{"id":474,"date":"2012-04-11T16:52:59","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T15:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bassdress.wordpress.com\/?p=474"},"modified":"2019-03-10T18:21:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-10T18:21:17","slug":"the-best-bowie-masters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/11\/the-best-bowie-masters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Bowie Masters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been a big fan of Bowie since I was knee-high to a grasshopper &#8211; &nbsp;I was raised on the&nbsp;original&nbsp;12&#8243;&nbsp;gatefold&nbsp;UK pressing of most of his albums. &nbsp;One thing that&#8217;s always bothered me is how the CD&nbsp;transfers&nbsp;of most of his early work sound abysmal. &nbsp;They suffer from&nbsp;overly&nbsp;happy EQing, poor compression work, bad de-noising&#8230; Really, I could go on. The Best Bowie Masters are a difficult thing to come by now.<\/p>\n<p>All of this genuinely makes some of my favourite music difficult to listen to. &nbsp;I find myself becoming distracted by sharp, digital&nbsp;cymbals, or being&nbsp;fatigued&nbsp;by totally flat dynamics. &nbsp;It&#8217;s a shame, but I&#8217;ve found a partial solution.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a little story to start you off with, to show you how little we&#8217;ve progressed in a quarter of a decade. &nbsp;In the early 80&#8217;s, RCA issued a lot of&nbsp;Bowie&#8217;s&nbsp;albums on CD. &nbsp;These were met with mixed reviews at the time, a lot of people saying that they were &#8216;just&#8217; transfers of the original masters used for the vinyls. I suppose people were hoping for a more&nbsp;noticeable&nbsp;jump in quality after their investment in a \u00a3500 CD player.<\/p>\n<p>Nowadays, people are&nbsp;clamoring&nbsp;for the original RCA CD releases,&nbsp;because&nbsp;they seem to be the only ones released that haven&#8217;t been massacred by incompetent&nbsp;studio engineers, desperately trying to justify their new toys. &nbsp;Don&#8217;t get me wrong, there are a few decent quality releases by&nbsp;Ryko (the AU20 Gold releases), but for me, the RCAs really hit the spot.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1599\" style=\"width: 301px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/bowiescaryrcahk0143q9rn.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1599\" --=\"\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1599\" class=\"wp-image-1599 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/bowiescaryrcahk0143q9rn-291x300.jpg?resize=291%2C300\" alt=\"The Best Bowie Masters\" width=\"291\" height=\"300\"><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1599\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Best Bowie Masters<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;ve listened to <em>almost<\/em> all the releases available now, and compiled a list of the best (read: closest in sound to the master tapes). &nbsp;This took me a long time to compile and critically compare. &nbsp;I&#8217;ve wasted my life, so you don&#8217;t have to.<br \/>\nAnyway here we go.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Space Oddity &#8211;&nbsp;<strong>RCA PCD1-4813<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The Man Who Sold The World &#8211; <strong>RCA&nbsp;PCD1-4816<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Hunky Dory &#8211;&nbsp;<strong>RCA&nbsp;<strong>PD 84623<\/strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars<strong>&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;RCA PCD1-4702 \/ SACD<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Aladdin Sane &#8211; <strong>RCA&nbsp;PCD1-4852<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Pin Ups &#8211;<strong>&nbsp;RCA&nbsp;<strong>PCD1-0291<\/strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Diamond Dogs &#8211;<strong><strong> RCA&nbsp;<strong>PCD1-0576<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Young Americans &#8211; <strong>Ryko&nbsp;RCD 80140 *<\/strong>not heard any RCA releases of this<\/li>\n<li>Station To Station &#8211;&nbsp;<strong>RCA&nbsp;PD81327<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Heroes&#8221; &#8211; <strong>RCA&nbsp;PCD1-2522<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Low &#8211; <strong>RCA&nbsp;PD83856<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Lodger &#8211; <strong>RCA&nbsp;PD84234<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Scary Monsters<strong> &#8211; RCA&nbsp;<strong>PD83647<\/strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Let&#8217;s Dance &#8211; <strong>EMI 1983 CD release<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Tonight &#8211; <strong>SACD<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Never Let Me Down &#8211;&nbsp;<strong>EMI CDP 7 46677 2<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Black Tie White Noise &#8211;<strong> Original CD release<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>1. Outside &#8211;&nbsp;<strong>Original CD release<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Earthling&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;<strong>Original CD release<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Hours&#8230;&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;<strong>Original CD release<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Heathen &#8211; <strong>SACD<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Reality &#8211; <strong>SACD<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Everything on this list sounds pretty good until &#8220;Earthling&#8221;. &nbsp;It would seem that after &#8220;1. Outside&#8221;, sound quality takes a massive dip in favour of high volume modern sound. &nbsp;The latest three albums are, in my opinion, ruined by terrible EQ and massive amounts of brick wall compression. &nbsp;We&#8217;re talking dynamics of about 5dB here&#8230; The SACD releases give you 1-2dB extra head room, but even they are still fucked. &nbsp;Also, if anyone cares, the SACDs are still only 22.05Khz, and probably exactly the same master as the CDs, but with marginally less compression on the final output.<\/p>\n<p>I would take this list with a grain of salt, as I really prefer a warm, thick sound to the bright shimmering digitalness we get today. &nbsp;Before you go hunting down these CDs, remember that I <em>much&nbsp;<\/em>prefer the&nbsp;Teo Macero version of Miles Davis&#8217; &#8220;Bitches Brew&#8221; to the beautifully open and&nbsp;separated&nbsp;remasters. &nbsp;And mono is the only way in which a person should listen to &#8220;Kind Of Blue&#8221;, even if it is at the wrong speed. &nbsp;I think that&#8217;s a pretty good anchor to base my&nbsp;opinion&nbsp;on.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, this is my ultimate list, and it&#8217;s what my Bowie collection is now, and probably always will be. &nbsp;It&#8217;s also probably the greatest collection of art ever produced by a single human being &#8211; if indeed, he is one.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in more discussion, head over to the <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.stevehoffman.tv\/threads\/best-bowie-masters.196997\/\">Steve Hoffman forums<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[30,35,87,130],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-compression","tag-david-bowie","tag-mastering","tag-sound-quality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2371,"href":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions\/2371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassdress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}