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Not likeing remasters - Are origingal 90's Vinyls worth it?

I am new the vinyl world and I was going to start collecitng more of the bands where I liked the whole album. Most of the music I listen to is from the 90’s. There has been a lot of remastered albums released on vinyl (The Verve, Dinosaur Jr, Electronic (band), Cocteau Twins, etc) in the last 15 years. But everything I listen to of the remasters (on streaming or cd).... I find things I do not like about them. Ethier they were re-recorded with to much volume or something else that just keeps me from enjoying the music like I did the original. 

But then that leads me down another road... getting the original vinyls. I am finding these to go anywhere from $100 to $300 which is a lot of money for me. Then I read back in the 1990s cds were the main media. The vinyl counterparts put out in the 90s did not have the same effort or sound engineering put into them to make them sound as good. Is that true?  

dman777
mulveling's avatar
mulveling
2,451 posts
 

I have had very bad luck with 90s vinyl. Best to stick with 80s and earlier. The real problem is CD was dominant by this time, which caused albums to start running 50 mins and longer. When they tried pressing that to 1 LP, it sounds lifeless and boring. Definitely look at runtimes per LP side. You want that to be 23 mins a side or less.

Of course there are exceptions. I have the very limited pressing of Alice In Chains’s 3 legged dog album on 2LPs and it’s about as good as hard rock / metal can possibly sound on any format! 
 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
7,937 posts
 

@dman777 digitally remastered albums suck for the most part. Vinyl or digital. 
I buy either the original or new reissues done in full analog preferably by Kevin Gray, Bernie Grundman, Scott Hull, etc.

Look for Analog Productions, Rhino High Fidelity, Craft, Blue Note Tone Poet for jazz. 
One exception of digital recording transferred to vinyl in my collection is the Nils Lofgren Live done by Analog Productions. Jaw dropping good. 

dman777 OP
189 posts
 

@mulveling oh no.... I only like 90's music mostly for vinyl. I just spent 5k on a turntable system.... I wonder now if I made a mistake. 

@audphile1 is it possible to get a re-issue from a 90's album on vinyl and not have it remastered? Not sure what to look for. 

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