Green Day - American Idiot Best Press

Has anyone tried the different releases through the years? Which mastering gave this album the superior sound?

We have the:

• 2004 Original
• Stan Ricker cut
• RJ Sterling cut

as the best contenders as I see it.

 

I only have the Ricker Cut. It sounds fine. No idea if any of the other presses are better.

 

Alright, Ive heard some who prefer the RJ cut over it, but never some who compared.

 

I'd be curious as well. Epic album.

 

My advice is to just skip this one on vinyl and get the HDtracks release.


I have a red and black pressing that uses the half-speed cut. The problem? There are weird gaps between the tracks, they’re really jarring and disrupt the flow of the album.

Particularly the crossfade into Blvd. of Broken Dreams comes to mind. Destroys the listening experience. When I heard it I was so beyond frustrated, I never want to spin this one again.


At any point during the actual mastering process, or y’know, evaluating the test pressings, someone should have caught that and said “hey. That’s not right”


This literally means that the album was cut slap-dash from a bunch of files without any real care or effort put into it. Providing those files to an engineer with a really good cutting chain isn’t gonna change the fact that the source material provided was flawed and should have been checked over a bit more carefully.


Provide prepared cutting masters that are 1 file per side, instead of a whole group of separated tracks, and slip-ups like this can be entirely avoided.

 

Thanks - good to know. I hadn't heard about this issue previously.