Dead Can Dance albums getting vinyl reissues on 4AD

I really like both stages of DCD but they're VERY different. They start how you'd expect a band named "Dead Can Dance" to sound and turn into the DCD we knew.

 

I don't think you could replace just the deadwax area when using metal parts. But it is possible I guess to have a metal part copy with a blank deadwax, unto which you stamp whatever you please?

I learned that Vinyl180 were very sketchy long after having bought some of the DCD reissues. I don't have any other Vinyl180 product.
These were mastered by John Dent, who is one of the very best mastering engineers, and sound great.

I think the MoFi Silver Series were for original digital masters or digital copies of analog masters, when the tapes are lost and nothing else is usable. Because some of their standard series (not Silver) use analog safeties (see some of the Dylan reissues), that while not being the absolute original masters, are the only surviving analog copies -then de facto becoming the "masters" to use.
So I'd say Silver Series is for digital sources, irrespective of if it's the master or a copy of an analog master?

 

Good question on the Silver Series, Yaz-Upstairs at Eric's 2012 may have come from safety tapes as it's full analog, no cut-off, and then we have the mystery mixes from the Sisters Floodland

 

Or maybe the Silver Series is for when they don't think a particular title can demand a premium price.

 

I like your thinking Thomas

 

So I picked up Spleen and Ideal.

The record is flat, centered on side 2 but ever so slightly off on side 1 (not enough to have that dreaded fluctuating pitch; and I just noticed my original LP is ever so slightly off on side one too), and generally quiet except for the occasional faint tick here or there.

I didn't compare it with my original LP, but I did a/b one track ("The Cardinal Sin" ) from this repress against the original CD. The CD is much more midrange-y in tone, while the repressed LP is bassier but also has a bit more high frequency detail. This LP sounds good to me, though, overall; nothing sounds off or anything, though I swear I could tell that it sounded a little bassier when I first set the needle down, before comparing it.

Then I a/b'd my original LP against the CD, and interestingly, the two actually sound closer in overall tone, though the CD is still more midrange-y.

They did a decent - though not perfect - job of replicating the cover art. The red gown on the new cover looks a little washed out compared to the original, while the building looks a tad grainy by comparison. Definitely not one of the more egregious examples of badly reproduced LP cover art (think The Smiths), but still, this is a band who had some of the coolest album covers of the 80s, so I'd expect the artwork to get the respect it deserves. Also, the new LP lists the songs on the back of the cover, whereas the original didn't, which takes away a bit from that 4AD mystique.

Overall, I'd say they seem to have done a pretty good job with this one. Not totally perfect, but about as good as you can expect to find in this current climate of frequently shoddy quality control. And at least it's nice to have these back in print (and not the Vinyl180 pressings!).

 

I picked up both the DCD vinyl180 box sets and have no problem with the sound. Different systems, different ears, different tastes, different conclusions.
I have to give a big thumbs up to Vinyl 180 with their service as nearly all the sleeves had been cut by the records moving during transit. They very promptly sent me replacement sleeves.

 

Thanks -- worth knowing.

 

And again, thanks. I like Spirit Chaser, but the band have been around a while, and from what you say things have changed. I have This Mortal Coil: Blood (rem. CD) and I like that- - would earlier DCD be more in that vein?

 

Not at all.

But the first This Mortal Coil album (not the ep), It'll End In Tears has two tracks that are very similar to the earlier DCD. And Lisa performs on them.
This is my favorite This Mortal Coil. Haven't heard the remaster.

 

Spleen and Ideal to Into the Labyrinth are their best efforts IMO

 

Agree with you here.

 

No news on who cut them?

Didn't John Dent do the Vinyl 180 reissues? I had them for a while, but I couldn't get past the surface noise. So I returned them.

 

And for what it's worth, the This Mortal Coil that did Blood was a very different entity (different cast of musicians; different aesthetic and MO) from the one that did It'll End In Tears (which is also my favorite). But yeah, Tears overall is much more similar to 80s Dead Can Dance (not surprising given that Lisa was on it), whereas I don't think anything on Blood sounds like any era of DCD.

 

You can't. Think about it: the deadwax area where the original mastering inscriptions are is also the area of the runout grooves. Mess with the inscriptions and you risk destroying the runout grooves, making the metals unusable. You can however carefully scratch out the old info, or add new info to it. (But scratched-out info always gives itself away and you can usually make out what is underneath.)

Usually there are 2 or 3 stages where inscriptions are left in the deadwax area. The first and most important one, the ones left during mastering, will always stay the same. The plating/pressing plant inscriptions may vary. In conclusion, if you source new pressings from old '80s metal parts, at least the mastering inscriptions will stay the same.

 

Now that these records are out in the wild it would be pretty easy to solve this mystery. Someone post the deadwax from Splean and Ideal. The original LP has:

• Matrix / Runout (Runout Side A): MPO CAD 512 A²
• Matrix / Runout (Runout Side B): MPO CAD 512 B²

 

As far as I can tell, Silver Series is a mix of:

* Copy tapes they can't bill as Original Master Recording (they started doing premium non OMR titles as Silver Series kind of stopped getting new titles for the canonical audiophile type stuff like Bob Dylan, The Band, and Kind of Blue).

* Digital sources.

* Titles that aren't in the old audiophile warhorse vein.

It's definitely not just for digital sources.

But what complicates the DCD titles is that, while there's nothing on the packaging differentiating them from the other Silver Series titles (well, other than being 2LP sets), the labels on the actual vinyl records say they were taken from the original master tapes. They're the only Silver Series titles with that labelling. So the question is: What makes MoFi willing to say that on a digitally sourced album when they didn't do it for any of the other digitally sourced Silver Series titles, like INXS's "Kick," for example? Did all of the other titles use analog copy tapes but the DCD titles used the original digital tape? Not sure how else it makes sense. Or were they "more analog" than we realize?

 

This is what I figured. So the question remains:

What did Music On Vinyl do with the Alice In Chains titles and (presumably, since I don't own them) the Rage Against the Machine titles if they use "original metal parts" but don't have identical or scratched out near-identical dead wax?

 

If the new pressings sound close to the MFSL pressings regardless of how they were done...we have a winner (at a reasonable price).

 

John Dent did the Vinyl180 reissues. Mine have little to no surface noise.

 

Now that I think of it, Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms is also a digital master, and it has the Original Master Recording banner.
Maybe they want to be totally honest and just put the banner when they use the absolute original digital master tape. Which is a bit silly.

 

My Vinyl180 reissue of Spleen just doesn't sound right.
Not as clear.

 

Mine has
MPO CAD 3623 A
MPO CAD 3623 B

Nothing scratched out in the deadwax at all.

 

John Dent used a tube stage to master them. When you know how that sounds, it is clearly audible when playing the LPs. I like it because it gives the early digital mixes a depth and width they didn't have and it is the first time I think they don't really sound like early digital, IMO.
YMMV, especially with vinyl...

(@HiFi Guy 008 if you don't like it, sell it to me )

 

Then in looks like this did not use the original metal parts.