Miles Davis - In a Silent Way on CD Poll: Blind Listening Test

This'll be a nice change of pace after mostly just Genesis. I chose In a Silent Way because it's one of my favorite albums of all time and I'm rather familiar with it. Kind of Blue crossed my mind too, but the issue here is that there are several different remixes on CD and only one mastering of the original mix. It probably wouldn't work unless I only used the 1997 remix, which I know has at least 3 different masterings. As for whether there'll be more Miles polls, I'm not sure at the moment. I just got the Complete Columbia Albums box last month, and going through it has been the first time I've heard most of this stuff. I'll see if there's anything else in there that'd be ideal for a thread someday.

The samples for Moving Pictures are already on Dropbox, but I'm going to wait for a few days before starting the poll.

Each sample contains 5 different masterings of a track played in consecutive order (ie - A, B, C, etc.). ReplayGain has been applied through Audacity so that each version of the song is at the same relative volume.

Rules and notes:

• ***In order to avoid biased votes, please do not guess or speculate which mastering a sample uses.

• If you intend to vote, it may be better to read other people's posts after you have listened to the samples and voted, in order to escape confirmation bias.
• It's recommended that you listen to the samples and discuss what you heard. Discussion of compression (without referring to DR values), EQ, and different tape speeds is fair game.
• Comments based on visual inspection of waveforms, spectral plots, and DR values might condition the poll results while the poll is open. I strongly urge you to avoid talking about these things until the poll has closed.
• You can't view the results before you vote.
• Votes are publicly displayed.
• If you want to change your choice, you can do so as much as you please until the poll's expiration.
• This is entirely optional, but I'd appreciate if you could point out if you're listening on speakers or through headphones. If you don't, then that's totally fine. It does help a bit though.

SAMPLES

• Shhh
• Peaceful
• In a Silent Way
• It's About That Time

If you want, feel free to check out my previous blind listening polls:

• The Cars - The Cars
• The Cars - Heartbeat City
• Genesis - Trespass
• Genesis - Nursery Cryme
• Genesis - Foxtrot
• Genesis - Selling England by the Pound
• Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
• Genesis - A Trick of the Tail
• Genesis - Wind & Wuthering
• Genesis - ...And Then There Were Three...
• Genesis - Duke
• Genesis - Abacab
• King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King
• The Police - Reggatta de Blanc
• Rush - 2112
• Rush - Permanent Waves
• Rush - Signals
• Rush - Grace Under Pressure
• Yes - The Yes Album
• Yes - Fragile
• Yes - Close to the Edge
• Yes - 90125

You have until Feb. 7 to vote.
Have fun!

 

Wow, interesting. B is way too dark: the cymbals don't sizzle, they just splat -- on the third cut, Miles sounds like he's playing underneath a blanket. E is a little too hyped-up, A is a tad cold and distant, with C and D being quite close to the sweet spot — but D definitely gets a nod for having just a little bit more clarity and presence. That's my top choice!

 

Using Meze 99 Classics through foobar2000 again. I've got to admit that it was very difficult to hear any differences on Shhh/Peaceful, with only B being identifiable due to slightly less definition to the cymbals. In a Silent Way/It's About That Time did a somewhat better job of showcasing the masterings' qualities. As such, this comparison is mainly from that track.

A - Balanced, good imaging and transfer. Best midrange.

B - Weird, muffled and thin at the same time. The air has been sucked out of it. I also noticed that IASW runs a tiny bit slower (both in speed and pitch) than the other masterings. Oddly, Shhh/Peaceful sounds fine here, but with a little less detail on the cymbals as I noted earlier.

C - Less bass, but still very balanced and crankable. I could hear more tape hiss on It's About That Time than the others, which perhaps suggests a copy tape. I know all versions (save for one) are known to be hissy, but still.

D - Maybe a tad bright, but bearable.

E - Deepest bass. Actually, I think this one's my favorite EQ-wise, but it's slightly compressed as well. Thankfully, it's far from a loudness war victim.

For now, A's my choice I guess, but only by a small margin. Really, all of these are perfectly acceptable aside from B, but even that one's okay on the first song. Will need to use my Sennheiser HD599s next time.
Note: A and D both have inverted phase.

 

This thread inspired me to pull out my Columbia/Legacy 180gram reissue from 2016 and give it another spin. Terrific music, top to bottom

 

My favorite Miles Davis album. I think D is the winner for me as the drums sound a bit better to my ears. Also liked A, but maybe the trumpet is a bit to bright on that one. B was one I didn't like much at all.

 

A was my favourite.

 

I liked A the best.

D was also good.

But B... what the hell.... ?

 

I voted for A. Using the title song as an example, the trumpet sounds most natural to me on this sample. I did hear a crackle of distortion on a few of the samples (towards the end), not sure what that’s about?

I’m simply listening on an iPad Pro, if I get a chance I’lll download and listen on a better system and possibly revise my vote.

 

Listening on my JBL 305P Mk II monitors with LSR 310S sub. D/A conversion by a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd gen).

• A is the best balanced overall, with good clarity. I have no complaints about it.
• B seems to have been EQ'd by someone who thought that any detectable tape hiss on a "perfect sound forever" CD was completely unacceptable, so he EQ'd out the treble. "In a Silent Way" has essentially no sound above about 8 kHz, and "It's About That Time" makes it to about 12 kHz but not much beyond that. The other two tracks aren't as bad, but still, this is awful; you completely lose any sense of the room they're playing in. If this were a Capitol album, I would suspect that Bob Norberg mastered this one, but no, this was on Columbia. Maybe it was the same guy who did the original CD mastering of Blue Öyster Cult's debut album? That one sounded the same way.
• C has a sort of high-generation-tape or bad-transfer quality about it. There's a certain lack of clarity.
• D isn't pretty good, but there's an EQ bump around 4 kHz that makes everything sound more piercing than necessary.
• E has an unnatural EQ bump in the 10-15 kHz range that I find irritating.

My ranking: A > D > E >>> C >> B.

Actually, I suspect that A and D come from the same tape transfer; EQ seems to be the only notable difference between them.

I used to own the original Columbia CD of this album; now I have the 2002 remaster. I think I can guess which ones those are.

I see that there are four different HD downloads of In a Silent Way on HDtracks, but I guess you didn't include any of those. I have no idea if they're all the same or not (I haven't even looked at the copyright dates).

 

Thank you very much for this thread!!!

 

I hate it when I notice a bad typo when it's too late to edit it. I originally wrote "D isn't bad", then meant to change it to "D is pretty good", but failed to change "isn't" to "is"... (sigh)

 

I’m gonna go with A overall. I found B to be the outlier…almost sounds like a different mix on some samples.

Via iPhone SE, stock headphone adapter and Grado SR60i.

Definitely prefer the warmth of my 70s vinyl for this one, but might think differently through a better DAC. I don’t own this title in a digital format.

 

I think I read somewhere that the Columbia Masterpieces CD is a remix. I'm not sure though, as I've never heard it.

 

Interesting. Nothing in the samples sounded like a different mix — B is the most radically different, in terms of the sucky treble, but it's still the same mix

It's there on the original too, from what I understand. This is an idiosyncratic recording... but I find those wrinkles part of the charm and mystery of it

 

Yeah- the soundstage on B just sounds different on a few tracks…but again, listening through headphones, so any difference in the perceived stereo image is accentuated.

 

A, D - no difference between A and D audible for me, most natural and full sound
B - by far the worst of the samples, the top end seems to be filtered out. Every blind listening poll seems to have its joke candidate where something went terribly wrong.
C - compared to A and D, a bit of a pronounced mid-range which is unneccesary
E - slightly harder sounding than A and D, but still in the good league

Since my favorite samples A and D are indistinguishable for me, I decided to vote for the one that had fewer votes (D).

 

IASW has never been remixed, at least in stereo (a multi-channel mix was made for the SACD reissue). It’s one of the only Miles albums from that era that hasn’t been.

 

I guess the EQ is funky enough on B that it’s messing with the soundstage through headphones…

 

Using my Senn. HD599s and foobar, A, C, and D practically sounded the same to me (although all of them were good). B is the only one that's truly an outlier thanks to its filtering. E had somewhat deeper low bass, but greatly resembled the others aside from that. Guess I'll have to hear these on a better setup or try again on foobar with different headphones.

Still going with A by the way, but I can see myself picking D or E too.

 

Yep- A,C, and D out front with B in a distant 4th place.

 

I wonder why that is. Too much work to recreate Macero's edits, maybe?

I don't know what the reason was for remixing Miles' albums, but I know some other albums have been remixed (or more accurately, the original mix was re-created as closely as possible) to correct purely technical problems with the original mix, usually caused by a problem with the tape machine that recorded the original mix. This was the case, for example, with Duke Ellington's Far East Suite, which was remixed in the '90s by Orrin Keepnews. His notes to the remix edition are very informative about what the issue was and how they went about re-creating the original mix from the multi-tracks.

 

Well they remixed Bitches Brew which certainly had to be harder than In a Silent Way. Surprised they never remixed In a Silent Way in stereo since they had that opportunity when they did the 5.1 mix on the SACD

 

I don’t know. Macero’s edits on Bitches Brew seem more complex to me and that one was remixed, so it’s a little odd that IASW was exempted from the remixing that was done to most of the Davis catalog.

Most of the Miles remixes seem to have been done purely for aesthetic reasons as opposed to missing masters, etc. Granted, since most were 4-track recordings, the remixes aren’t radically different from the original stereo mixes, but still - it was an odd decision.

 

I'd read somewhere on this forum that IASW has been remixed in stereo for the Complete In A Silent Way Sessions box.

 

It wasn’t. The two tracks were re-edited but are in the same mixes as the original.