Hi guys. I have been listening at John Surman and Garbarek ECM CDs for decades. Digital as well. I recently bought a collection of ECM LPs of the same albums ie Private City, Legend of the 7 dreams, Rites and so on. What I can say is that I have been highly disappointed. The quality is not what one can expect from an analogue sounding LP. The sound is thin, in a nutshell, I even find it sometimes less good than the CD or digital streaming. These pressing are of course digital, as opposed to an old ECM pressing from the 70’s I found in a second hand shop at Montreal which is called Conference of the Birds (Dave Holland) which in turn is an analogue pressing and sounds marvellous, with flesh and so on. I suspect ECM to deliberately create "CD sounding LPs" as a way to satisfy a majority of people who own poor equipment and cannot extract the best of a rich analogue pressing. I do not want to look paranoiac but I guess this is a profitability issue at the end ie they can sell more of these "CD sounding LPs". I am so disappointed from ECM, that I definitely stopped buying their new releases, even in CD, and enjoy the streaming versions with Spotify. If someone can advise on a label which is only making LP pressing from analogue sources, I am interested to know which one is.
Done buying new vinyl
Just bought a few albums recommended by a mag. Party by Aldous Harding and Beautiful Jazz by Christian Jacobs. The first has that slight buzzing distortion and dirty noise in one channel for the entire recording. The second has a two small clicks every revolution thru most of a side. The recording quality of the first varies from song to song. From very good to fair. But mostly dull with processing. The second is an AAA recording and is fair at best. Recorded too low and too muffled with flattened soundstage and dynamics. I have hundreds of 60s jazz and blues records that trounce these.
Should I send them back to Amazon?
Should I send them back to Amazon?