Definitive Audiophile pressings

e.s. said:
Yeah, not surprising at all. I'd sooner give $300 to someone selling an early pressing than the Craft reissue.
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Well in that case, I've got a 1972 US stereo repress with green label and blue text on the jacket. :D

Kidding aside, that ebay stuff is ridiculous, and I can't believe all those sales can be completed by sellers who don't even have the item in hand!
 
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e.s. said:
In this case, affording it likely wouldn't have helped much. I had one in my cart, and it was sold out before I could complete the sale – so literally seconds. Worse, the next day, I got an email from Craft informing me I had left it in my cart without completely my purchase, so I naively went back thinking I still had a chance... only to see that it was just as sold out as it was the day before. Looking at how many are on eBay now for $300+, I think it will be a long time before I give Craft a second look on any of the D2C releases.
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Well the next one will have bigger pressing numbers so hopefully that means more people will be able to get a copy.
 
zdkaiser said:
Thanks. Picked this one up. Mastered by Kevin Gray, pressed at Optimal. Has rave reviews on Discogs. Totally worth $20. No mention if its AAA though
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I believe that if it has KG@ATM in the runout it's AAA. If it's KG@CA it's digital sources on this title. But even the digital sourced one sounds awesome.
 
zdkaiser said:
If it's this copy from 2015, its KPG@ATM. Guess those are the same plates they used to press this album at RTI in 2008.


Van Morrison - Moondance

Url: https://www.discogs.com/Van-Morrison-Moondance/release/7792823

Shared from the Discogs App
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The issue with the listing is that a bunch of different pressings have the same UPC I believe, so no telling what you get on this or Astral Weeks until you open it in most cases for the black version. Worth a shot with Amazon's return policy though. I think I bought this from Popmarket since it claimed to be the AAA version based on the date but it ended up being the KG@CA one. ended up not returning it though since i think i paid under $15 for it and it sounded great.
 
For anyone curious, I purchased this last week: Moondance - Amazon

and it matches this discogs entry, ugly new Warner Brothers logo and all: https://www.discogs.com/Van-Morrison-Moondance/release/15300484

It is the version with KPG@ATM on one side and KPG+SH@ATM on the other. I actually have compared the KPG@CA and KPG@ATM versions and will say I have a very very slight preference for the KPG@ATM but honestly they both sound great.
 
BiggaWhat said:
For anyone curious, I purchased this last week: Moondance - Amazon

and it matches this discogs entry, ugly new Warner Brothers logo and all: https://www.discogs.com/Van-Morrison-Moondance/release/15300484

It is the version with KPG@ATM on one side and KPG+SH@ATM on the other. I actually have compared the KPG@CA and KPG@ATM versions and will say I have a very very slight preference for the KPG@ATM but honestly they both sound great.
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Total noob question. What’s the difference between KG@ATM and KG@CA?
 
Sonicpharmacist said:
Total noob question. What’s the difference between KG@ATM and KG@CA?
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Are you asking the difference between the two in general or specifically in regards these Moondance records? In general it’s the place where the album was mastered ATM is AcousTech Masterng and CA is Cohearent Audio.

In relation to Moondance supposedly the ATM version is AAA while the CA is a digital cut but since they are both Rhino and use the same UPC it’s impossible to differentiate until you can check out the runout matrix.
 
Sonicpharmacist said:
Total noob question. What’s the difference between KG@ATM and KG@CA?
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TenderLovingKiller® said:
Are you asking the difference between the two in general or specifically in regards these Moondance records? In general it’s the place where the album was mastered ATM is AcousTech Masterng and CA is Cohearent Audio.

In relation to Moondance supposedly the ATM version is AAA while the CA is a digital cut but since they are both Rhino and use the same UPC it’s impossible to differentiate until you can check out the runout matrix.
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Acoustech Mastering closed & KG set up Coahearant. I sort of had an assumption that he kept the same mastering suite, does anyone know if that's correct? I've also assumed that it was a split between Hoffman & KG, & he basically went out on his own. I don't really know what the story is there, but does Hoffman even do any mastering anymore?

I know there was a lot of chat about the cable upgrade in the mastering chain prior to setting up Coherent & saw this post for Joe Harley in 2007. I think this is why I assumed he uses the same mastering suite. But 2007 seems like a long time ago, maybe I'm confusing different stories

forums.stevehoffman.tv

Upgrading Connections at AcousTech Mastering

It goes without saying that there are many controversies and debates in the perfectionist audio/LP collector market. But one area of near universal...
forums.stevehoffman.tv forums.stevehoffman.tv
 
Andy said:
Acoustech Mastering closed & KG set up Coahearant. I sort of had an assumption that he kept the same mastering suite, does anyone know if that's correct? I've also assumed that it was a split between Hoffman & KG, & he basically went out on his own. I don't really know what the story is there, but does Hoffman even do any mastering anymore?

I know there was a lot of chat about the cable upgrade in the mastering chain prior to setting up Coherent & saw this post for Joe Harley in 2007. I think this is why I assumed he uses the same mastering suite. But 2007 seems like a long time ago, maybe I'm confusing different stories

forums.stevehoffman.tv

Upgrading Connections at AcousTech Mastering

It goes without saying that there are many controversies and debates in the perfectionist audio/LP collector market. But one area of near universal...
forums.stevehoffman.tv forums.stevehoffman.tv
Click to expand...
Hoffman supposedly got fired from MCA for stealing master tapes which later got him banned from being given any Universal tapes. Since they are one of the huge labels, his career was effectively over. There were also those who thought that Hoffman was riding KG’s coattails and KG was the reason why stuff like the DCCs sounded so good.

boom boom did upgrade cables at some point. I believe he upgraded to Audioquest cables around 2007. Not sure if Cohearant is the same exact setup as ATM but you can see his gear here: Our System | COHEARENT

The reason why they recut some of the VanMo as digital was that the tapes were just in bad condition. When they cut the ATM versions they also transferred the tape to digital high res since they could tell the tape didn’t have a lot of life left in it. Then they recut from digital at CA.
 
MikeH said:
Hoffman supposedly got fired from MCA for stealing master tapes which later got him banned from being given any Universal tapes. Since they are one of the huge labels, his career was effectively over. There were also those who thought that Hoffman was riding KG’s coattails and KG was the reason why stuff like the DCCs sounded so good.

boom boom did upgrade cables at some point. I believe he upgraded to Audioquest cables around 2007. Not sure if Cohearant is the same exact setup as ATM but you can see his gear here: Our System | COHEARENT

The reason why they recut some of the VanMo as digital was that the tapes were just in bad condition. When they cut the ATM versions they also transferred the tape to digital high res since they could tell the tape didn’t have a lot of life left in it. Then they recut from digital at CA.
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Wow. Stealing master tapes from your customers, words fails me.

I seem to also recall KG somewhere saying his view was that sometimes the mastering can be better from a digital copy as opposed always going from the tape. With the Van Mo, he probably did the digital master fist time round & then just decided he could get a better sound on from that on the more recent releases.
 
Andy said:
Wow. Stealing master tapes from your customers, words fails me.

I seem to also recall KG somewhere saying his view was that sometimes the mastering can be better from a digital copy as opposed always going from the tape. With the Van Mo, he probably did the digital master fist time round & then just decided he could get a better sound on from that on the more recent releases.
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I don't know if it was just a rumor or not, but supposedly the FBI raided his house after some master tapes went missing. And he had also been splicing in pieces of copy tape into original master tapes. The whole thing has a sense of mystery to it and not 100% sure what went down, but the last time he regularly worked was back in 1993 according to discogs. Some people say Hoffman was the fall guy for some failed deal with Buddy Holly's estate (Hoffman was rumored to try to sell off some of Holly's master tapes to a third party). I think the Hoffman cult tried to wage war with Wikipedia to get them to take down certain stuff about Steve.

As for what KG said, I think he said that he'd rather use a high-res digital master than a copy of a copy tape. His overall point was that digital doesn't automatically = bad. More and more older recordings will be transferred to digital high res to preserve the tapes and as long as someone like KG is doing the cutting, I know it can still sound great.
 
MikeH said:
I don't know if it was just a rumor or not, but supposedly the FBI raided his house after some master tapes went missing. And he had also been splicing in pieces of copy tape into original master tapes. The whole thing has a sense of mystery to it and not 100% sure what went down, but the last time he regularly worked was back in 1993 according to discogs. Some people say Hoffman was the fall guy for some failed deal with Buddy Holly's estate (Hoffman was rumored to try to sell off some of Holly's master tapes to a third party). I think the Hoffman cult tried to wage war with Wikipedia to get them to take down certain stuff about Steve.

As for what KG said, I think he said that he'd rather use a high-res digital master than a copy of a copy tape. His overall point was that digital doesn't automatically = bad. More and more older recordings will be transferred to digital high res to preserve the tapes and as long as someone like KG is doing the cutting, I know it can still sound great.
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That's crazy, sounds like there is the makings of a good music doc. right there.
 
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