I have seen it at that price. I think I paid around $25 for mine, and I don't regret it; it sounded better than the #3 I had.
I'm with you on that. It's not that 3 is totally awful - I just like 7 better. (Especially for the $4 I paid for it - but now I'm just showing off. ) Mastering 6 looks like the stealth mastering here. It appears to be very close to 7. Unfortunately, I don't have #6 to compare against, but @synchronizer if you find that one at a decent price, it might be a good one to have in your collection. Cheers, Paul
Very cool discussionPaul P. and Plan9 thanks; the history of this one is a very interesting topic to me so hearing your guys' analysis is appreciated.
I just picked up this CD at a garage sale for a whooping $.10 Matrix has MFG BY CINRAM #921120H MCA-37214. Info very similiar to yours: MCA Canada (Manufactured by Cinram) "Price Code I" Cat #: MCABD 37214, DIDX 55 (DIDX-55 on CD) Barcode: 0 7674-17214-2 9 Peak Levels:1.4/100.0/100.0/97.4/99.8/100.0/90.4
Speaking of the assumedly Hoffman-mastered MCLD UK Aja, so far I find it interesting that the "Home At Last" snare drum has a lot more mid-range/low-range in its sound than it does in the latest re-masterings (which make the snare sound very high-pitched on my end.)
Have yet to find a Hoffman mastering in the bins, but I keep finding (and buying) spare copies of the amazing sounding Japan for USA MCA CD.
I have been waiting for a long while to find and compare a Nimbus UK against my US ’85 as I have never found many direct comparisons of the two and the potential differences always fascinated me; I finally found a Nimbus UK about a week into a major house project that had my main rig boxed up for about four months, and so the wait continued as I was determined to do this test proper. Last weekend, after a little contact cleaning, I got back up and running; and since every position was marked in advance it only took moving the listening chair a few inches here and there over five or six albums to be back in business. While the differences are not huge, they were definitely there in my book. The big one for me is with the Nimbus the heavier lower range parts of the album reside higher in the image; everything is now more connected and with the Nimbus it is all working from the center out. Second, you can forget how so many production bits of this album are meant to slowly fade to silence in the midst of everything else going on around it, so a female backing vocal, a guitar chord-- their endings are meant to take their sweet time laying out there; on the Nimbus many of these bits, which often happen closer to 2 and 10 o’clock, are much less rushed while more in their own space. Is the Nimbus’ top-end less tizzy and more natural, is it generally less digital sounding… perhaps so to a small degree, but more accurately it is about a third takeaway; different than everything sounding more analog or natural at all times, it was more about three or four dozen little things pop up throughout the album… a drum fill, a cymbal strike, an edge of a vocal, a horn note… and you say to yourself, wow that is spookily natural sounding, and I am sure I have not heard it that way before, all while a few extra new little nuances or base-layer brush strokes shine through. It adds up to excellent right out of the gate even against a very good US ’85 mastering; nothing dramatically different between the two, but since they pop up in the classifieds here from time to time well worth trying out in my opinion especially if you are looking for a little extra edge up on this album.
Mine EAC'd out as Mastering 3 which I think is what you mean, it is MCAD-37214 DIDX 55 USA Matrix DIDX-000055 4.
Very nice comparison - thanks for taking the time to write that up. And - congrats on finding the Nimbus master. It's a neat sounding CD, to be sure. Cheers, Paul
I actually bought a copy of this today. I put it in EAC and it checks out similar to mastering 4 on the list.
just found my copy of this. it has the same peaks as the nimbus CD according to XLD X Lossless Decoder version 20151214 (149.1) XLD extraction logfile from 2016-01-10 10:45:05 +0000 Steely Dan / Aja Used drive : Apple SuperDrive (revision 2.00) Media type : Pressed CD Ripper mode : XLD Secure Ripper Disable audio cache : OK for the drive with a cache less than 1375KiB Make use of C2 pointers : NO Read offset correction : 6 Max retry count : 20 Gap status : Not analyzed TOC of the extracted CD Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector --------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 00:00:00 | 05:11:27 | 0 | 23351 2 | 05:11:27 | 07:58:15 | 23352 | 59216 3 | 13:09:42 | 07:36:20 | 59217 | 93436 4 | 20:45:62 | 03:56:53 | 93437 | 111189 5 | 24:42:40 | 05:34:55 | 111190 | 136294 6 | 30:17:20 | 05:06:17 | 136295 | 159261 7 | 35:23:37 | 04:30:40 | 159262 | 179551 List of alternate offset correction values # | Absolute | Relative | Confidence ------------------------------------------ 1 | 685 | 679 | 20 AccurateRip Summary (DiscID: 000ba1c1-00450442-56095a07) Track 01 : OK (v1+v2, confidence 9/28) Track 02 : OK (v1+v2, confidence 9/27) Track 03 : OK (v1+v2, confidence 8/28) Track 04 : OK (v1+v2, confidence 8/28) Track 05 : OK (v1+v2, confidence 9/28) Track 06 : OK (v1+v2, confidence 9/28) Track 07 : OK (v1+v2, confidence 9/28) ->All tracks accurately ripped. All Tracks Album gain : -1.67 dB Peak : 0.975922 Statistics Read error : 0 Jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0 Retry sector count : 0 Damaged sector count : 0 Track 01 Filename : /Users/chris/Desktop/untitled folder/01 Steely Dan - Black Cow.m4a Pre-gap length : 00:02:00 Track gain : -0.57 dB Peak : 0.907928 CRC32 hash : ECAA774E CRC32 hash (skip zero) : 3DC311C2 AccurateRip v1 signature : B2BE691F AccurateRip v2 signature : 2E5FD40B ->Accurately ripped (v1+v2, confidence 4+5/28) Statistics Read error : 0 Jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0 Retry sector count : 0 Damaged sector count : 0 Track 02 Filename : /Users/chris/Desktop/untitled folder/02 Steely Dan - Aja.m4a Track gain : -0.31 dB Peak : 0.917328 CRC32 hash : A6F8F30B CRC32 hash (skip zero) : FFDF7C12 AccurateRip v1 signature : 2B163E74 AccurateRip v2 signature : 3996F811 ->Accurately ripped (v1+v2, confidence 4+5/27) Statistics Read error : 0 Jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0 Retry sector count : 0 Damaged sector count : 0 Track 03 Filename : /Users/chris/Desktop/untitled folder/03 Steely Dan - Deacon Blues.m4a Track gain : -2.04 dB Peak : 0.908478 CRC32 hash : C038446D CRC32 hash (skip zero) : 4900A484 AccurateRip v1 signature : A58E381C AccurateRip v2 signature : 7E73072D ->Accurately ripped (v1+v2, confidence 4+4/28) Statistics Read error : 0 Jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0 Retry sector count : 0 Damaged sector count : 0 Track 04 Filename : /Users/chris/Desktop/untitled folder/04 Steely Dan - Peg.m4a Track gain : -2.78 dB Peak : 0.889557 CRC32 hash : 1285D92C CRC32 hash (skip zero) : AE0EAEE7 AccurateRip v1 signature : 687FE175 AccurateRip v2 signature : F5F9B2C8 ->Accurately ripped (v1+v2, confidence 4+4/28) Statistics Read error : 0 Jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0 Retry sector count : 0 Damaged sector count : 0 Track 05 Filename : /Users/chris/Desktop/untitled folder/05 Steely Dan - Home at Last.m4a Track gain : -2.31 dB Peak : 0.963654 CRC32 hash : 0D119FBF CRC32 hash (skip zero) : EEBD542B AccurateRip v1 signature : CA42F21B AccurateRip v2 signature : 8FD783D4 ->Accurately ripped (v1+v2, confidence 4+5/28) Statistics Read error : 0 Jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0 Retry sector count : 0 Damaged sector count : 0 Track 06 Filename : /Users/chris/Desktop/untitled folder/06 Steely Dan - I Got The News.m4a Track gain : -0.20 dB Peak : 0.861969 CRC32 hash : BE4A4513 CRC32 hash (skip zero) : 49798763 AccurateRip v1 signature : 13898047 AccurateRip v2 signature : 692EAFFE ->Accurately ripped (v1+v2, confidence 4+5/28) Statistics Read error : 0 Jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0 Retry sector count : 0 Damaged sector count : 0 Track 07 Filename : /Users/chris/Desktop/untitled folder/07 Steely Dan - Josie.m4a Track gain : -2.21 dB Peak : 0.975922 CRC32 hash : F75E0AD9 CRC32 hash (skip zero) : D8E067DA AccurateRip v1 signature : AAC97390 AccurateRip v2 signature : 9CE568F9 ->Accurately ripped (v1+v2, confidence 4+5/28) Statistics Read error : 0 Jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0 Retry sector count : 0 Damaged sector count : 0 No errors occurred End of status report
I have recently picked up the MCLD 19145, Mastered by Universal (on matrix). I don't think there has been conclusive evidence that this was a clone of the Nimbus one. Maybe I have missed something? Thank you very much. (I don't know how the EAC programme works, but I'll do some research if no one comes up with an answer).
I finally got to check peak levels for MCLD 19145, Mastered by Universal (on matrix). It matches the Nimbus. Is this enough to say it's definitely Mastering 7 (Steve's)? Pista 1 Problema de Sincronización 0:00:20 Problema de Sincronización 0:00:23 Problema de Sincronización 0:00:28 Nivel Pico 90.7 % Extraida con precisión (confidencia 5) [2E5FD40B] (AR v2) Copia terminada Pista 2 Nivel Pico 91.7 % Extraida con precisión (confidencia 5) [3996F811] (AR v2) Copia OK Pista 3 Nivel Pico 90.8 % Extraida con precisión (confidencia 4) [7E73072D] (AR v2) Copia OK Pista 4 Nivel Pico 88.9 % Extraida con precisión (confidencia 4) [F5F9B2C8] (AR v2) Copia OK Pista 5 Nivel Pico 96.3 % Extraida con precisión (confidencia 5) [8FD783D4] (AR v2) Copia OK Pista 6 Nivel Pico 86.1 % Extraida con precisión (confidencia 5) [692EAFFE] (AR v2) Copia OK Pista 7 Nivel Pico 97.5 % Extraida con precisión (confidencia 5) [9CE568F9] (AR v2) Copia OK
hard to understand thread... great info, thanks to all but my big question is: only 5000 of which CD? how identify one of those 5000 CDs? (I don't care others if "match", "it seems its the same mastering", "sounds like the steve mastering", "3, and 6 sounds like 7", clones! etc...). I mean which press is one of those 5000 steve mastering? PICK JUST ONE! Steely Dan - Aja » why Steve don't say "hey this is the first CD!"? and END of the search and confusion, he don't know? after he mastering, he don't know in which cd pres the mastering goes? or I'm totally confused and the 5000 are just 5000 licensed to print masterings, so the mastering was divided/sparce in many releases? nimbus uk, japan for us etc....? I see sellers on ebay selling 3 different "hoffman" CDs... sick!
I think the supposedly 5,000 printed would look the same as the ones Nichols mastered (it wasn't a new remaster program, just Nichols saying hey I want this used moving forward) so therefore hard to pinpoint those 5,000 unless one listened/tested for a needle in a haystack. There is a lot of confusion around this issue so I could well be wrong with this explanation. Better to just get what is possibly a clone of one of those 5,000 in the Nimbus UK and call it a day. Those mastering 3,6 are very good and you have to employ some amount of focus to start pinpointing differences with mastering 7, but they are there for me.
There has not been a case documented where two Aja CDs with the same catalogue numbers have different mastering. The research has been done, and three variations of the same basic original 1980s mastering have been identified. The UK MCLD 19145 version, which Steve himself accepts as his mastering, never appeared on an US CD as far as we know.
Picked up this one Sunday barcode : 7674-17214-2 matrix : MCAD37214 A51202Nb MFG BY UNT ( other side looks like TEP 771) Steve ? not Steve ?
Check the peak levels in EAC. If they are 90.7/91.7/90.8/88.9/96.3/86.1/97.5 - it's Steve's mastering. I have compared Steve's to mastering 3 (90.8/91.7/90.6/88.7/96.3/86.2/97.6) the MCA Japan for USA and they sound very similar to me. I'd imagine most people would be content with either mastering. I love the sound of mastering 3. Lately, I've been rescuing these old MCA Japan for USA CDs when I see them in the bins. Hard to leave them behind.
I've never ever imagined that I would find a minty copy of MCLD 19145 at a local used cd store for $6. The present problem is that I don't know where is my go-to copy of Aja, 32XD. I'll compare them when I have both in front of me.
I just picked up made in U.S. MCA '84 Aja. MCAD-37214 DIDY 000055 CRC printed on disc. MCAD 37214 DIDY 55 on spine. Matrix: 5 1AMCD 37214-2 SRC+01 M1581. My gut says it'll be a mastering 3. I'll do an EAC shortly to confirm.
My copy is a MCA German pressing. I didn't see this one listed. 250 449-2 (MCAD37214) on back tray Matrix 250449-2.2 RSA Is this Steve's mastering? Track six looks off by .1 It's Mastering #6 Track 1 Filename J:\Music\STEELY DAN\1 Track1.wav Peak level 90.7 % Extraction speed 2.1 X Track quality 100.0 % Copy OK Track 2 Filename J:\Music\STEELY DAN\2 Track2.wav Peak level 91.7 % Extraction speed 2.1 X Track quality 100.0 % Copy OK Track 3 Filename J:\Music\STEELY DAN\3 Track3.wav Peak level 90.8 % Extraction speed 2.2 X Track quality 100.0 % Copy OK Track 4 Filename J:\Music\STEELY DAN\4 Track4.wav Peak level 88.9 % Extraction speed 2.2 X Track quality 100.0 % Copy OK Track 5 Filename J:\Music\STEELY DAN\5 Track5.wav Peak level 96.3 % Extraction speed 2.3 X Track quality 100.0 % Copy OK Track 6 Filename J:\Music\STEELY DAN\6 Track6.wav Peak level 86.2 % Extraction speed 2.2 X Track quality 100.0 % Copy OK Track 7 Filename J:\Music\STEELY DAN\7 Track7.wav Peak level 97.5 % Extraction speed 3.1 X Track quality 96.9 % Copy finished End of status report
