Dark Side Of The Moon - Holy Grail

Great post, GP. I especially agree with this point:

I've seen it quite a few times on this forum, usually from a very small group of individuals, and it simply isn't right.

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Let me add a (heavily abridged) anecdote, taken from the book "Mindless Eating" by Brian Wansink, PhD.

"A cook on a Navy carrier had mixed while stocking the ship before it departed for a 1/2 year cruise. He had ordered only (yellow) Lemon Jello instead of the usual 50-50 split between (yellow) Lemon and (red) Cherry Jello. The sailors began to get a little antsy after 3 months straight of Lemon Jello - and the complaints were coming in thick and fast.

So what did chef do? He added red food colouring to the yellow Lemon Jello, making it appear like Cherry Jello. People soon began to come up to him, complimenting him on his resourcefulness at locating Cherry Jello. No one noticed that it really wasn't Cherry Jello."

A personal anecdote:

Over the years, I've sold enough tubes to know that the buyers of my tubes *will* hear what I *tell* them the tube will sound like. In other words - if I tell them what they've bought will sound "dark and tonally rich" to them, it will always turn out to sound "dark and tonally rich".

It all came to me in a flash one day when I accidentally mixed up emails and told a guy who had a "dark and rich" tube that it should should sound "fast and detailed" - and vice versa.

Guess what happened? The owner of the "dark and rich" tube came back raving about how "fast and quick" his tube sounded while the guy with the "fast and detailed" tube came back telling me how "tonally rich and warm" his tube sounded. Imagine how I felt! I now refrain from giving impressions of tubes till the new owner offers his - sure, I may make less, but I feel a lot better with myself at the end of the day.

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Humans are, well, humans. Computers are well, computers. A computer has no bias, no past experience and no agenda - while people do, oftentimes unknowingly.

If the digital rips are identical, then either the human is mistaken, or there is something we are not testing for that is somehow influencing the sound - in this case, possible pressing differences (as opposed to mastering differences).

This would in turn imply that both the Japan Black Triangle non-TO and Japan Black Face non-TO discs both contain the "Holy Grail" masterings, but there is a caveat: the BF may play differently (inferiorly?) on some systems due to possible pressing variations.

Just my 0.02.

 

Indeed it has happened to me. I could repost my findings re: how early Sonopress discs used to sound brittle and ringy in the top end on my old Sony player, until I "treated" them with a notorious tweak... my original post is in the archives somewhere .

If you read my post again, my emphasis is not on new observations by members parcipating in *this* thread as such. It is more to do with repeated statements that have been made over a long period of time, literally a few years now, without consideration as to how digitally identical discs may perform on other members systems.

Those of us who are considerate of this, simply aren't comfortable with letting the phrase "that one doesn't have the breath of life" slide. This is the kind of thing that drives the prices up on Ebay for everyone, yet not everyone has a system that makes the cheaper disc sound inferior.

I don't have a problem with people saying "this black triangle with **** in the matrix sounds better on my system - go figure". It's when that person repeatedly says "this is a better mastering, the other disc has no breath of life" ... and it's end of story, without the question of how the discs will perform for someone else.

I hope that clarifies things; Greg's excellent posts have taken care of the rest.

 

My thread has drifted a little of track. I have a question. Are all discs (like the disc in the image below with CP35-3017 SHVL-804-A.B(CD) 'TO' or non TO' versions. I cannot ask the seller right now. If anyone can shed any light on this I'd appreciate it.



Regards

 

They come in both 'TO' and 'non-TO' flavours.

They also come in 'CP35-3017 only' and 'CP35-3017 CDP460012' flavours as well.

Which makes 4 combinations -

1. CP35-3017 non-TO
2. CP35-3017 CDP460012 non-TO
3. CP35-3017 TO
4. CP35-3017 CDP460012 TO

The desired versions are 1 and 2. A few members prefer 1 over 2, but we spent the last few posts shooting that preference full of holes (complete with explanations).

1 and 2 would definitely be identical for you if you intend to play this disc back on a computer (e.g. HDD-based rig) and have the means to properly rip it. Or if you intend to expend whatever minuscule bit of effort it takes to properly copy the CD to a CDR of your choice (black Taiyo Yudens, anyone? ).

 

Darker side of SACD

the quad Dark Side dvd sounds quite good. However, the SACD is "the" reference version in my opinion. I have the Mobile, remasted EMI etc.. and the SACD has the darkest side of the moon. In fact, I bumped into a crater it was so dark.

 

There is one more possibility on the identical digits question. Some CD plants have higher levels of jitter in the glass master.

 

Fair comment. I do think that unless we are paying attention, it's easy for the reviewer's language to drift from making a personal obervation to what appears to be stating an absolute. However, using the Hoffman-signature phrase "breath of life" in particular is playing with a loaded die.