Burrito Deluxe

Sacd coming February 2020 from Intervention Records of The Flying Burrito Bros. Burrito Deluxe

 

That's good news.

 

I got an e-mail suggesting a pre-order.

Intervention Records is thrilled to re-announce The Flying Burrito Bros.' classic 1970 sophomore effort, Burrito Deluxe on hybrid CD/SACD (Cat# IR-SCD8/UPC: 707129301512). The anticipated on-sale date is late February 2020.

Burrito Deluxe CD/SACD (PRE-ORDER NOW!) – Intervention Records

 

And some Matthew Sweet titles from this label too??!??

 

chuffed !

 

Great news!

 

Good to hear that they are back and running. Truly a labor of love. I'll be buying them. Maybe we can get those Matthew Sweet release on SACD as well. I know it's wishing too much for Marshall Crenshaw's second album on SACD as well.

 

really happy to hear this.

 

Has anyone else hear this "remaster?"

Terribly pinched sound. Where did the frequencies go?

My old 16-bit/44.1 copy sounds much better.

What a disappointment.

Bill

 

@Spy Car , which "16-bit/44.1 copy" are you referring to?

There are a few CD versions listed here, but none say "US" release so I'm not sure if you're referring to one of the UK or Japanese CD editions:
The Flying Burrito Bros.* - Burrito Deluxe

 

That discogs site is quite useless now because of that cookie crap that oozes up from the bottom of the screen, causing what you're reading to go dim. And no I'm not answering any questions about any cookies. I wonder why they use cookies on that site anyway. Time for changes.

 

IRONY

 

New poster... and I hate to get off on the wrong foot here. I was intending to say some nice words about IR's hybrid SACD reissue of two of my favorite albums. Then Burrito Deluxe arrived and I'm now more interested in asking what the high praise here has been about. I'm totally baffled.

I, too, find the frequencies wanting. The Burritos have always had a rather bright sound so I wouldn't mind a little more emphasis on the low end, but this CD sounds murky and muffled, with no high end to speak of. (On my system, which is pretty much run-of-the-mill stuff... NAD separates, et cetera. And it's the standard Red Book layer I'm talking about.) Drums sound like cardboard boxes, Leon Russell's piano is dead-sounding, there's no rosin "scratch" on Berline's fiddle... The vocals are nice enough, but everything else apparently has to suffer to achieve that.

I've been A-B-ing the SACD with previous LP and CD reissues all morning, and what I think of as the Burritos "sound" just isn't there. For me, the trademark sound is the sweet, silvery, "sprung" tones (who was it that came up with that description?) of Sneaky Pete's steel. He had an instrument (and a touch) that sounded like no one else, whether he was with the Burritos or guesting on albums by the Ventures, Ronstadt or Zappa. You could tell in a second that's who you were hearing. That tonal quality is completely absent on this SACD. It might as well be a synthesized steel.

I know some people like bass-heavy remasters - and I'm no fan of the hot high-end we've been subjected to over recent years - but what's the appeal of this disc? Why the rave reviews?

Oh, and if they haven't yet, someone should mention the decision to open the disc with an obnoxious, manic radio ad (in Spanish). I can see that making me cringe every darned time I put this disc in the player. It could have gone at the end, as a bonus track maybe, but this is like tacking a carnival barker's spiel onto the opening of Sgt. Pepper ("to add a little fun"). Good grief. Is no one else bothered by this?

Sorry for the lengthy gripe. Hope to do better next time!

 

Your post got me to pull out my copy and listen. I agree that the highs are muted, creating a muffled sound on top. I still prefer this to the original Edsel CD, though.

I am surprised by the sound of this SACD though, for Kevin Gray is not known for mastering in this way.

 

You’re obviously not referring to the Intervention remaster because it’s fantastic. BTW fill out your equipment profile

 

Edsel's Gilded Palace, as I recall, was pretty awful so I never got their Burrito Deluxe. Early Japanese pressings seem to have been transferred fairly straight, and are very listenable with just a slight bass boost. (I ought to compare mine with the Hot Burritos! Anthology from 2000 - that was kind of a dangerous period for CD "improvements". But now I'm curious.)

I tried to engage Shane Buettner about the murky highs, btw. He seemed to be claiming that this was the way the tapes sounded, and that I'd never really heard Sneaky Pete properly - the way he "really" sounds. Which he has. I ought to throw out fifty years of listening and bask in the Truth now. Hmmm.

Wish I knew whether Gilded Palace was mastered the same way as Burrito Deluxe. That was the album that turned me on to country music (and I've never been the same since). I've never been entirely happy with the sound, but I just returned the copy I'd ordered from Acoustic Sounds unopened. I'm starting to think that if "heroic measures" are needed to rescue a recording, the results are never going to be satisfying. Enjoy what you've got!

 

Sorry! I appear to have messed up the chronological continuity here. My browser didn't seem to be doing the "reply" formatting right, but it was okay once posted.

 

The IR SACD for Gilded Palace came out a lot better than their Burrito Deluxe SACD. I definitely recommend getting it.

 

Get a SACD player

 

Is that it? It sounds so muddy because it's the Red Book layer?

 

It doesn’t sound muddy at all, but get a SACD player.

 

Have you directly A-B'ed it with a decent earlier copy of the album? You might be surprised.

Sorry... no interest in SACD at this point. I firmly believe that audiophile sound has much more to do with the quality of the source used and the person doing the transfer than it does to the technology.

The point of experimenting with these hybrid SACD discs is that I'm hoping the requirements of the high-quality SACD transfer will result in using a good (a) source, and (b) remastering pro. I assume that will pay dividends in the sound of the Red Book layer.

 

No. I have a SACD player and it sounds muffled. Its still the best mastering available, but not great sound.

 

I give up

 

Sorry, what were you trying to accomplish? LOL

I do recommend trying to hear an earlier release of BD, though.

I spent a while restoring 78s for a blues singer who was putting together an anthology. He couldn't stand to hear any hiss or crackle... that high end stuff was actually physically painful to him. It drove me crazy to put the carefully declicked (manually!) songs through a filter at the end, chopping off all the harmonics and ambience. So much of the original timbres were lost... the airiness of a flute, the crunch of the trombone section... We argued about it a lot.

His argument was that that's the way he'd heard the songs back in the Fifties, on compilations by Folkways, RBF, OJL, et al, and that they would sound fine to people - AS LONG AS YOU DIDN'T GIVE THEM THE UNFILTERED VERSIONS TO COMPARE THEM TO.

He was absolutely right. Once I forgot about the sound of the unfiltered versions and just start listening to the filtered ones in the context of the compilation, they were great. I forgot what had been lost... the memory doesn't stick around long

It still bothers me, though. And I kept the originals around for my own listening pleasure.