Jefferson Airplane Surrealistic Pillow Stereo/ Mono CD

I have the gold CD and I'd say the sound is more than adequate — marginally below the more recent SHM-CD and Blu-Spec 2 CD, but having the full stereo and mono LPs, the track listing is much more useful.

 

Have the original RCA cd, gold disc and vinyl copies of MONO original release and DCC stereo remaster.

For favorite sonics I reach for the original CD or the MONO LP.

 

I've got the RCA gold mono/stereo disc. Play it for the mono because the stereo sounds better on the current remaster with the bonus tracks. Not that the mono sounds great but it's the best mono version of Surrealistic Pillow you can get at this point on CD.

 

Your brother is a great guy. He helped me with my campaign to get RCA to release some Skeeter Davis reissues on CD when he was editing Goldmine. He was really encouraging and published some of my writing.

 

This is the only mono Pillow I have, so for now it's ok with me.

 

I'm surprised at all the love for the stereo mix over the mono on this one. Have never heard it on CD but my mono LP kills the stereo LP in my book. Still a lousy recording but so much better without all that reverb

 

In all honesty after hearing the album in question then hearing the 2003 remaster trounces it. But it's cool to have stereo/mono on one disk for what it's worth.

 

I'll buy that disc from you for 15x what you paid for it.

 

Wow why what is it that you want it so bad?

 

What version is this??!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Surrealistic-...ywords=jefferson+airplane+surrealistic+pillow

 

The China version. Contains her phone number.

 

I noticed on Amazon there is a Blu-Spec 2 and a collectors edition coming out 9/10/13 of SP. Talk about confusing?

 

That is the one I got for one dollar.

 

2003 remaster.

 

I have tried several CD versions, including the 2003 Bob Irwin remaster, other remasters and the early Japanese pressing (RCA PD83766), and they all sound pretty bad to my ears. I kept the early Japanese disc, as it didn't sound as bad as the others.

 

I haven't seen one recently and the sound is decent.

 

Well I like it cha cha cha

 

No offense, but this doesn't make any sense. How can they be the same mastering if additional noise reduction was applied to one? I know you've said that you don't view a uniform level shift without other changes as constituting a different mastering, but this? Such processing or lack thereof is inarguably part of the mastering.

 

What I meant was they took the existing digital master for the gold CD and simply applied noise reduction to it. So everything would be the same (tape source, digital transfer, relative volume, EQ) except for the added noise reduction. I guess you could call that a remaster, but to me it seems like something less than that. It seems like you would need a fresh digital transfer with different EQ to truly call it a remaster. But I don't feel that strongly that I'd want to debate it. If you consider it a remaster that's fine with me.

At any rate, in this case it's a moot point because I was misremembering what I'd read on Luke's forum, and Andreas corrected my error. The two CDs are not identical except for noise reduction, they are two completely different masterings. The credits are the same, but I don't know if that's an error or if the same team did both masterings.

 

But who is this "they"? A mastering engineer, that's who. "Same mastering" doesn't just mean "from the same digital transfer." There could be any number of masterings that use the same digital transfer as a starting point. A mastering is the product of a particular mastering session (or series of them) done on particular equipment by a particular person or persons. If someone else takes that product and does something else to it, it's not the same mastering anymore. I can understand the argument (though I'm not sure I entirely agree with it) that a simple overall level shift done at the pressing plant does not constitute a new mastering, since the data will still null out if adjusted back to the original volume, and thus it might be characterized as a difference that effectively makes no difference. But noise reduction is at least as radical a change as EQ. In fact, it's very much akin to a kind of EQ, in that it entails decreasing (sometimes outright eliminating) specific frequencies. It distinctly, measurably, audibly, and irreversibly alters the sonic character of the music. I don't see how this can be said to represent the same mastering by any meaningful definition of the term.

Back to the main topic, does anyone know how either of these mono/stereo releases compares to what's on the Ignition box? It also came out in 2001. Is the sound identical to that of the gold CD?

 

Interesting. Good info.

 

So my question to you is there noise reduction applied to said disc? czesklebas comment just don't make sense to me can you untangle this statement?

 

This is absolutely true.

 

Any details?

 

Gre

Great link!