The Dark Side of The Moon: The best remastered edition? Options

[Antigen]

Hi to all,

i want to buy the best version of The Dark Side of The Moon of Pink Floyd.

I don't have a SACD player.

What is the best edition?

I have see on Amazon that exist a version made on 1992, one on 1994 and one on 2003 for 30th anniversary.

What is the best?

Thanks

[BearcatSandor]

Hi to all,

i want to buy the best version of The Dark Side of The Moon of Pink Floyd.

I don't have a SACD player.

What is the best edition?

I have see on Amazon that exist a version made on 1992, one on 1994 and one on 2003 for 30th anniversary.

What is the best?

Thanks

Well, what does "the best" mean to you, as far as this recording goes?

[Wombat]

i want to buy the best version of The Dark Side of The Moon of Pink Floyd.

You have a strange way of asking several stuff like in your other threads but i may help you here. People tell and even the pros that the music is pretty much the same on all versions!!

[cyberdux]

i want to buy the best version of The Dark Side of The Moon of Pink Floyd.

You have a strange way of asking several stuff like in your other threads but i may help you here. People tell and even the pros that the music is pretty much the same on all versions!!

I believe Antigen means "Which CD mastering would most closely represent the original recording?"

[Apesbrain]

There are many opinions on this as evidenced by a 13-page thread over at the Steve Hoffman forums...and that's just on the vinyl releases.

Wikipedia has some good coverage of the various CD and SACD releases. I'm sure the MFSL CD version is very nice, but I think it's out of print. There are some used ones available on Amazon though.

I ripped the stereo "redbook" layer on the 2003 hybrid SACD and it sounds just fine.

[BearcatSandor]

I have read that the redbook layer of the DSOTM SACD is a victim of the loudness wars. I don't remember if f i read that in Stereophile or in the Absolute Sound. It was one of those.

[PoisonDan]

I have the 1992 Columbia remaster, and it sounds absolutely great.

It's also definitely not affected by the loudness war. I don't have access to the files right now, but as far as I remember, the replaygain values were quite low (I think somewhere between -2 and -5).

Edit: Just verified: the albumgain is -3.69 dB.


This post has been edited by PoisonDan: Mar 30 2011, 20:37

[BearcatSandor]

I have the 1992 Columbia remaster, and it sounds absolutely great.

It's also definitely not affected by the loudness war. I don't have access to the files right now, but as far as I remember, the replaygain values were quite low (I think somewhere between -2 and -5).

Edit: Just verified: the albumgain is -3.69 dB.

Are the replaygain values indicative of more headroom/less compression? How should i be reading that? I thought it was a 'perceptual' measurement.

[onkl]

The MFSL has an album-gain of +0.78db with Eclipse being the loudest and -1.48db track-gain. I guess thats unaltered directly from the master, no compression or clipping.

[annadiethel]

I have the same question. Which version sounds better: 1973 edition or 2011 remasterized edition?

[soundping]

I have the MFSL gold cd and you can hear more higher frequencies. At least that's what I'm picking up on my mdr-v6 headphones.

[Porcus]

Are the replaygain values indicative of more headroom/less compression? How should i be reading that? I thought it was a 'perceptual' measurement.

ReplayGain measures some kind of average volume. Targetting a 'perceptual' average yes, but that is still some kind of average.

Suppose you have a peak-normalized CD. Then the gain value measures average-to-peak. Presumably a measure of dynamic range. How good a measure depends for example on material, but when you compare two masters of the same recording, then material is the same. So, at least you would presume it to be a decent indicator (though you might have to adjust for peak if they aren't normalized to same level).

This post has been edited by Porcus: Jun 14 2012, 11:08

[slks]

RG values are not a definitive indication of good mastering. While it's true that high RG values (-11 dB for example) almost certainly require some clipping/compression to reach ... Say you simply reduced the volume of that recording by 9 dB in Audacity. You'd now have a file with a RG measurement of -2 dB -- but it would still be just as clipped and compressed as the -11 dB file. RG only tells you what the perceived loudness is. It doesn't tell you whether a recording sounds good, whether it has been properly mastered or not.

The only exception to this, really, is when values start getting much beyond -10ish ... at that point, the audio's so loud that it's a near certainty that heavy amounts of clipping/compression are involved.

Now on to Dark Side of the Moon. I've got the MFSL release, which does measure an album RG of +0.78 dB and a peak of 0.600952 . Although these measurements don't tell you much, MFSL purports to do flat transfers of the master tapes without further compression. And it does sound like that's what they've done. I'm completely satisfied with it, and have never had any desire to track down any other version (except for the quadraphonic mix). Other CD releases are just going to be EQd a little differently, with newer ones probably being clippressed to varying degrees also. I see no reason to search for anything other than the MFSL, if you can find that release. If you want to change up the sound a bit, just play around with the EQ for yourself.

This post has been edited by slks: Jun 19 2012, 23:30

[Porcus]

Say you simply reduced the volume of that recording by 9 dB in Audacity. You'd now have a file with a RG measurement of -2 dB --

... and a peak at -9 dB, which you could use to adjust for comparison. (However, with e.g. fb2000, you need to convert the peak factor into decibels.)

[Stone Free]

I ripped the stereo "redbook" layer on the 2003 hybrid SACD and it sounds just fine.

I also have that pressing, however I do remember on listening to it not liking the mix as it really changed the nature of one of the songs, and I really didn't like the change.

Before that I got the remaster from 1994, and it sounded different from that.