Talk Talk Laughing Stock to be reissued on Vinyl!!

This drops tomorrow!! I am so psyched and .......broke. Oh well, it will be a few weeks before i can spend ANY money but I cant wait to hear the Mark Hollis solo record and of course I know LS very well already but looking forward to owning it on vinyl.

As far as why you would want this on a digital mastered slab of vinyl?...............................................I dont own a cd player so thats why I want it on vinyl!

 

Well? Any first impressions yet?
I read a first disappointed comment on the facebook-page of Ba Da Bing of someone who A/B'd the new Laughing Stock vinyl against the cd....

 

Were these albums even recorded and mixed in analog?

Or is that just being assumed?

 

Wow, great.

So the cutting engineer can start with the same CD I own, then adjust the EQ before cutting the vinyl LP, which will then reflect both the limitations of vinyl and the engineer's taste in EQ, draped upon the CD "master" that I already own.

The potential for greatness is almost unbearable.

 

ad180 did some great legwork on this question, at least as it pertains to Laughing Stock. See posts #51 and #55 in this thread. Short answer is that LS was recorded to analog and digital and mixed to 1/2" analog.

 

I assume that's sarcasm.

Kevin Gray has done some amazing work from CD. I know somebody who had him cut an LP from a CD and the LP actually sounded BETTER. I don't know how he did it... EQ, D/A converters... but he did it.

 

Yeah but the poster didn't comment on sound quality

 

That's true, and being from another sources than this Forum nothing was stated about the set-up of his system, but it wasn't altogether favourable, was it?
I'm expecting my copy of Mark Hollis any day now...

 

It was hard for me to know what to make of his comment, honestly. He said it wasn't cut from an analog source, which I think we've all assumed would be the case anyway. But how did he know that, and what does that have to do with A/B comparisons to the CD? Did the CD sound better? Worse? Identical?

I think the fact that numerous people asked about the source on their Facebook page, and a number of people here (myself included) have emailed BaDaBing without response tells us it's pretty unlikely these were cut from the best possible sources.

Patiently waiting for my copies so I can make up my own mind as to whether they are any good or not....

 

Thanks, but I'm perfectly capable of setting my own parabolic equalizer in the chain if I need to. Using an imperfect and less convenient delivery system (vinyl) to deliver a digital source I can buy at the store is cynical at best.

 

So has anyone had a chance to listen to these new pressings?

 

Media Mail.

Mine should arrive tomorrow, and I'll post additional information and impressions after I've had a chance to listen.

 

A first impression of the Mark Hollis vinyl...
Quite noisy vinyl (which spoils the first twenty seconds of silence of 'The Colour of Spring' quite a bit). Compared to the quite fine cd the soundstage is a bit blurred, in some places there seem to be some sounds barely audible on the cd like an extra percussive sound in the left channel of 'The Gift'.
As an LP it isn't bad, I still prefer the sound of the cd with this one. Packaging is decent, nothing fancy. I have have the cd; you don't have to bother with this version, i.m.o. .
I'd still love an audiophile edition of this one!

 

One of my local shops has it on order... I should have Laughing Stock in a week or so.

 

thats a bummer.............It just really spoils things when folks dont go that extra mile for sound and pressing quality, especially for such important recordings as these. Looks like orginal pressings will hold their value.

 

How could you POSSIBLY expect anything more from a company that is using CDs as their vinyl "masters"?

 

You can at least hope for a clean, quiet pressing, thats my minimum expectation.

Mastering is a whole other debate and should be also a top priority I just have a habit of setting my expectations low so I can be pleasantly surprised.

 

I guess my assumption would be that if they aren't even going to bother getting a good master to do a vinyl issue, then why would they care about things like pressing, packaging or anything else. They are clearly issuing the album as a collectible money grab, not as anything that brings new and better quality sound to the market.

 

I don't see this as a money grab. Face it, 99% of the buyers aren't going to care where this is sourced from. Sad, but that's the reality. I want an audiophile release of these titles, but I don't think any of the audiophile companies (or Polygram, for that matter) will put the care and effort into reissuing these titles for us.

 

Well my first idea this being a 'let's jump on that vinyl-bandwagon'-release appears to be true (although I haven't heard anything about the sound-quality Laughing Stock pressing yet..). I find the approach of Ba Da Bing records surprising; I can imagine you may treat a badly mastered blockboster-album to be treated like this; not two fine and subtle recorded albums like these...
For the potential Mark Hollis-buyers I can can only give this advice: stick to the cd and if you haven't got it: it's on sale for a very nice price!

 

I don't think Mark Hollis is an audiophile recording to begin with. Sounds like he recorded it at home in a bedroom. A remastering might help, but the original recording always determines how good any remaster will sound.

Orig cd of Laughing Stock is a step way down in sound quality also (at least the cd I've heard) and I doubt any orignal lp sounds much better. But then again, the remastered Spirit of Eden was a very pleasant surprise.

 

Recorded at Master Rock Studios in London. Each instrument was recorded by a pair of Neumann M49 tube microphones. The musician was placed in the part of the room that corresponded to the placement in the stereo field. Overall a painstaking process that captures the music beautifully, IMHO.

 

I don't really know what qualifies something as an "audiophile" recording, but to my ears both Laughing Stock and Mark Hollis are beautiful sounding recordings with lots of ambiance, super wide and deep soundstage and fantastic dynamic range. The CDs I have of both sound wonderful, but sound their best late at night with the volume turned up. Also, to me the Spirit of Eden remaster is too bright, and I much prefer the original UK Parlophone CD. But to each his own.

 

Beautiful recording, and the CD does sound great. Pretty easy to get lost in Watershed. Very natural sounding bass and some real shimmer on the cymbals. Lots of space. Sounds kind of audiophile to me. But like some of us here, I prefer the original Parlophone master for Spirit of Eden too

 

The high resolution layer of the Spirit of Eden SACD sounds like a different mastering, to my ears (on my system). Not bright at all...