Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon - Best sounding CD (updated)

Sure, anytime. Long story:

Short story:

The Harvest 1984 CD is still my favorite. Even more now than ever. My CD-player is slowly failing, so I could only do fair comparisons on my PC in the last time. Which was hard because of pre-emphasis. Two days ago I ran the output of another CD-player through a new, very decent interface which, for strange reasons, made the best de-emphasized version on PC. Forget the comment in the last post about a treble boost, not necessary. It's truly incredible. Slightly limited frequency scope, but inside of it, everything is in perfect balance. All the way through. Super relaxing, but at times, super powerful. It totally surrounds you.

The Sax Remaster (20th Anniversary etc) is the best 'out of the box', in that it doesn't need de-emphasis and therefore works for every situation at once. Modern frequency scope, faithful dynamics. Pretty much flawless.

The MFSL has such a superior quality of sound fidelity (well digitized tapes), if I find a good EQ-curve to make it more enjoyable for me it might be a very strong contender.

EMI (revision 0, also known as TO-Black Triangle etc) and SACD-SACD-layer are yet to come.

 

On the poll that I see, Toshiba/EMI CP 35-3017 Black Triangle holds the number one spot,
so when you say that "the latest remaster" has the most votes but no explanations which remaster are you referring to ? The 2016 one ?
What's the "final verdict" here ? Is the 35-3017 version not "the best" then ?

I know it's subjective but still...
I'm impressed how long this thread has kept on going unfortunately I don't have time to read through it all at the moment so I can't come to the conclusion which release is superior.
Hopefully someone is still active here and can answer

Cheers fellow Pink Floyd lovers and audiophiles !

 

The vote total above is a bit misleading for the following reasons:
1. First, you need to add the total votes for the first and third on the list because black triangle and Harvest black face without a "U" or "AR" in the matrix are the same and black triangle and Harvest black face with a "U" or "AR" in the matrix are the same.
2. BUT, the votes of those who voted for the black triangle disc or Harvest black face disc that contains a "U" or "AR" in the matrix need to be deducted from the total votes, since those discs were made from EMI mastering.

 

I see.
So is the poll correct then? 35-3017 is the winner not the 2011 remaster?
And what about the 2016 remaster?

 

It might be the winner, since it got combined 30%, but like princesskiki said, there are EMI-masterings among these discs which sound very very different.

2016 is Blu-Ray, right? Isn't it the same as the 2011 (stereo) and the SACD (5.1)?

 

I'm at fault here, there isn't any 2016 remasters, I was referring to the 2016 vinyl releases that they did so I assumed they remastered the records in 2016 aswell but they didn't, I guess they're still the 2011(2014?) versions...

 

2016 Pink Floyd Records discs = 2011 Discovery remaster. They are the same digitally speaking. I believe the 2011 Immersion Box had a Blu-ray that had stereo, quad and 5.1 mixes all in 24/96 PCM. Not sure if the 5.1 is the same as the 2003 SACD DSD layer. All very confusing. I found the 2011 to be pretty well balanced and at a reasonable volume. For headphone listening, I honestly like the MFSL. The only reason I tell people not to go for that one first is because of how expensive it is. You can often find the old Japan Harvest CDs cheaper.

 

Checked the description for the Immersion Box (Blu Ray 2011) again (not gonna buy it anytime soon). The 5.1 mix is definitely the 2003 one, so the same as SACD.

 

Anyone detect differences between the BD & SACD 5.1 mixes?

 

According to the Blu-Ray's description, the 5.1 on that is the 2003 version. So there shouldn't be differences, only possibly by level shift. And of course there might be tiny differences because of the conversion to over-the-top "High-Rez" vs. conversion to magical DSD. Depends on how they stored it in the first place.

Thing is, unless somebody has both versions on the same device (e.g. on the PC, which requires DSD conversion for the SACD first), a direct comparison is not that easy.

 

??

Japan CP-35. 206 votes

2011 remaster. 250 votes

Do all Harvest blackface use the same mastering as the black triangle?

My Japan for US does. It’s a CP-35 also. Why aren’t ALL pressings of the same mastering listed as one option?
Very confuzzling.

 

Two Harvest Blacklabel releases have the "Grail"-Mastering, a third one uses the EMI-mastering (AR in the Matrix). Some Black triangles use the EMI as well. This led to the beginning of this thread being full of confusion, since people thought the Black Triangle mastering was even older than the Harvest Blackface one and so much cleaner, and very bright. They just had BTs with EMI.

And yeah, the poll doesn't make sense for the most part. To list all pressings of the various mastering would have been tiresome as well, since you must go with Matrix-information. Also, knowledge of the various releases was still growing after the poll was created.

Do we need yet another, updated again poll?

 

Not as tiresome as dealing with all of this mixed up confusion.
That the black triangle can be younger than the blackface is new to me.

What is the point of listing one blackface even though there are two that are totally different from each other?

 

Since the OP hasn't shown face in 8 years, we'll probably never know. More than likely had no idea at the get go...
I mean I didn't realize I had 'The Grail' mastering on my US till a few years ago. (I've had it for about ten years now) I just know I enjoyed it

 

I only joined this thread some weeks ago, with a dazzling amount of confusion. It seems that at the time of creation, not all releases were that known to everybody (the OP didn't know, for example, about different Black Triangles). There were also still people declaring the two MFSL-releases different.

It's all quite mashed together with the different releases. Vernons Website (pinkfloydarchives) has helped a lot, as did princesskiki's and other people's effort to clear things up.

 

It’s time to put this boring thread to bed.
Time to start a new one now that we have better information.

 

The first U.K. Harvest issue is from 1984, the Black Triangle design in Japan was kept until 1986, at least.

This might be good for a new and better poll. For the sake of discussion it'd probably be pretty redundant, since in this thread here many people already debated ad nauseam (me included).

 

Other questions for sake of clarity:

Does somebody have both the EMI-mastering and the EMI Revision 1, which is not yet the Sax-remaster? I asked this already; consensus was that it's just a Level shifted Version of the first EMI, but some Tracks are shifted differently and there might still be some EQ-adjustment, since the first EMI is VERY bright.

I'll check it out myself very soon, but can someone comment on my assumption that the SACD-SACD is different in several aspects to the SACD-CD-layer, more than just Peak values?

 

I agree. Thread should be locked, new one started using a compiled list of the available versions out there. Perhaps we could get Vernon to create the thread, many of the threads I've read here state that he is the resident expert on this topic.

 

I have written that the poll options are non-sensical in post #21 in this thread.

 

87.8 / 94.7 / 100 / 97.2 / 100 / 99.1 / 100 / 96.1 / 100 VS 83.8 / 90.4 / 95.5 / 92.8 / 95.5 / 94.6 / 95.5 / 91.7 / 95.5

All tracks were shifted by the same -0.4 dB and no EQ adjustment was done.

I ran a null test. Quantization errors caused by calculations for the 16 bit level shift and/or dither resulted in a difference mix with an RMS of around -94 dB, peaking around -85 dB.

Good luck discerning between the two.

 

No doubt a night and day difference.

 

Ok, overlooked the thing with the Null Test. Seems reasonable enough ^^

Yes, it was clear from the start that it was nonsensical. The first pages also clearly showed that not everyone is on the same page, not only the OP.

 

I'm gonna ask my question here. Recently on Amazon Marketplace I ordered among some other cd's a secondhand copy of DSTOM. It was really cheap. But on the Pink Floyd Archives site and here I could not find the edition I have. From the looks of it, it seems like a Sony (U.S.) mastering.

Spine: Capitol CDP 7 46001 2
Barcode: 0 7777-46001-2
Back cover: CDP 7 46001 2 DIDX 226
Matrix: but when looking for matrix it only shows 46001. I can't discern anything else there.
Booklet: everything seems the same as e.g. this release. But the pages with the band photos aren't there! Also the page with only the pyramids (no text) on it and the page with info about the compact disc are missing.

Just ripped it and these are the EAC peak levels: 76.9 % / 81.7 % / 98.2 % / 83.3 % / 89.2 % / 86.9 % / 90.5 % / 82.2 % / 88.5 %. I can't seem to find these values. Track 4 gave errors when ripping. But all the others were accurately ripped.

Picture of the front of the disc: https://i.imgur.com/SrtyYgY.jpg
Back of the disc: https://i.imgur.com/ApLMzak.jpg

Is this a fake I bought?

 

I can’t tell you if it’s a fake, but it is kind of weird. Given the DIDX number, I would think its a Sony DADC pressing. But the matrix area of your disc looks more like a Polygram, PDO or MPO pressing. Or maybe an EMI Swindon one…