| Review by acousticsguru January 12, 2015 (3 of 3 found this review helpful)
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Performance:  Sonics:  |
Note this is NOT a reissue of the earlier APO SACD (remastered by Doug Sax?), which by the way, I do not know. This review is for the 2014 series of Kevin Gray remasterings.
Compared this to the recent SHM-SACD. The APO sounds as if from session tapes, very transparent, having said that, there are tape flaws such as the sudden volume drop in "Blues By Five" that are a bit annoying. Even so, the Japanese release, presumably from an analogue copy of the production master in seemingly much better shape, has some of the nasality of an analogue copy of the era, and it's clearly less wide-band (at both ends of the spectrum, and although the high-cut treble sounds more like an old Miles LP, it's really bothering after while, not just the cymbals, but also making the bass sound "submerged"), even though EQ appears to have been applied to correct this (a production master of the era was meant to cut an LP, not for flat transfer to high-resolution digital). I'd imagine that the SHM-SACD sounds closer to the original LP (which I don't have for comparison) - no matter, as it sounds "colored". The APO sounds more realistic. To me, not even a fair contest. Unless the idea were to make an old recording sound "old" (the SHM-SACD does that). Having said that, the Kevin Gray remasterings of these Prestige albums (I've yet to hear Steamin') push clarity/fidelity (exposing the state the tapes are in) to an acceptable limit. I'm afraid these are going to be the sonically best incarnations we'll ever hear of these legendary recordings (Relaxin' in particular is one of my all-time favorite Miles and/or Coltrane albums).
Greetings from Switzerland, David.
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