Timeless music, nice pressing, but wonky mastering
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3 Stars
Posted
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
by
RCG
Poor "Aja." One of those albums that has more bad releases than good. I purchased this MFSL-1-033 version back when it was newly released. Sadly, it errs toward the bright side in its mastering with a rather strange tonal balance in the treble region.
If I didn't know better, I would say that it was incorrectly EQ'ed. It occurred to me that those CBS Mastersound half-speed had a similar sonic quality, and it was found that the EQ for those were set for full speed mastering, the center frequencies not dropped by half for the half-speed cutting. This has a very similar quality, with that pushed out treble and a thumping bass quality with a lack of the deeper bass present in this recording.
From a collectible standpoint, this version is worth owning, but there are other pressings that better it sonically, including the now out-of-print Kevin Gray mastering on Cisco.