MFSL now doing 7 Bob Dylan titles in mono (hybrid SACD)

Whoops apologies. I do have the MFSL mono sacds of BIABH and JWH and they are in my opinion excellent and played often. Still awaiting H61 which may well turn out to be perhaps the most interesting. Lots of discussion re H61 and how to get the best sounding version. The old DCC is probably my favourite if I ignore the whole stereo or mono business.

 

Looking at amazon.com US they have what may be the remaining three mono SACDs listed with a September 22 release date. . .which may mean they will soon be available from music direct.com. Here's hoping!

 

My first reaction to the JWH SACD is that the harmonica sounds surprisingly aggressive here. I had hoped for less shrillness in that department.

I don't know, maybe I've been brainwashed by listening to the Mono box for 7 years, but I sure like those flat transfers. Maybe I should just focus on the pre-1965 mono SACD's for the moment.

 

Isn't this recording notoriously bright? The old hybrid stereo SACD is super bright as well.

 

Apart from the harmonica I would not call the mono versions of this album bright.

I just expected Mobile Fidelity to tame the piercing harmonica sounds a bit.

Instead, it's worse. The coda of title track is almost unbearable to listen to here.

 

I don't really understand why you guys always want the high-end of these records tamed so much.

 

Great question. The harmonica sounds fine here.

 

I don't necessarily have a preference for muted highs. Look in the trending thread about "Forever Changes" where I dump all over the MFSL for being murky and dark.

It's just that the harmonica is all over this album. So it's a problem if it hurts my ears compared to the 2010 release. I of course use headphones a lot. So maybe that makes a difference.

I can post some samples later today.

 

People don't want to hear this but I suspect that is how the harmonica sounds on the master tape. Bright and piercing.

 

I thing you are right.

A few weeks ago, I was listening to that SACD (CD player) and thinking, "man, great full bass, but damn, this harmonica is harsh." So harsh, that I put the SACD up for sale, but no one wanted it. So I listened again and this time it sounded much more enjoyable. The harmonica was still bright, but not as much as before. I just tried again and indeed, it sounded as it did the second time. I suspect I had failed to place my wall treatment behind the listening station the first time. The treatment does a nice job of softening the highs (and sharpening the focus) from my stereo.

If I want a mellower harmonica, I can always grab my Dylan in Mono box.

 

I would guess you are right. From Derek Barker's excellent Dylan Remastered article from Isis

Some people love this version whilst many others detest it. The harp sound is very strident, but then again, it always has been, and there’s a lot of EQ. This is by no means the best of the 2003 re-masters. The re-mastered CD layer of the SACD was made available as the standard CD release in UK/Europe (512347 2) in March 2004 and in North America (CK 92395) in June 2004. Like it or nor, this master is now used to make all of current stereo CD releases of “John Wesley Harding”.

In 2010, a mono mix of “John Wesley Harding” was released as part of “Bob Dylan: The Original Mono Recordings”. For this release, series producer Steve Berkowitz and engineer Mark Wilder went back to the original mono master and tried to iron out the problems that seem to have beaten others in the past (too much high end on the recording and too many piercing high notes from Dylan’s harmonica).

Link to Isis magazine. Bob Dylan Remastered - Bob Dylan ISIS Magazine

I guess the big question is whether MFSL used the same original mono master for their mono sacd?

 

I have not heard the MoFi, and I am making no comment here about its relative fidelity to the 2010 Sony mono box mastering, but regarding the latter, I really don't think those are (all) flat transfers, as you call them. Certainly not JWH! Mark Wilder and Steve Berkowitz talked in an interview about this being the most difficult one to master and having to do separate EQ passes for the vocal and harmonica sections because, and I quote Berkowitz with his own original emphasis: "the high end of the harmonica is just lethal"!

Being a harmonica player myself, and having played with a number of others, I can tell you that real harmonicas played the way Dylan plays his on some of these songs really can sound very shrill, in person, in the room, in your ear, etc. Again, I'm not commenting on the sound quality of the MoFi per se here, because I haven't even heard it. But if the recording captures with good fidelity the actual tone and presence of the harp as played, and if MoFi elected to carry that quality through in its mastering rather than drastically alter it, then I'd not be surprised if it's somewhat shrill in places. In fact, I'd be surprised if it weren't.

 

Well, here are samples from the 2010 mono box and the 2017 Mofi Hybrid (the beginning of "The Wicked Messenger")...

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I think only one of them is truly "piercing".

 

I heard that they were flat transfers from a user here at the time, but it does makes sense that a big commercially released box would be mastered and not just released with flat transfers.

It does however sound like Wilder/Berkowitz approach was "as little as possible".

 

[Just thought I'd pull out the full quotes relating to JWH from Roger Ford's 2010 interview with Steve Berkowitz and Mark Wilder regarding The Original Mono Recordings]

RF:
Which album presented the most difficulty in the overall process? What sort of problems arose and how did you overcome them?

SB:
“John Wesley Harding”, right?

MW:
Yeah.

RF:
That was the case with the stereo remaster as well, wasn’t it?

SB:
Yeah. It’s a wonderful record, and the record for the most part is very what I call internal, quiet – but not the mixes. The master mixes are pretty wild, and there was a lot of extreme mastering that went on in those original productions. So in a way, taming the original mixes into the sound that became the sound of that released album, takes a lot of work.

MW:
Something about the harmonica on that album...

SB:
The high end of the harmonica is just lethal...

MW:
Yeah, lethal. I don’t really use many digital tools, but on that I would take a pass for the harmonica and a pass for the vocal, and intercut them. So when Bob is singing I’m using the vocal pass, and when he’s playing harmonica there’s a very tight edit made, and it goes to the harmonica pass, the harmonica EQ. Now for me, that was easy because it’s accepted practice in the CD world; but for George Marino this is probably the hardest record he ever cut in his life.

SB:
We have a history of this, going back years now, of having various people take a shot at this record, and it’s simply the way the harmonica that Dylan played was received into the microphone and accepted on tape. It’s just that there’s a lot of high end, there’s a lot of high notes, and it’s piercing and it’s loud. And often, when Dylan would play it seems that when he sang, he would sort of rock back a little bit, but when he played harmonica he would hunch back closer in. And so every time the harmonica comes, it’s like, “Look out, here it comes again!”. And I said to George Marino when he was cutting the vinyl edition, “Aim lower. Aim lower, because if you get this precise, you’re hurting people.”

RF:
So how did the vinyl pressings that you found of “John Wesley Harding” sound?

SB:
The masters of the original mixes are really, really squashed so that they were acceptable. From what I hear, the record got recorded pretty simply – it’s just a trio, for the most part, playing live, and they recorded it. Then they mixed it, and I don’t know what they heard when they were mixing it, but what they mixed and then what they mastered, they had to really squash and compress it to get it to sound kinda quiet and muffled as the original production does, in stereo and mono. And so this is what we had to keep going at, and I know it goes completely against the grain of what Mark usually does, which is to maximise the original sound, because if you do that here, it’s painful!

[A contextual note: earlier in the interview, Berkowitz says of the overall approach with the set that "we chose to go back to the 1A pressings, worked as hard as we could to find the best tapes to replicate that original production, and that’s what we did." They were aiming more for the sound of the records as originally mastered and released than that of the master tapes themselves.]

 

Exactly! The mono box was seeking to replicate the sound of the original mono LP. It sure sounds like it.

 

Thanks for posting this.

Well, it's now painful alright.

 

Well I ordered the mono recordings box set for 80 as that is the best that is around. I want that set because those are the guys that know the material best IMO.

I got a few of the MFSL Monos so I will have to do a comparison soon here.

 

That is about the difference I heard on BIABH mono box against the mofi mono redbook; I guess on this album it may not work as well, but from those samples it isn't screaming out to me that it is a mofi problem as much as possibly more of a tape problem getting through in a more open transfer. I tend to like this album in stereo so I have not tried the mofi mono yet, maybe someday.

Edit: I just played around with the mono and stereo of Wicked Messenger and despite the relatively goofier stereo the fact that the harp isn't quite as set to vaporize in the stereo mix might just be the reason for me liking it more all along and I never knew it.

 

I like the stereo version as well. Do you have the newish stereo Mofi SACD (not my favorite) or the old Columbia CD (mine is COL 463359 2).

ST promoted the CD back in 2004.

I pulled out my old Columbia CD of Dylan's JOHN WESLEY HARDING just to be sure....

 

Yes the old Columbia CK 9604 which I got after hearing comments about it on these Dylan mofi threads; previously, I only had it in the mono box. I have not tried either of the mofi of this and, as I simply think the CK 9604 is so enjoyable right now, doing so is pretty well down my list of things to do.

 

Music Direct is now sending out the mono Freewheelin' Bob Dylan SACD's. That just leaves Highway 61 and Another Side still to come in the mono series.

 

Yes, I got my shipping notice for the Freewheelin' mono SACD; will be glad to listen to it this weekend.

 

We are back on track!

The new Mono MoFi of Times They Are a-Changin' is an excellent improvement over the 2010 disc. Less harsh and quite a bit warmer.

It combines the ambiance of the Mofi Stereo SACD with superiority of the mono mix. I really only need this version from now on.

I guess a pattern is emerging. I like the new MoFi Mono discs for the early acoustic stuff (62-64) and the 2010 box for electric/folk rock (65-67).

I'm eager to hear Freewheelin' and Another Side now.

 

Listening to the Freewheelin mono SACD right now. I love it! This always worked better for me in mono.