Suggestion for listening to Dylan's 'Desire' SACD

I'm quite surprised at the expressed dissatisfaction of the sound quality of Dylan's 'Desire' SACD, specially on some other forums. I find the SACD incarnation of this recording (I listen in two channel stereo) very, very, good. I find it rids itself of "haze or veil" present in the previous digital mastering. Because of the limitations of the recording itself setting a few "playback parameters" help enjoyment immensely. Remember these are suggestion only, I'm not trying to tell you how you should listen to your music but I'm only passing on personal experience that might help with this particular recording.

If your acoustic environment is med-live to live you could try setting the volume level so that Dylan's voice averages somewhere between a MAXIMUM of 80 to 85 db SPL 'C'weighting/Slow response time at your listening position.
IMHO this recording as well as a great deal of Dylan's work relies on his voice and "Story Telling" and that is what I key in on.

I find at the above levels Dylan's voice is articulate with tonal character portrayed as it should be. Emmy's backing vocals along with Scarlet's violin tone/playing are greatly complimentary.

I just sat down and listened to it again before writing this to reaffirm my opinion of this recording and the above is my take on it anyway.

 

For me, I wasn't dissatisfied on Desire. However, the change in sound to what I'd expect was a big difference to me. It became slllighhhty like a whole new recording.

Like seeing a movie on the big screen after seeing it on TV. You go, "Whoa!" and it takes a while to get used to.

The treatment the original LP had is gone, whatever it was. It's much more direct, although very musical.

I've only picked up 3 so far, but the feeling isn't mild... The new SACD's done by Calbi and others have really come through. Better than the other reissue campaign that Abkco did with the You Know Whos (although many are superb).

Desire wouldn't have been on my list, but I cannot have BOTT without it. Desire is a masterpiece with poetic beauty, mastery and again, that period when Dylan was more optimistic about life and liberties.

 

The only thing keeping me from buying Desire is the 1975 RTR shows. I like every cut, except for Hurricane, better at these shows than on the original Lp. Aw heck, I'll pick it up anyway.

 

it's just a bad mix. very compressed muddy bass. sacd can only help so much. great music though.

 

As I've said elsewhere, the instrumentation often sounds wonderful but the voices are generally hot/distorted. Listen to "Joey". There's simply no getting around the fact that there is congestion if not distortion. That said, I consider Desire and others to be excellent remasters.

"Desire" does have a polarity associated with it, i.e., inverted relative to some other Dylan SACDs. To ignore polarity is to admit that you aren't going to be listening to everything optimally.

 

I'm just beginning to appreciate Desire beyond Hurricane and Isis. I've had the cd for over a year but never listened to it up to now.

It's really an enjoyable abum with Dylan in fine voice. Can't think why I left it on the shelf all this time.

Haven't got the SACD yet, because I'm fairly impressed by the regular CD sound, maybe because it's still new to me?

To those who have the new SACD, does the track "Joey" still go to mono for about 10secs about 3 mins in to the track?

I noticed this last night, it sounds like they spliced in a 10sec repair from a mono mix, curious??

Just wondering if this is repair on the 1st gen master presumably used for the new SACD or whether it's onlly on the LP cutting tape that I am guessing they used for the old CD.

J Joyce

 

All this talk just confirms that Desire should have been at the top of the list for a remaster/remix like Street Legal.
Some of that might have been in the original recording but don't tell me they can't correct some of these problems. This was recorded in a top studio in NY, not some shack in Nebraska.

Doug

 

I believe that certain deficiencies in the sound of the Desire album can be attributed to Dylan's haphazard recording methods.