Deep Purple - In Rock - Audio Fidelity Gold CD

I have no clue. I have never ordered from CD Pacific.

I just got my disc from Buy.com. The sound is amazingly clear and dynamic. This is my first Gold CD and it was well worth it (especially at $17.99).

I, also, bought the Yardbirds' Roger The Engineer on Airline Records. This sounds very good, as well, though not as good as Deep Purple In Rock.

 

Wow, they're doing Machine Head too?!

 

Yep! Now I possess at least one CD mastered by Steve and I am a true and evil Hoffmanite! Got mine today from CD Pacific (ordered 12 days ago, shipped last week - not bad, even if the second ordered CD, King's X's Out of the Silent Planet, still hasn't been dispatched).

Listened to IR twice, at first in the CD mode, then in the HDCD mode. It sounded terrific in both cases, with HDCD enabled in Windows Media Player it sounded a bit smoother with increased ambience (of course if this all isn't about difference between decoders in foobar2000 and WMP; my players behave a bit unpredictable under Vista with Digidesign drivers and I am not 100% sure if enabling the HDCD mode in WMP does really bring something to the table).

Now I have a wish for Santa Claus: it would be very nice to replace seemlessly all those Anniperversary Aqualung CDs in their boxes (including mine) with OOP Steve's ones. Pretty please, do it on 01/01/2010!

And thank you very much, Steve, for this IR! Waiting for Machine Head now, I haven't got any digital copy of it yet, my *** was kinda smart.

 

Finally got around to listening to this CD. Very nice, brought back some memories, thanks Steve.

 

Playing along with the options of EAC, I have checked the spectral content of the songs of this album and found they have very little high-frequency information like the example in attachment for 'Speed King'.
Anyone knows the cause for this? The original recording, the current state of the tapes?...

 

The higher recording level, the lower high frequencies, it's a rule. This may be the cause - we know that this album was obviously recorded with all meters in the red zone. Anyway, there is a huge roll-off in highs above approx. 10 kHz, and, AFAIK, all versions of the album prove that (at least, the 25th Anniversary version does).

Edit: of course, it could be a EQ'ing choice of the original engineers as well.

 

This is the first CD I own that Steve has done...shame on me

I bought this album as a teenager when it first came out and have always rated it as easily the finest hard rock album of its time...and imo is the best Deep Purple album by some way..even better than Machine Head.

This sounds absolutely superb compared to all my memories of listening to the vinyl ...on decent equipment at that time as well...and the other CD versions..the power and dynamics really show what a band they were.

Superb work Steve...can't rate it high enough

 

This may be the AF gold CD released in 2009 that I am most grateful for, actually.

The old EMI disc was much too dull sounding for my taste, & the 1995 remaster, well, ............. just plain sucks.

 

I had lower expectations than usual because the WB CD sounds so brutal and I kept reading all these comments about the master tapes sounding like crap etc etc.

I figured how much improvement could there be under these circumstances?

Well, it shows how much I (don't) know because this mastering was a revelation.

The album has gone from virtually unlistenable to highly, highly enjoyable.
It allowed me to really hear the album for the first time for which I am thankful.

 

IMO, it wasn't unlistenable in any of previous forms, but Steve has finally brought Ian Paice's cymbals straight to my room.

 

I will concede I was probably too negative when I said "virtually unlistenable".

But it was definitely enough of a struggle that I couldn't get into the album, until now.

 

I'm 44 and before this year, never owned a Deep Purple album. Now, thanks to Audio Fidelity and SACDs generally, I have 5 (including 2 versions of Machine Head). Over the last couple of days, I've had a chance to play these LOUD, including both Machine Head and In Rock today. While I still can't say I love the band and particularly the howling vocals of the lead singer, to my ears Steve did an excellent job on these. At loud volumes, there's no distortion and they sound pretty clean for heavy metal. While I read bad things about the recording quality of these, I thought they sounded better than the recent Styx Grand Illusion for example. I compared this also to the first Gnarls Barkley CD I played yesterday, which was earbleeding and distorted even at low volumes. While I still prefer early Black Sabbath when it comes to British heavy metal, I enjoyed listening to these. Good work, Steve!

 

I missed out on the IN ROCK disc. Just saw this one on ebay. Is it a legit copy? Thanks

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/DEEP-PURPLE-...200680160751?pt=Music_CDs&hash=item2eb9783def

 

It Looks legit,I can`t see anything wrong with it.It`s a great sounding version to own.

 

That is a good one. I did not know it was OOP already. Buy whatever you can find. It is well worth it if you like the album.

 

US $43.00. wow! I'd look around more.

 

Thanks.
It was $23 when I copied the link. I cannot seem to find it anywhere. Maybe I should post a WTB in the classifieds here?

 

Good idea.

 

Picked up a used copy of this yesterday, it sounds fantastic.

 

One of the best sounding AF CDs
Almost as good as vinyl