Why? Does Gateway have worse equipment? I have his Tony Orlando And Dawn Greatest Hits (Ludwig at Gateway), and I am not all that impressed with the sound, as it seems kind of dull and wooden. Does anyone here have it?
I also noticed I have a Def Leppard 'Hysteria' LP that gives 'Bob Ludwig' credits on the liner notes, but there is no 'RL' in the dead wax. Just a matrix number and 'DMM', which I assume is for 'Direct Metal Master'.
Well, it has nothing to do with the equipment, it is the medium itself. Digital will sound inferior to analog 99 out of 100 times, now matter who is doing the mastering or remastering. Just don't tell SH that
Today I picked a copy of Madonna's 'Like A Virgin' from Germany. It says 'Club Edition' on the back of the LP jacket. And of course in the dead wax it has 'RL'. I saw the 'Club Edition' of this LP mentioned in this thread a few pages back. Does anyone know much about this 'Club Edition'?
My guess is that the liner notes are just carried over from dualdisc. I may be wrong here, but I don't think Bob Ludwig does vinyl mastering anymore. I think I've read that someone else at Gateway does any vinyl work there. Also, his middle intial is not "M".
Just picked up Hendrix -- Band of Gypsies. Green Capitol label. Sterling stamped and "RL" both sides. Side 2 also has "LH".
It just seems coincidental that he mastered the DD, and there is 'RML' in the dead wax. It could be entirely possible that the 'M' stands for something else.
found another early 'RL' today: Linda Ronstadt - Silk Purse (Capitol 1970, 'Sterling LH/RL', fantastic sound and some great songs, never heard this album before)
I don't believe that they do ANY lacquers at Gateway. No mention of a cutting lathe in all their analog equipment lists on their web site, and no mention of lacquer sevices. -Aaron
I was looking at my Journey - Escape LP last night. The inner sleeve credits Robert Ludwig at Gateway N.Y. But the dead-wax has no RL anywhere. It does have a stamped matrix and a stamped "COLUMBIA N.Y." I did get this LP about a month after it was the big hit that it was. BTW, the matrix stamping type on the Escape LP is exactly like the matix stamping on my orange label non-Wally but still early pressing Boston S/T LP done years earlier.
Actually that's sounds right. Ludwig supposedly did the Classic Records Born To Run (I say "supposedly" because there's no RL in the dead wax of mine and I have the original pressing w/o the gatefold cover). That's the last thing I can recall hearing that Ludwig or Gateway did with vinyl. Maybe somebody else knows otherwise...
From a 12/01 MixOnline interview: You started mastering vinyl. Is that something you are still doing? Until recently, I had a DMM [Direct Metal Mastering, where the album is cut to a copper disc] system at Masterdisk, and at Gateway a lacquer-cutting lathe, a VMS-80. We sold our machine to Sony a few months ago, and the reason was that I was gradually getting more and more disappointed with the level of quality control that took place at the record companies. I realized that the A&R people didn't have record players anymore in their offices, and the amount of work we were getting was gradually decreasing to maybe one lacquer-cutting session a month. The machine always needed a lot of calibrations and tweaking in order to perform at its best, so it wasn't really justifiable to keep the machine around any longer. Although we don't do vinyl mastering any more, we are still considering doing it again if there is a demand for it in the future. Masterdisk still has their DMM machine, and, as a side note, I can mention that Bruce Springsteen's Live in New York City was mixed by Bob Clearmountain on a DA-98 with Apogee PSX-100 converters and was mastered here at Gateway. Masterdisk, in turn, used our 24-bit master to master the LP using DMM.
I bought a few LP's today, and there were several mastered by Robert Ludwig. There were a few already mentioned here, for example... Dire Straits 'Brothers in Arms' Dire Straits 'Love Over Gold' All I can say to those two in regards to sound is...WOW!!! A couple of others I found... Dire Straits 'Extended DancE Play' (I just noticed tonight, that if you look on the back of the LP, there is a pink strip with two figures dancing. If you hold the LP jacket at just the right angle, those two figures dance around like Jello) Tommy Shaw 'Girls With Guns' Hall & Oates 'Big Bam Boom'
Another Hall & Oates - "ROCK 'N SOUL PART 1" has a "MASTERDISK RL". Good music and it sounds quite good.
I have that one too and it sounds awesome. Just looked at the deadwax and I have RL too. My Bukingham Nicks sounds great but it's from Sterling and has PRC as the initials. Who the heck is that? I know I have a 2nd pressing.
A few days ago I picked up David Bowie's Let's Dance for $5 in ridiculously great condition. I was ecstatic to find it was mastered by Bob Ludwig. Sounds great. Also, I just checked and apparently my copy of The Stranger is an RL pressing, too.
I am now convinced that this RL version of The Stranger is very, very, very, very, very difficult to find. Other than my white label promo, the last 60 copies that I have seen were either "TJ" or non-Sterling copies. Aaargh! Good for you, ThisIsntKraig!
I came across another Robert Ludwig mastered LP with 'RL' in the dead wax.... Scorpions - World Wide Live Sounds awesome!!!
This is to correct myself. I may have mistakenly posted that my white label promo "RL" copy of Billy Joel, "The Stranger" had "sterling" on it. This is WRONG! The "RL" copies have "MASTERDISK" next to it (and not "sterling"). I apologize for the confusion. The sound of this disc is still the same though -- simply amazing!
great thread; I have looked at what seems like hundreds of avalon lp's by Roxy Music- not a RL in the bunch-did i see a reply where someone actually found one? was it us, uk, or what? two other LR stampers are The Band's first live lp and Dire Straight's first live lp. i'll loook for some more.
