[Thermionic Dude]

I have been revisiting some favorite cassettes from my high school days and had forgotten how GREAT these bands are. I am now looking to replace a few of the aging casettes and am hoping you can point me to the best-sounding releases.

The Mission: "God's Own Medicine" and "Children"-there appears to be several available CD releases of these albums. I am intrigued by the recent (2002-2003 IIRC) UK remasters of these albums, but see that US and Japanese remasters also appear to be available. Any comments on the sound quality of any of these releases would be appreciated.

Midnight Oil: "Place Without a Postcard", "10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1", and "Red Sails in the Sunset"-without a doubt, their best albums, but unfortunately appear to be long out-of-print in the US (only "Diesel and Dust" and "Blue Sky Mining" appear to be in-print and just happen to be the only albums I already have on CD!). The only releases I can find (cdconnection.com) of the former is an Aussie-release boxed set that contains all three albums. If the CD sound quality is definitively superior to the cassette releases (not at all a given in my experience with 80's Alt Rock-I can think of several examples where the cassette sounds superior), I will order the boxed set.

Bauhaus: "In the Flat Field" and "Mask"-appears to be several remastered versions available but I really don't know anything about sound quality, any insight any of you can provide would be appreciated.

Oh yeah, since this is a post about 80's music I have to ask: are there ANY good-sounding CD releases of Depeche Mode "Black Celebration" or "Music for the Masses"? I have the original US CD releases of both of these albums (these were actually some of the first CDs I bought after getting my first CDP) and the overall sound quality is 100% 80s "digital" in the WORST WAY-literally every cliché we use on these boards to describe bad digital sound is present in spades on these releases. It's a travesty that such musical greatness can be so uncerimoniously neutered by the abysmal quality of the recording/mastering process.

I had originally posted this to another audio-related board, but have received very few responses. The demographic here at HeadFi is somewhat different in terms of musical preferences, so I thought I might have more luck with this question here.

Cheers

 

[Quaddy]

i own bahaus crackle on cd, and its amazing, flat field and mask sound great to me, such a spine tingling mandolin-esque middle section a few minutes in to mask

well worth purchasing crackle on cd for these dark cultish tracks!

 

[rincewind]

The Midnight Oil CDs are all over the place in Australia. And I'm 99% sure they aren't reissue/remasters. IMO, most early CDs like that are superior to their reissue counterparts. I'm pretty darn sure the CD releases will be better quality than the tape versions, as they are simply transfers from the originals, not super=duper remastered (ie WRECKED) versions. BTW, good taste in music

Whose gonna saaaaave meeee, whose gonna saaaaave meee!

 

[HFat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thermionic Dude /img/forum/go_quote.gif Midnight Oil: "Place Without a Postcard", "10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1", and "Red Sails in the Sunset"-without a doubt, their best albums

Well, I beg to disagree...
In any case, my release of PwaP sounds good to me. The others less so but I wouldn't say they're botched either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thermionic Dude /img/forum/go_quote.gif If the CD sound quality is definitively superior to the cassette releases (not at all a given in my experience with 80's Alt Rock-I can think of several examples where the cassette sounds superior), I will order the boxed set.

Care to explain what's the issue with those CDs? CD is a much better media and I can't imagine a CD release not sounding clearly better. I guess it could sound worse if it's been "remastered" to make it louder or something along the way for example but I get the impression that's not the kind of issue you're concerned about.

 

[Thermionic Dude]

HFat, the problem with the Depeche Mode CDs is the overall harsh, tinny sound quality-similar (but not as bad) to lower bit-rate MP3 (say, 128kbps). This is worse on "Music for the Masses", which I believe is an all-digital recording ("Black Celebration" is an analog master, if I'm not mistaken). In comparison, the cassette (and likely vinyl) release sounds somewhat smoother (likely due to tape's inherent roll-off of high frequencies) and less fatiguing overall.

Many Classical CDs from this time period also suffer from these issues.

Ricewind, thanks for the info. I will probably just pull the trigger on the box set; last I looked it sells for $30.00 US-a good deal for 3 CDs, even better given that it is apparently a rare item in the US!

 

[HFat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thermionic Dude /img/forum/go_quote.gif overall harsh, tinny sound quality-similar (but not as bad) to lower bit-rate MP3 (say, 128kbps).

You lost me there: my MP3s don't sound like that at all!

I think early CDs are often treble-heavy. Is that what you're concerned about? If so, I think that the releases I've got also suffer from this issue but I don't think it's bad and it's the kind of thing that can be helped by a little EQ.
You might want to look into de-emphasis by the way (although this is probably not the cause of your problem).