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

Thanks for the information. I didn't know that. Mark Wilder sure did a great job on it. Most other versions of the album sound indeed pretty painful (including the MFSL Mono and the Calbi Stereo Remaster).

So maybe it's not always the best bet to stay as close to the original master tape as possible. I for one am grateful that Mark did what he did.

 

Can you elaborate on what this means?

 

Did you mean instead to say that you prefer the EQ on the mono box? I just want to clarify because you seem to give every indication throughout the thread that you prefer the EQ of the mono box over the MFSLs.

 

No, I meant what I said. I prefer the MFSL mono for S/T and John Wesley Harding over the mono box mastering for those two albums.

 

I was able to compare the MFSL redbook layer with the Sony version and your comments about "I Am a Lonesome Hobo" are spot-on. You have to match the volumes a bit to make a fair comparison, but yowch, during the intro, that third set of notes (it comes across as the second "peak" of that intro if you will) is really bad. You can even hear the signal breaking up a bit. Give Wilder a lot of credit, it doesn't sound like he filtered or compromised the music, but he really managed to take the edge off the harmonica while leaving it intact. You hear it elsewhere on the disc, but that intro to "I Am a Lonesome Hobo" is the best place to hear it.

Re: the bass, I see what you mean by too heavy, but the level really fluctuates on the MFSL. There's a bunch of tracks (maybe most of the disc?) where it seems pretty much the same as the Sony disc, but on the opening title cut and the last cut "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," the bass definitely feels pumped up, and on "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" it does seems a bit much. It's pretty prominent on the Sony disc but it's at the right balance.

One other thing, the MFSL disc clearly runs slower when you switch back and forth, and I wonder if the slower playback speed may have also plumped up the bass cloud on the opening and closing tracks as well? Everything slides down a tiny bit in frequency, so it's just a theory.

Anyway, I generally prefer MFSL's discs, but in this case, it's a different. Long story short, Mark Wilder's 2010 Sony mono disc gets the nod for the mono mix.

 

I also found the MFSL mono JWH to be much slower in pitch than the 2010 Sony initially. But after comparing with every other masterings I have, I found that they were all at that same "wrong", slower pitch. The 2003 Sony stereo, the original Columbia, the MFSL stereo. And now they all sound out of tune compared with Wilder's 2010 mono. He definitely went all-in with those, and they all sound great, but I don't know if I like that he corrected the pitch on this one. It's now perfectly in tune when you play along, so that's great and all, but now I can't stand any other version because they all seem to drag.

 

I'd side with Wilder and Berkowitz as they used original reference pressings as a guide, and most mastering engineers don't go that extra mile. (It may have been easier for Wilder and Berkowitz since they were working for Sony.)

 

As I believe I noted before, it's possible that the speed of the tape didn't match the speed of the original LP. And that it's possible both are "correct", albeit in different ways.

 

I don't do LPs anymore, but it would be nice to know for sure. If someone with original pressings can chime in, please do so. I'm really curious to know the "correct", intended pitch of this album. On one side we have MoFi which allegedly stay true to the tapes, and on the other we have a corrected version of how it's "supposed" to sound, ie in tune.

 

This reminds me of Kind of Blue - the fact that the album was originally mastered at the wrong pitch (not an artistic choice, it was a malfunction with the mixing console) was widely known by jazz aficionados who tried to play along to the album, and it wasn't until the '90s that it was finally corrected when they went back to the multi-track tapes to create a new master.

I know some speculated that Dylan liked to mess with playback speed based on the bootlegs for the original all-New York session Blood on the Tracks, but when the engineers involved were asked, they said that was not the case and that the speed discrepancies heard on the "liberated" acetates were a mastering error.

So with that in mind, I would think whatever was the correct pitch "in life" is probably the one to go with.

 

A tangent and a minor point, but the issue was actually with the 3-track session tapes - those made on a specific machine, that is. The main 3-track machine ran slow, so the tapes made on that machine were too fast when played on other machines. It was later discovered that the backup 3-track machine ran at the correct speed, and those tapes (and modern remixes from them) have been used for the recent reissues.

 

I agree. And I really do like Wilder's work on the mono box. It was kind of a revelation for me to hear JWH at this speed, since all we've heard before was out of tune. I'm just surprised no one really noticed or talked about it for 8 years before Arne67 and I did. Honestly, I guess I'm just frustrated because up to that point the MoFis were pretty much all definitive for me, and now I have to keep the mono box just for this one!

 

Same here, I've been picking up MFSL's SACD's for this reason, skipping only the newly mixed stuff (though I made an exception with Blonde on Blonde - R.I.P, original stereo master, R.I.P.) I kind of prefer the artwork on the mono box set though as they're just like the original LP sleeves, and not rearranged or squeezed (see the Layla SACD) like MFSL's, so there's at least that.

 

This spurs another thought. It's worth keeping in mind in one's evaluations that, in life, Dylan's guitars were seldom perfectly in tune, and Berkowitz would seem to know this based on his citing of the harmonica instead as the instrument that "should be in pitch." But two things I know from my own personal experience with harmonicas: (1) they are often tuned slightly sharp to begin with, A442 in many cases rather than A440, and (2) they actually have a tendency to creep up sharper still, over time! (According to this, which I just found on a quick Google, it has something to do with the way the reeds are constructed.) An additional factor, wholly apart from any tape machine issues, that potentially muddies the waters further with respect to what's "correct"! Makes me wonder if Berkowitz and Wilder were aware of this fact as well, and took it into account, or not...

 

Glad to see that I'm not the only one who disliked the JWH disc. Sold by the end of 2017.

 

Seconded!

Anyone compare these?

 

I have them both but have not played them back to back. The mono MFSL sacd layer of Another Side was fine in my opinion and it is great to have these 7 albums in mono on sacd. The 2010 box was in my opinion superb with great packaging to add to great sound. I would be surprised if any one was disappointed in the MFSL mono AS sacd layer.
I know the album very well but for years all I had was a mid 70s CBS stereo UK version on vinyl. I then got a second hand mono but to have the album in mono in really great quality is wonderful.
I do think sometimes we are spoilt for choice these days.

 

I noticed my Dylan mono SACD’s are made in Austria but the Ry Cooder issues are USA. Can someone provide some insight?.

Are other titles also from Austria?. Thanks

 

Is there even hybrid SACD production capability in the US?

 

That's interesting.

I didn't think so, but maybe one came on line?

 

I have been through all of them now.

Five of them are winner...

Bob Dylan
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Another Side Of Bob Dylan
Highway 61 Revisited

Two of them are IMO inferior to the 2010 remasters...

Bringing It All Back Home (unnatural bloated bass)
John Wesley Harding (unmodulated shrieking harmonicas)

 

I agree with all of those, except HW61 and JWH, which I would swap.

 

I find the music on the 2010 Highway to be too buried behind Dylan's vocals. The more aggressive and full SACD helps to mitigate that a bit.

 

I spent an hour last night comparing the mofi mono vinyl versions to the mofi mono sacd versions for Times and John Wesley Harding.
My digital rig is pretty comparable to my analog rig.

I was very surprised at the differences. The sacd layer sounded good but not as warm as the vinyl on Times. Tonally they were similar, but the Dylan sssss’s that are so prevalent on the sacd were pretty much gone on vinyl. Soundstage is the same, the vinyl was a tad more balanced the the guitar felt slight bit warmer. It was the vocals that showed more of a difference.

JWH on the other hand was drastically different. I thought the SACd sounded good but the vinyl blew it away. Going back and forth made the sacd seem not even audiophile. The soundstage was much better. The vinyl was warm and in the room, the digital was shallow, bright and overly forward. I can not believe this title was so different since they are both from MoFI.

It makes me wonder what other vinyl editions drastically outclass the sacds.

I normally just get sacd when offered in both. I only bought these since were quite reduced on the MD website and thought what the heck.

 

Danny, Here are a few thoughts on your comparison. The first, is do you have an SPL meter so that you can be sure you matched levels to within 1 dB? I know this sounds picky, but in doing comparisons if my own I have found that unless levels are matched very closely you hear things that are not there (usually the louder one sounds better). Second, is a comment about mastering and format. I have a TASCAM hi-rez digital recorder that I use to make needle drops of my vinyl. I can make DSD copies with it which, of course, is the same digital format as used on SACD's. The TASCAM has an input gain control which I can use to match levels almost exactly (I use it mostly as an attenuator). I can tell you that when you make a DSD copy of the analog from a vinyl record and do a comparison to the vinyl it was made from it is almost impossible to tell the DSD from the vinyl. This tells me that if you have your levels set right then these differences you hear are in the mastering and not due to the digital format. I find this very interesting given that I assume the same master tape was used by MoFi to make both the SACD and the vinyl.