I have three copies: US pressing mastered by SR, UK "blue vinyl" copy and Japanese copy from King Records (JET labels). It looks exactly like this one: Electric Light Orchestra - Out Of The Blue , except some matrix numbers are different. Sounds absolutely phenomenal, considerably better than US and UK blue vinyl.
Yes, I'm aware, he had asked how you can tell if it's MoV so I gave some very generic information about identifying pressings. MoV sometimes re-uses stampers, sometimes they cut from digital file, etc. I don't believe they do any in house remastering. I think the quality of their physical records is pretty good, however, I'm pretty sure they've also been known to press from some pretty bad sources in some cases, but it's not their fault, they pretty much press what's been given to them, at least from what I've seen/read/heard. My MoV Dirt by Alice in Chains is petty good, not mind blowing but it was clearly a digital file mastered for vinyl. And that's what makes the biggest difference from what I can tell is that the mastering needs to be intended for vinyl. But it's not the best mastering, or maybe it's that the mix doesn't quite translate well for analog, either way, it sounds different from the CD to me, but I wouldn't say better or worse. But this is also why I wouldn't buy most Sony stuff from MoV and, yeah, AIC is Sony but I was told specifically that it was worth it, because Sony did their massive digital archive project in the 90s that they use for most of this stuff and most of those were ****.
I just bought on Amazon for $15, "All Over The World: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra. It sounds pretty good. Maybe not audophile quality but definitely worth $15. Plus it was flat and quiet. It's 150 gram vinyl but better than a lot of the 180 gram vinyl I own
I've heard from some others that it's very bright, which is fairly typical of Japanese mastered music in general. I've heard a few that did sound significantly better than US or UK copies, but that's usually in somewhat dark and muddy sounding recordings in the first place so the extra brightness and crispness clarifies where others sound brittle to me. Now all that with a grain of salt because I have some hearing loss in lower frequencies from some damage to my ears when I was very young. So I tend to favor slightly bassier music, pressings, and systems to compensate... Which is also kind of funny because that damage also makes it harder for me to distinguish high quality bass from low quality bass. Like I can hear some difference between a super ****ty sub and a high end sub, but going from mid range to high end or **** to mid range, it becomes a lot harder for me to distinguish... Then again, the bass also needs to be fairly clear, and can't be super muddy or it muddies up the whole song for me. So... I guess all that rambling is to say that the Ricker US cut to me isn't overly bright, the bass is good and tight, and then the overall sound is just damn good. So maybe I'll track down one of those Japanese pressings but I can't imagine that to me it'd be better. But I also mention this so the other poster knows why I might not be as good of a resource as you are. You also probably have better gear than I do. Nice. I'm torn as to whether I want to pick it up or not. I have had some questionable packaging from Amazon with vinyl. But also I have a decent bit of their stuff, though it would probably be nice to listen to a lot of their hits without having to change records... Then again it is missing so many obvious songs (for ex. 'Do Ya', 'Can't get it out of My Head', '10358 Overture') and has some real head scratches included (Xanadu?, and I mean, I like Ma-Ma-Belle and Horace Wimp, but compared with the ones left out? Nah... Same with Wild West Hero...)
Obviously. I was thinking about buying online and you can see a long list of OOTB yet no idea what one is MOV.
The sound is more important, than the weight. It's all clever marketing. The weight makes no difference, it the quality of the grooves that matter.
I agree, the swirling effect of the strings is unique to the WB as far as I can hear. The remasters loose all that.
If you go to the MOV site, it explains everything, they master from what they are given, it seems. It all depends how good the Hi Res, digital file is. Some are good digital transfers, while others are not so good. It wasn't until the late 80s or early 90s, that they really had the knowledge to do what they do transferring to digital, digging through archives, using correct tapes and EQ. They all had to relearn the whole engineering and recording process, because all those engineers came from the era of White coats and clipboards, where analogue/analog was king. The old school has now been replaced by computers and gadgets, that remove the human touch and 12 year old mixers in their garage.
Buy from the Discogs marketplace. They're listed by "release" which for vinyl is the pressing and they'll have the matrices for that pressing on each one. Look under the bar codes and other identifiers section to see the matrices. But the label will be at the top with all the major information, so it will say Music on Vinyl there if it's MoV. This is the link to the MoV version: Electric Light Orchestra - Out Of The Blue On that page there is a link to buy or sell, that will take you to the marketplace and will have listings for that release if there are any sellers selling it. Each seller will have different policies for buying and shipping. You can filter and sort through different criteria...
BTW, I took screenshots of a good path to get to it, you can generally do something similar for most things, it's on this google photos album... I highlighted where I clicked. Not sure if it's all in order, but I think it is. https://photos.app.goo.gl/iCMSKfGWHzgxdDe19 Actually, yes, they're in the right order, and if you click on the first image you can over your mouse over and see a little button at the bottom right that will open up "activities" on it, and I annotated each picture with instructions. Note, this is how you do it on their website in a browser, their mobile website and their mobile app are a bit different. But if you play around with it a bit, you'll figure it out. You can also add them to your watch list if you don't want to buy it right now or are looking for a better deal or better quality version, and you can set up alerts through their site. So far I have not had a bad experience buying on Discogs and I use it to catalog my entire collection, though, right now I'm a bit behind.
Added to my wantlist btw, once I get at least one passable copy of their entire discography, I'll look into buying alternate versions, Thanks for the tip. I DO plan on buying a copy of it.
Oh yes, the packaging from Amazon was horrendous. They sent it in a bubble mailer. And yeah ELO had a lot of hits . But for the price it was definitely worth it.
Here's the Ricker cut that I have, and it sounds phenomenal. Probably better than the MoV. Electric Light Orchestra - Out Of The Blue (Vinyl, US, 1977) For Sale | Discogs
I managed to find a brand new copy of The Move 'Lookin' On' MOV Vinyl, it sounds great very clean surface. If all vinyl was this good, I'd be very happy.
It does. Trouble is finding a quiet player. I went through quite a few over the decades to find a good one
Then I got very lucky. I mean, I consider myself lucky anyways because I got it in 2005 before I knew jack about vinyl, at antique mall, for 5 bucks.
I’m really confused about the Sony reissues. I decided to take a risk on the current OOTB reissue on Amazon as it was only £15 and it arrived and has MOV in the deadwax, which I understand is a decent reissue. So which are the Sony reissues to avoid that are compressed? I also picked up a clean, used Discovery today for £2.50 and it sounds fantastic!
Yep all OOTB's should use the old MOV mastering/stampers Sony, avoid FTM, Discovery and Time. The rest- Eldorado/A New World Record use MOV. These were the only one's done in the that campaign. a 40th of No Answer was done and ELO 2. No clue on those, No Answer probably uses Mew's awful mastering. - I'm not risking those
You won't find many for sale anywhere now, long gone. All Sony Music, unless it states MOV on Amazon. I recently bought the MOV 'Looking On' vinyl. It is pristine and you need to turn it up. I doubt if we'll get much better in the future, if they intend to use Hi Res, to cut the vinyl. The EU mastering plant isn't great, that's probably where the problem lies regardless of what the source is.
Thanks. Be nice to know who actually mastered the audio. Like I said earlier, Mews digital was probably used for No Answer.
