Disagree! It is clear to me you are part of a select group.
Some "big name" mastering engineers have turned their studios into factories. They churn out a ton of product and one point everything starts sounding the same as everything else.
Interesting note about master tapes. It is is one of the most abused terms in music marketing. All those expensive
Japanese SHM "remasters" are all from copies.
And to be honest, I am speculating with a certain amount of certainty, that many of the new Mobile Fidelity SACD hybrids are generated from
PCM masters. The frequency of the releases and the similarity of the Redbook layer to previous remasters kind of brought it home for me.
Mind you, this is just my opinion, but upsampled PCM master produced SACDs are not exactly a big secret.
The beauty for the record companies are that once the digital archive is produced, they can license it to any one with out worry.
Sorry was thinking about vinyl. And even Steve can't get everything either Bernie was the only one that RCA would send their tapes to. I know they wouldn't let Chesky take them out of the building.
For tape playback, it all depends on the tape that I'm working on. The tape machine might be an Ampex ATR100, a solid-state machine, or maybe it will be one of my vintage Ampex vacuum tube machines, like a 350 or a 351. Depending on what the tape sounds like. If the master tape sounds pretty sterile and needs a little vacuum tube help, then I will use the vacuum tube machine. If it's already luscious enough then I'll use the solid-state machine. If I'm going to EQ anything, I have vintage EQs, I have Universal Audio EQs, I have George Massenburg Labs parametric, I have a Sovtek parametric. Pretty much the standard tools of the trade.
Steve likes his 351 because he can tube roll and get the sound he likes. What I find interesting is that I think it's a reversal for the listener depending on the playback system. Some of the biggest mastering houses use equipment like Requisite Audio which has a beautiful luscious sound but that sound can be altered during playback quite a bit even on audiophile systems.
I love Steves work on the buddy Holly masters, now its known he did little to 'improve' them and sometimes thats all it takes. im not surprised by the difficulty in obtaining let alone insuring that you indeed have a 1st generation tape. i was kibitzing with Chad Kassem when a show goer walked up and asked whether his recent "Tea" reissue was from a 1st gen tape or what and then asked if Mobile fidelity's were "lets just say I've been up the cow ass, i know where the butter comes from..." as only chad could say it.
i've questioned some of Chads early reissuses as they were variable and in some cases inferior to the orginal LP and im sure he was 'duped' no pun intended, by some who took his money and guaranteed he was getting the best copy of a given tape when indeed it was far from it.
