Geffen Records lp's

Jonnyb53: You are prob. right about the pressing.. I'd have to buy 10 diff. LP's like the "Hot Stamper" guy and then I'm prob. sure one of them would be absent of the 'noise' I have in mine.. It was just easier to buy the cd of that title, which sounds great also without the noise. I think I have the next Metheny after "Still Life" also on Geffen and if I remember right there is no problem with the vinyl on that one. One nice thing about the ECM pressings is that I've NEVER had bad vinyl from them.. and they were pressing right into 1991 or so.. and the German imports of that period are exceptional pressing quality.

01-15-09: Xiekitchen
I was going to talk about the Pat Metheny recordings but I see someone beat me to it. The sound quality of "Still Life" is very good, but the pressing itself and vinyl suck. My Geffin label pressing suffers from noisy bad vinyl. too bad, as the Metheny recording is wonderful.

I have three Geffen Metheny recordings and they all are very quiet and dynamic. I have no complaints about the mastering, vinyl, or pressing quality. I suspect your record was stamped near the end of the life of that particular stamper, and should have been replaced beforehand.

1-15-09: Mapman
The golden age of vinyl preceded the 80's. More and more (not all) vinyl products were suffering deeply by the time CDs came into vogue.

My experience doesn't match this at all. As I write this I've just listened to two great-sounding '80s albums, "Business as Usual" by Men at Work and "How WIll the Wolf Survive?" by Los Lobos. I have many 1980s LPs spanning several labels and genres--The Police, The Cars, Elvis Costello, Go-Gos, the Geffen Metheny albums, Stevie Winwood, Dwight Yoakam, Manhattan Transfer, Bobby McFerrin, Stray Cats, London and Deutsche Grammofon classical, etc.

Either I've been *extraordinarily* lucky or the '80s was a second golden age for LPs. Yes the vinyl is thinner, but in my experience if you can adjust VTA and have a record clamp to reduce resonances, thin vinyl is a non-factor. Some of my better-sounding records are of the notoriously thin Dynaflex variety. By the '80s the analog tape decks had an s/n of 100 dB or more and there were many talented engineers, mixers, and masterers who could put together a good record in the analog domain in their sleep.

I have a few albums from this era that are a bit bass-shy -- the Men at Work and at least one Stray Cats album, but even those are very quiet, clean, and dynamic. Many others such as from The Police and The Cars are very transparent, dynamic, and have excellent extension at the frequency extremes.

Ponnie, I agree with you.

The golden age of vinyl preceded the 80's. More and more (not all) vinyl products were suffering deeply by the time CDs came into vogue.

GEffen cam into existence late in the game during the vinyl era, so perhaps that and other newer labels suffered as a whole more so then some others that had been around for a while.

My 2 cents is this. What you are experiencing is poor mastering from the enginer and producer. Many multi-track recordings were poorly mastered by the recording enginers over the years especially in the 80's. It was all about profit and CD's during the 80's.

Pat Metheny along with many perfectionist musicians made sure their recordings represented them and their craft. The groups you mentioned may not have taken that same level of care as Pat. Don't blame the label blame the artist for letting a mediocre recording get released. If you want to hear something special check out Dire Strait On Every Street LP and listen to Fade to Black. Even the CD is exceptional. They made sure that every recording they made exceeded expectations. There are many other artist out there that take care of their business. You may not listen to much Mowtown but during the 60's and 70's I can't remember a bad recording on that label. A couple may have been a little bass shy but most were well recorded. Look at Earth Wind and Fire, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, and many others took pride in their recordings.
Some labels took short cuts for profit during the 80's mainly becuse the CD revolution "Perfect Sound Forever" was the mandate at $18.00 per disc. If you look at the quality of vinyl during the 70's and compare it an 80's LP you will see the 80's vinyl is very thin and "Floppy". There was more poorer quality vinyl which led to more noise. The age of disco was not very friendly to our ears and even the quality of the cover art went down.

See if you can find a European copy of that release and see if there are any differences. Vinyl was still made there even when we abandoned vinyl for the silver disc. That's my 2 cents on the topic.

I was going to talk about the Pat Metheny recordings but I see someone beat me to it. The sound quality of "Still Life" is very good, but the pressing itself and vinyl suck. My Geffin label pressing suffers from noisy bad vinyl. too bad, as the Metheny recording is wonderful. Had to resort to buying the CD for sound without the dirty vinyl noise. and in my experience, no amount of cleaning gets out that dirt pressed into the vinyl itself.

Mapman, I have 2 double fantasy records, and they are both pretty dull sounding. But if you remember a good one, then I suppose they are out there! Thanks, I will look for a third! There is a Lennon compilation I have as well, and hands down the cd smokes it!
I'll have to grab a couple of those Metheny albums, Thanks guys.

"Double Fantasy" by John Lennon on Geffen is not bad as I recall.

On the other extreme the first "Asia" album from Geffen about a year or two later is a huge letdown as you describe.

I don't know if any more meaning can be inferred other than some were good and some were bad as was common with many labels back then.

My experience is exactly the opposite, though I don't know if I have any Geffen pop/rock LPs. I have three Pat Metheny Geffen LPs (Still Life (Talking), Letter From Home, and Question and Answer), and they are some of the best commercial pressings I have, easily on a par with '70s-era ECM jazz records.

In fact, Question and Answer has exceptional dynamics, especially Roy Haynes' drumming, and I don't know how they managed that given that the pressing has over 30 minutes per side.

I have the weezer blue album which was originially recorded and released under geffen, there was a Geffen Release and a Universal release, neither sounded as good as the CD.

depends on the time frame for the releases I guess. Geffen, probably like most labels all but gave up on the vinyl format from the mid 80s until recenly with the re-hip-ification of LP's.

The recording and mastering process was devoted to producing a frequency range more suited for digital played back. Its likely they never even made a second mix/master for vinyl and just pressed from the digital master.