Just listened to my 1991 EMI Low with bonus tracks Some Are and All Saints. It sounds great and detailed, no listening fatigue. I also have the German RCA CD, ANCIANT box CD and original vinyl. The 91 EMI doesn’t sound lacking if anything it benefits from lack of bloated bass.
I’d probably agree that I prefer the base shy Ryko rather than bloated base ANCIANT cd. It still isn’t ideal.
Haha, thanks! It's not really a matter of headaches, though… procrastination is probably a better description Problem with doing a Low blind-test is the JPN one: if you include it as-is, it's easy to recognize it. If you fix it before including it, you're doing your subjective changes, and people will complain. If you include both an untouched and a fixed JPN, people will probably recognize it among the other options too… oh well. Maybe the best option is to include it as-is, but avoid picking samples where its balance problems are too obvious, so that people will focus on the other sonic differences. I really don't know… alright, it's a headache. Nice to see some evidence that some latter Ryko pressings did re-use the Au20 masters, by the way! (Oh, and I've changed my mind on TMWSTW, recently. I don't think I'd recommend the RCA WG master anymore, it really sounds like a poor tape. I used to prefer it because I'm not a big fan of the heavy sound of that album, and the WG makes it a bit duller, but the Parlophone and the RCA JPN are just way better transfers, and they're also closer to the original artistic intent for that album.)
In a Low blind test, you'd have to use the untouched PCD1-2030. I considered including my fixed version until it was pointed out that if I fixed it, I'd also have to "fix" the Rykos as well in the interest of fairness – which defeats the purpose of a blind test. And if I offered a "flat" and a "fixed" RCA, I'd also have to offer a "flat" and a "fixed" Ryko. And then at that point it would essentially be a confirmation bias test instead of a blind test. EDIT: I'll also add that I'm not 100% positive my silver Ryko with "80142" in the matrix is a clone of the Au20 – I just know it's not the same as my standard Ryko!
I recently did a thorough sort of my music collection and realised I own very little Bowie on CD. I decided to rectify this by purchasing a full set of Ryko/EMI (UK) CDs and they are gradually starting to arrive in the post. I decided to go with the Rykos because the series seems the most consistent and Jeff Rougvie's blog posts 'sold' me on them. It seems, from reading, that Ryko did their best to create technically excellent transfers from the original master tapes. Something RCA didn't do, and Parlophone/WMG can seemingly no longer do as a number of their recent remasters exhibit audible tape damage. I've been streaming some Bowie in anticipation of the Rykos arriving, and last night I played Hunky Dory (CDP 79 1843 2). I think this is the first time I've ever heard a Ryko Bowie. I was braced for it to sound unbearable but it sounded... fine. The sound was clear. Bass was present when it was on the recording, such as during the orchestral swells. Some of the dynamics were very punchy. There were moments when certain sections became overly trebly, but I put that down to a flaw in the recording. The sound was perhaps a little disjointed or unbalanced from song to song, it almost sounded like it needed 'more' mastering at times. However, overall, it was a very good listening experience and I felt as though I had heard what the master tape sounds like. Looking forward to seeing what turns up next!
Hey Robert, I greatly dislike the sound of the Ryko Bowie CDs, but I tolerate a couple (Hunky Dory being one). As we always seemed to enjoy similar audio quality, I'm sure in the end you will be prefer the RCA CDs, especially for anything post Diamond Dogs. If you can find the right RCA pressings, the transfers are more than fine (case in point Aladdin Sane, STS, Lodger which are the best digital versions).
Never understood all the bias towards RCA cds...my few cds from Ryko sound fantastic...BOWIE The Singles 1969-1993 feat. GH is my all time fav Bowie Compilation.
There's a trap to all this. If a release got a thumbs down, we start thinking of them as being terrible and not worth owning. This isn't really fair. Hell, for the bonus tracks alone the Ryko's are winners. I know you can get most of those tracks on various other releases now, but for the Ryko's they're right there and really add something.
Here I am reviving this thread again, although it's really a blessing that it's not closed at this point! (keeping it open is a smart move by the mods here... Ryko Bowie is an evergreen-tinted-jewel-case topic after all). It's the time of year where I typically listen to a lot of Bowie, and I've been spinning several of the Rykos in my CD player and hi-fi system ("Man Who Sold the World", "Low", "Station to Station"), and honestly they sound just as good to me as they ever have. Even with the low bottom end, these are warmly mixed, well-packaged, and all include substantive bonus tracks. Aside from maybe some of the unnecessary Berlin-era remixes, I actually look forward to these bonus tracks as a part of the entire experience. I say yay for Rykodisc Bowie and am glad to have collected the set. EDIT: "Station to Station" appears to be one of the more maligned titles in this reissue series, and even that has been a joy to listen to. What more can you ask for than giving you a well-mastered version of a timeless album?
I love the extra on the Ryko discs. But I think the low end balance generally tends to be reduced in favor of treble.
Random question, I have a couple Ryko Bowie’s that have a dark circle that runs around the edge of the data side. Are there any big differences with these and the normal ones, I don’t think I noticed any.
+1 I also like the packaging and the newly designed back covers, adapted for the CD age. Also the early S+V box set, promoting the series (although I couldn't afford it then, and only bought it second hand many years after the fact) The "Sound+Vision" reissue campaign was a winner, and it was so exciting then, buying the releases one by one, when they came out.
Still enjoying my Ryko journey! I've acquired some other masterings for research purposes. Compared to the Rykos, the RCA CDs sound like nth generation Dolbied tapes (at best, I would guess Master > 1:1 copy > EQ’d Prod Master). That bassy muffled wobbly sound that the RCAs have (and the Rykos don't have) is an audible lesson in provenance! Some are worse than others but they all lack fine top end detail (check out the song "Aladdin Sane", the CSR RCA is missing loads of top end detail in the intro). The Rykos are consistently clear sounding, but can be ever so slightly too trebly at times (e.g. the compressed piano and strings on Hunky Dory can get a bit overwhelming and should have been tamed). It almost sounds like the Rykos used a generic EQ template that works most of the time but occasionally becomes noticeably bright. It is interesting to compare the Ryko and 2010 versions of Station To Station, as the 2010 is purportedly a flat transfer of the original master. If we assume that the Ryko used the same source, we can hear the difference between the two. The two sound incredibly similar. The 2010 is ever so slightly warmer, and the Ryko is ever so slightly treblier. I think this difference is probably echoed across the Ryko masterings. Here are my listening notes so far. It's a work in progress and all IMO: The Rykos are not perfect, but I think they probably sound closer to what the master tapes sound like than the RCAs do.
The Ryko Man Who Sold The World cd was the first Bowie album I bought for myself- that's still the one that sounds "right" to me.
Commenting on sound needs a filled equipment profile as reference for others to see what you're listening on.
Lately I've been listening to my Bowie CD's even more than usual and I just have to shake my head when people say there is no bass to be found. My headphones are notoriously bass shy and still I can focus on what the bass does on most songs. George Murray is basically the lead player (with a bass guitar) on much of Lodger. The only two that stick out as unpleasant are some songs on Hunky Dory and ''Heroes'' can feel weak.
...any preference between the Ryko Bowie CDs and the Ryko Bowie LPs? Just curious...I recently picked up Ryko LPs of Hunky Dory and The Man Who Sold The World, mostly because I thought they looked so cool (with their OBIs and clear vinyl) when I was a kid, but couldn't afford them then...
I have never heard the RCA CDs but I assumed they sourced the LP masters for them. As for the Ryko CDs, I immediately noticed they leaned toward the high end when I began purchasing them. But since I always EQd music for my own sensibilities, that was sufficiently corrected. Only The Man Who Sold The World impressed me of the Ryko set because I always thought the original was bass heavy.
Same here. I was collecting Bowie on Ryko cassette tape (didn't succumb to CD until 1994!) but I was, and always will be, a vinyl person. Anyway, I didn't know Ryko was even issuing these albums on vinyl at the time, nor ever saw one, until one day (probably a year or two after the fact) I went to a used record store downtown and spotted a couple of those elusive Ryko vinyl editions. I can't remember what the prices were, but they were more than a 15 year old could handle, obviously (I think maybe $30 each). Once I got into CD I systematically worked on rounding up all my favorite artists. It was '95, I think, when I started to earnestly work on collecting all Bowie albums on CD. And it was in a nick of time, as the RYKOs went out of print not long after. I remember driving around cemeteries in the winter (doing genealogy research) and listening to "Low". 20 years later when I was an older man and had the cash to throw around (waste), I spent about a year tracking all the Ryko (and post-Ryko EMIs through "Lodger") down on eBay. And I love them. Maybe not my go to for sonics, but dammit if they aren't things of beauty. Especially those early titles when they cared enough to issue them as 2 LP sets. Just gorgeous. RYKO really raised the bar for reissues. I will always maintain a soft spot for Ryko. I get that warm fuzzy feeling when I see those old cassette tapes. I wish I had kept mine because now I miss them (not that I have a way to play them). But yeah...the sonics. One time I had a friend over and we cued up "Starman" and compared the RCA, the RYKO, the SACD... and we compared that drum fill at the beginning... and the lack of bottom on the Ryko was pretty obvious compared to the others. But hey, I still love 'em. You'll pry that Tech Unit from my cold dead hands.
I bought it when it first came out and always found it a bit crap and scratchy, but each to his own. I’ve no idea what they go for now, but it’s really nothing to covet, IMO. There are many more desirable Bowie collectibles to seek out.
