Relaxing revelations

 

Last week was a bit messed up in a number of ways so we're catching up and at the same time trying to relax a bit so I did play a couple of records one being a Bay City Rollers album from the days I had lots of clippings, posters and scarfs of theirs.

Given my super audio cd player spends over 80% of its time playing regular cds I recently changed the external digital to analogue converter that takes the noughts and ones from the transport in the player to improve on its sound.

I've had cd since 1986 so not surprisingly some my cds go back a long time and some have had a number of cd releases so how would you know what's worth keeping as we tend to remember how something s oundedbut not necessarily take account of what we heard it on.

This variant of the first Duran Duran album was from 1985 to the early 1990's the international cd release of the album which saw To The Shore removed and the 1983 single Is There Something I Should Know? added as track five (and last track  side one on the US/Japan lp|) 

In 1993 a version that restored To The Shore was issued in Europe with a newer mastering issued but to my ears it seemed to lack "attack" and subsequent issued in 2003 and 2010 worse.

The usual criticism of that first cd issue was that sounded bright and that 1983 single was mastered a bit louder than the rest of the album and it can remembering how it sounded on my original Toshiba player.

Putting it in the super audio cd and playing from the new external digital to analogue convertor was a revelation as it didn't sound bright, there was an obvious bass line and Simon Le Bon's vocals had great presence.

I even heard clear soundstaging!

Actually I had to pinch myself that I wasn't hearing a record playing it was that good correcting that level issue while playing it.

Actually this was a really good sounding cd ONCE you corrected the level mismatch and took advantage of the advances in digital technology.

Now it won't sort a bad cd out but it certainly will bring out everything that the disc has and that for generations we assumed it never had.