A Love Supreme Hybrid SACD

[Late]

I thought there was a thread already on the hybrid SACD of A Love Supreme, but none of my searches yielded any relevant hits. ANYway, does anyone here have the Analog Productions hybrid SACD of this title? How do you like it? (I'm asking about the sound/remastering as opposed to the music, which we already love.) I'm curious as to how the hybrid SACD sounds in comparison to the 2-disc RVG edition, and particularly if AP was able to use the same tapes that Rudy used.

(OR ... should I be looking for the 1987 German or Japanese pressing?) ARgh!

Thanks for your input!

[jazzbo]

I have both the AP SACD of ALS and the Verve SACD (which is an RVG mastering). I like them both, for different reasons. They both sound very good to me. If you've heard any of the AP Blue Notes or Impulse releases on SACD, this one falls right in that camp. Rather neutral and with the SACD resolution there is more ambiance and texture to the sound. Mastered quite low, so you have to crank the volume. The Verve I think I prefer though, it has more oomph to the sound, and it sounds closer to the LP to me, and I listened to this on LP quite a bit. I just connect to the Verve SACD a bit more.

The Verve SACD sounds a lot like the Deluxe version with mastering by RVG, but with that extra resolution and resulting bit more room sound and dynamic texture.

Ultimately it may come down to whether you really like "Hoffman style" or "RVG style" mastering. I'm not slavishly devoted to either. I like both reissues.

[J.A.W.]

Note that the Analogue Productions impulse! hybrid SACDs were mastered by Kevin Gray, Hoffman had nothing to do with them - let me make clear that Lon didn't say that Hoffman mastered them, but some people seem to think they're his masterings. To my ears Gray has a different mastering style, which I generally prefer to Hoffman's. I've heard the CD-layers of some of them and they sounded excellent to me; I've not heard A Love Supreme, though - it's far from my favourite John Coltrane album.

Edited June 3, 2012 by J.A.W.

[Late]

Thanks, Lon and Hans — I appreciate the input.

On a side note: I know that things can sometimes get touchy on this board in regard to preferences for remastering and different engineers (and different labels), but I value all informed opinions. I have ten of AP's hybrid SACDs (only two on Impulse! however), and like them, so I'll probably check out the hybrid ALS at some point. I'm hoping to purchase an SACD player some time next year, and look forward to finally hearing the SACD layer of a number of my hybrids (most of them classical).

Anyone else have this particular hybrid SACD and care to comment?

[ShowsOn]

If you like this album get the Analogue Productions SACD.

I have owned 4 other copies of this album, but none of them are as good as the A.P. SACD. The A.P. doesn't have any weird treble boosted E.Q. that the two RVG mastered versions I have heard have. I even owned the RVG mastered single layer SACD, but that disc suffers from boosted high frequencies that make the cymbals sound annoying. The A.P. version has a very natural tone and full dynamic range so you get to hear the very dynamic way that Elvin Jones plays. The compression on the RVG version just evens out the drums so it is as if Jones is playing with the same intensity for all of each movement, which just isn't the case.

The only thing that may annoy some people about the A.P. version is that the channels aren't narrowed at all, so it has a very wide stereo image from Coltrane on the far left to the drums on the far right with the piano and bass in the centre. I understand this annoys some people, but if you compare it to the RVG CD, the drums are panned in a lot, whereas the sax isn't panned in as much, so it has this strange unsymmetrical stereo image which I think sounds strange.

I can't recommend the A.P. SACD highly enough, it will be worth a fortune when it goes out of print because it is the most natural sounding version of this album that just sounds great at any volume.

I had a bunch of comparison MP3s on my computer that compared the same short sections of 5 versions. I will upload them and add the links to this thread if I can find them.