Opinions on the quality of import Vinyl (1 Viewer)

[DEAN DE FURIA]

I was browsing in my local CD world and they have a pretty decent selection of current Vinyl LP reissues. Most were from the UK. How good are the "Simply Vinyl" brand of reissues? They had some big titles such as "Tommy" and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road". Do they use the original master? Are they as good as MFSL or DCC Lp's?

I also saw a bunch of domestic Columbia 180 grm reissues (Sly, Dylan, etc). Do they sound any good?

One last question: What about the quality of Japanese Vinyl? They almost always sell for big dollars on ebay. The packages sure do look cool with the OBI. Did'nt they get mastered off of 2nd gen master tapes?

 

[Philip Hamm]

I never noticed that import records were a whole lot better or worse than domestic. Maybe a little bit better for Japanese, but I only have a couple of these and they're mostly 45RPM maxi-singles so that's going to sound better anyway. This is from back in the day mind you.

NP: John Lennon: Mind Games

 

[Frank_S]

David, Simply Vinyl had received bad reviews for their poor QC. Many of their records were badly warped, unplayable. I only own 1 of their pressings, Garbage(That's the name of the band), it sounds good. I would say that my favorite re-issue company of late is Classic Records. They re-released all Led Zepellin albums and they sound incredible, well worth the $25 asking price. I have a few Imports, Traffic, The Beatles, The Who and believe them tto be superior to the Domestic pressings.

If you like Jazz, there are a lot of Audiophile pressings that sound very nice. I actually prefer the Mono releases when it comes to Jazz.

I only own 1 Japanese pressing, it's a Toshiba/EMI picture disc of "Abbey Road". I rarely play it but it sounds very nice.

 

[David Egan]

20 years ago I was buying a lot of Japanese LPs because they were clearly superior to domestic vinyl of the time. I have long regarded these albums to be better than most CDs but with recent 24 bit technology I no longer think this is the case. (note that MFSL used to do most of it's pressing in Japan.)

On the other hand I always found German vinyl to be disappointing. British vinyl could go either way.

I am wary of the Simply Vinyl product because I don't know if they are taken from analog masters. I have recently purchased LPs by Bob Dylan and the Ramones that specified they were from analog masters and some were under $10. Spending a lot on a vinyl copy of a digital master seems pointless.