherwise).

Anyway, Spey and Co. are the first I've run across to share this experience and certainly the first to achieve notoriety doing so.

Hats off, gentlemen, to a reall audiophile hero!

Dave

sixcard.pdf