[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

On Jan 26, 12:54*pm, "ScottW" wrote:
"Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!" wrote in

:I have several "Yes" LPs from England that sound better than the Atco
:US releases.

Have you checked out Analog Productions Fragile?
It's one of my "best mixes/pressings".

No, I haven't. Is it currently available?

: I also have Ella Fitzgerald on "His Master's Voice" that
:sounds better then the US Verve version. Same for my German LS
:Belafonte and Dutch "Little Feat".

:As I said, "generally..."

Most European imports of pop and rock (can't speak to classical
or jazz)
were better than their US equivalents of the 60-80s IME.

In the classical world the Europeans seemed to slip as badly as the
labels did in the US. DGG went, IMO, way downhill from the "Tulip"
label days. Very flimsy vinyl. I dumped all of my 1970s DGGs recently.
RCA went to the disasterously shoddy "Dynaflex". Columbia went to
vinyl about 1/2 as deep, although they didn't seem to slip as badly as
some of the other labels. A lot of the top jazz artists went to Pablo
or other labels that didn't seem to care so much about production
quality.

OTOH, much of the D2D jazz stuff I have from the mid-70s and later is
quite well done.

However the current audiophile labels of the US (Classic Records
and Analog productions) are IMO producing as good a vinyl as
anyone in the world...even if Classics Aqualung was a huge
disappointment.

My latest LP kick has been tracking down (no pun intended) rarer jazz
recordings. I haven't been doing too much on the current audiophile
labels or too much with pop. Part of the fun for me is the hunt. We
still have some good record stores here. I found an antique shop (one
of those ones with 60 or whatever vendors) where one guy specializes
in LPs. I've found some great stuff there. I found a $250 Miles Davis
LP in great shape for $12, for example.

I do like my MFSL "Aqualung" though. The DCC CD I have of that is good
too. Steve Hoffman did a good job IMO. The MFSL "Thick as a Brick" and
"Close to the Edge" are also nice.