Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 11:48:50 -0400 From: "budlet" <landerson at nyc dot rr dot com> Subject: The sound of Discipline
Got the remastered Discipline.
First thing I did was slap it into my CD-transport and queue up the tune Discipline. This has alsways been one of my favorite Crimson pieces, but I was always disgusted with the quality of the recording and master as it has existed to this day. The highs wer glassy, and the bass lacked any kind of substance at all. These are well-known features of early digital recordings, so I alwsy suspected that Discipline was one of these tragedies (Glen Gould's later Goldberg variations is another such digital tragedy).
So with remastering and HDCD, I was very hopeful that the excellent performance that had been so unworthily captured had now been given its due. And the verdict? With HDCD-capability, my Levinson/Thiel/McComrack rig revealed a very siginificant improvement. Although it ain't "Night Watch" (one of my favs in terms of sound quality), you can now hear Levin actually play. The drums now emit from distinct points in space, and there's a lot more detail. And despite the fact I can hear HDCD artifacts in Belew's voice, I love HDCD. Given this, I plan to buy the other 80s discs.