I was pondering this comment a bit on my way into work… Wouldn't the opposite be true if that were the case? Wouldn’t they have jacked up the top-end instead if they specifically wanted it to sound "good" to older ears?
Miles Davis - master of the muted trumpet and the delicate melodic line, and inventor of "cool jazz" - is not typically known as delicate or refined? News to me. And older folks' hearing is typically first diminished in the upper registers, which would allow them to hear the organic and natural sounding bass on this Mofi pressing without impediment. I'm in my 40s, my hearing is just fine; and after two listens, I'm pretty sure this is the best, most full-range and most life-like pressing of Kind of Blue I've ever heard.
As the opinions seem to have been patched in from Bizarro World, I don't recommend pondering it too long.
This is a stupid comment, which confirms my suspicion that you were trolling in the earlier post. Welcome to ignore.
Yeah, and it's not meant to be impertinent. Fwiw, I have some of the MoFi series and like it a lot. But when we're evaluating a remaster of a 1997 remix of a 1959 recording, I'm not sure what "life-like" has to do with it. Seems more like a matter of evaluating what MoFi did as a treatment, an interpretation if you will, of the remix, with a result that may or may not be to one's taste compared to other versions of the same remix.
Welcome to SH.TV, where we can't seem to disagree on opinions regarding sound quality without attacking the equipment or hearing ability of the other. When we do disagree, let's please try to do it without becoming disagreeable. The forum will be a much more pleasant read that way. Thread-relevant content: my KOB has shipped from Soundstagedirect. Looking forward to hearing it, and comparing it to my Classic 33. I may just keep that opinion to myself.
Well, you gotta admit that your remark was a bit uncalled for. What ifyouever meant to say (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the MFSL sounds the most lifelike of all versions (he's got or knows of). Why wouldn't he be in the position to make such a statement? Who, apart a very selected number of persons in the world, has ever had the chance to listen to the original master tape? And who says the master tape sounds more life-like than a lovely mastered version which tries to compensate for deficiencies in ghe recording process?
Even if someone has not listened to the master tape, they likely have heard someone play the trumpet, bass, drums, piano, and tenor sax live. I think that's a decent touchstone for whether a recording of those instruments sounds life-like.
Well, that's my point, I think. There's a bird outside my office right now, and it sounds pretty life-like. But in evaluating the ump-teen versions of KofB, can we even make such a judgment? If I had ever heard Coltrane in an acoustic environment I was familiar with, I might have some basis to make judgments about whether he sounds life-like on a particular recording-- otherwise….
True. I heard an ensemble last week featuring Jason Palmer, among others, and though Jason has more of a Freddie approach or sonority, he was always right on top of the ensemble, even at low volume. Pretty tough for trumpet players to sound delicate, and I don't think that was an effect Miles was after. But it's all a matter of taste, etc.
The implication in the stupid question was that, if one is not old enough to have heard Miles Davis, specifically, play trumpet, one is disqualified to make a comment on whether a piece of media conveys music in a "life-like" fashion. I feel comfortable characterizing that as a) stupid commentary, and b) trolling. My sense is that there's a certain envy from some posters who don't have the gear to discern all the nuances in pressings like this new Kind of Blue Mofi 45. Speaking only for myself, I find that a rather odd way of looking at things. Before I owned higher end gear, I made it my ambition to eventually get the kind of system that, as a music lover, would get me closest to the music I love best. It never occurred to me to look for ways to insult those who already had what I aspired to and wanted.
Yes, but that's precisely why I never cared for the term "life-like." I've spent years in jazz clubs, listening to all kinds of jazz. If "life-like" were a standard, then most studio-albums should be dismissed since the conditions and settings are "artificial" compared to the scenarios under which most of us have ever heard a trumpet or a live jazz band.
No, it's more about, what's the basis of "life-like"? Because even if one had heard Miles or any of the others on the record, it's debatable whether even that would form a basis for judging the new record, especially compared to other versions.
Or, you know, having heard dozens of versions of KOB the preference for MOFI is a matter of taste and not how much money you spent on your gear.
I don't disagree, but I'm not the one using the term life-like to describe something I've heard, and even if I were, I now think we're parsing it a bit too finely. There should be a little poetry to the language used to describe a subjective listening experience. I think most reasonable readers will understand what is meant by life-like, without the need for a disclaimer that no studio album can truly sound live because of the artificiality of recorded conditions.
1) I never said that the descriptor "life-like" was the ne plus ultra with regard to recorded media, but that this particular pressing sounds the most life-like *to me* of the pressings I own and have heard. This is a characteristic on certain pressings I really like, now including this one. 2) Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but there has been a long, nuanced debate on the topic of the Music Matters Blue Notes - which reveal more of what's on the master tapes, and are thus arguably more life-like - versus the original Van Gelders, the characteristics of which are altered from the master tape by compression and the like. Depending on the example, I personally can see merits to both presentations. I also think it's far more useful and interesting to have reasonable discussions about these sorts of differences rather than lying in wait, making potshots. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.
I don't mean to interrupt (hehehehehe) but for me the term "life like" when describing an audio/musical reproduction experience has always meant something in the lines of "this presentation tricked my senses in a way that makes me feel like I'm listening to a real event and not reproducing a recording". So, this is not to mean that it has the timbre or tonal accuracy or dynamics of the "reality" of that specific performance and musician, what it means is that it is presented in such way that it causes an illusion of a life like event. Any event... not that particular serial number instrument, not that musician on that day, not that studio... just a well presented illusion that we can feel and perceive as life like. If I go to a concert and then buy the recording of that concert, it will many times sound completely different when played back at home, I mean really much different in many aspects. However, as different as it is, it can sound "life like", not because it sound like the concert I attended, but because it conveys the recording of that concert in a way that is life like, that I can perceive as a real event. Being "life like" is not to be the same as real life as it happened. Life like, as I understand it, is to be like reality, to provide an experience that approaches life (as in a real event). In that sense, I'm perfectly ok with the term "life like" and I think it's actually very useful to describe how a record is recorded, mixed and mastered.
