Rush - A Farewell to Kings 40th anniversary box set (Steven Wilson 5.1 mix included)

Well my box arrived Wednesday evening. I just got a chance to open it up.....and guess what? It only has 2 LPs in it! 2 of them are missing!!! :howl

This will be my first time having to do a return with Import CDs. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I'll still give the 5.1 a listen before I return it.....


....ooohhhh.....the music on the menu is very cool.......

privateuniverse said:

Well my box arrived Wednesday evening. I just got a chance to open it up.....and guess what? It only has 2 LPs in it! 2 of them are missing!!! :howl

This will be my first time having to do a return with Import CDs. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I'll still give the 5.1 a listen before I return it.....


....ooohhhh.....the music on the menu is very cool.......

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wow, now how can that honestly happen? Crazy.....

GOS said:

wow, now how can that honestly happen? Crazy.....

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I seem to have bad luck this time of year. Last year I had to return the mega Pink Floyd box because a disc was missing. I also had a mishap with a 4LP Velvet Underground set that came out for Record Store Day. My copy had two copies of the 1st LP, two copies of the 2nd LP and no copies of the 3rd & 4th LPs. Not much quality control at those packing plants! :howl


On the plus side, I did just work my way through the blu-ray. SW's mix is very nice.....

GOS said:

For those that get sick of hearing about vinyl being included in these super-duper box sets...driving the prices up without reason.....on this set, I can agree so far. I dug out the vinyl, very heavy and nice. Extremely clean looking visibly. Run them through my vinyl cleaner, dusted them down. Cued them up......and....

CRACKLE, CRACKLE! WTF?? Really? If you are going to include vinyl, driving up prices for others who do not want them...at least make the vinyl a high quality pressing. Mine, at least, are not high quality. Fidelity of the vinyl is excellent, it's the out of box crackle that is horrible honestly. I have dozens of old vinyl that are much quieter than these brand new LP's.

Duh.....

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Why did you clean them if they are new? dr. simple (Paul) and I listened to the vinyl on Saturday night and they sound great. Perhaps your record cleaner is introducing the noise.

DennisMabry said:

Why did you clean them if they are new? dr. simple (Paul) and I listened to the vinyl on Saturday night and they sound great. Perhaps your record cleaner is introducing the noise.

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Dennis, I cleaned them because out of the sleeve, they had a significant amount of white debris that came from inside sleeve. Also, I’m not a rookie at taking care of vinyl.

Finally, no chance my cleaning is introducing noise. If that were true, I would expect my other hundreds of cleaned vinyl would have similar issue, which they don’t.

[emoji1303]


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DennisMabry said:

Why did you clean them if they are new? dr. simple (Paul) and I listened to the vinyl on Saturday night and they sound great. Perhaps your record cleaner is introducing the noise.

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New vinyl should almost always be cleaned before being played.

GOS said:

Dennis, I cleaned them because out of the sleeve, they had a significant amount of white debris that came from inside sleeve. Also, I’m not a rookie at taking care of vinyl.

Finally, no chance my cleaning is introducing noise. If that were true, I would expect my other hundreds of cleaned vinyl would have similar issue, which they don’t.

[emoji1303]


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OK, well that's just sad then if you received bad pressings! That sucks. I had a bad pressing on a Norah Jones colored vinyl edition and cleaning didn't help, so I returned it and opted for the regular 180g black vinyl and had no problems with the replacement. However I usually do not use my vinyl washer on new vinyl unless there is something obviously wrong. I use an anti static brush, but other than that if there is a problem like a scratch or pressing problem, I send it back for a replacement. With this box set, I'm not sure what your recourse would be other than to send the whole thing back.

DennisMabry said:

OK, well that's just sad then if you received bad pressings! That sucks. I had a bad pressing on a Norah Jones colored vinyl edition and cleaning didn't help, so I returned it and opted for the regular 180g black vinyl and had no problems with the replacement. However I usually do not use my vinyl washer on new vinyl unless there is something obviously wrong. I use an anti static brush, but other than that if there is a problem like a scratch or pressing problem, I send it back for a replacement. With this box set, I'm not sure what your recourse would be other than to send the whole thing back.

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Yeah, all true. I guess I could have returned the set. In my heart, I just didn't have the stamina to do that. I'm happy with the 5.1 and well, that's what I love the most. I guess I could simply rip the vinyl and use Click Repair to deal with that.

In case you didn't see my post....I received Eye In The Sky box and the 45rpm vinyl sounded killer right out of the box. So, there clearly are big differences in vinyl.

GOS said:

Yeah, all true. I guess I could have returned the set. In my heart, I just didn't have the stamina to do that. I'm happy with the 5.1 and well, that's what I love the most. I guess I could simply rip the vinyl and use Click Repair to deal with that.

In case you didn't see my post....I received Eye In The Sky box and the 45rpm vinyl sounded killer right out of the box. So, there clearly are big differences in vinyl.

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Nice! My AP set delivery has been delayed. Maybe next week.

GOS said:

Dennis, I cleaned them because out of the sleeve, they had a significant amount of white debris that came from inside sleeve. Also, I’m not a rookie at taking care of vinyl.

Finally, no chance my cleaning is introducing noise. If that were true, I would expect my other hundreds of cleaned vinyl would have similar issue, which they don’t.

[emoji1303]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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I had the same problem with my Alan Parsons Lp's from the previous box set. They were covered with some sort of a white powder from the inner sleeves. I had to clean them before playing. I don't like those heavy cardboard sleeves everyone seems to be using.

Philip Spinner said:

I had the same problem with my Alan Parsons Lp's from the previous box set. They were covered with some sort of a white powder from the inner sleeves. I had to clean them before playing. I don't like those heavy cardboard sleeves everyone seems to be using.

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I too hate the heavy cardboard. Drives me crazy......

Well it's day whatevertheheck and still no AFtK in 5.1 for me.
Apparently ImportCD was doing the "Buy it from us at this lower than anywhere else price! (Shhhh, don't tell them we don't have copies yet and it's going straight to backorder.)" shtick. Grumble grumble rabble rabble.

GOS said:

CRACKLE, CRACKLE! WTF?? Really? If you are going to include vinyl, driving up prices for others who do not want them...at least make the vinyl a high quality pressing. Mine, at least, are not high quality. Fidelity of the vinyl is excellent, it's the out of box crackle that is horrible honestly. I have dozens of old vinyl that are much quieter than these brand new LP's.

Duh.....

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In the old days it was common practice to "dehorn" the stampers before pressing the vinyl. That usually isn't done now as the prevailing thinking is that the practice also removes musical info. How this applies to new vinyl is that you generally can't judge it for noise level until after a half dozen plays or so. Your stylus is the instrument which gets rid of the "burs" now. Play a few times, reclean and then judge.

http://repforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php?topic=18485.0

markshan said:

I... after a half dozen plays or so. Your stylus is the instrument which gets rid of the "burs" now. ...

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Ha! What about the rest of us that have more proper vinyl setups and not some DJ turntable with the tracking force set to 8g or more (lathe mode)?! (OK, that's a little caviler but still.)

It was one thing when vinyl was the leading consumer technology and the pressings turned out as well as they did. There was a wide range of quality and better pressings to chase down sometimes. The best cases were from people putting in their best effort.

Today, save for some very limited old school 100% analog recordings (from tape or live session to cutting lathe), the vinyl is a lossy copy of the HD digital master. (lossy = analog generation loss in this example) Why the heck would anyone want to screw around like that? The snobbier consumers will be listening to nothing less than the digital master with boutique converters. These new vinyl pressings are more facsimiles of artifacts from a different age than actual examples of the format. Imitations.

jimfisheye said:

These new vinyl pressings are more facsimiles of artifacts from a different age than actual examples of the format. Imitations.

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Like most generalizations, this is largely incorrect. There are some wonderful sounding modern pressings. Runs from a stamper are a tenth or less now than they were back then. It's like every copy is a WLP. The quality of vinyl varies wildly, but the good stuff of today is the best stuff ever made. Not like in the 70s during the oil embargo when almost all vinyl was cut with recycled records. Take a Speakers Corner reissue of a Motown record and compare it to the original. Those new pressings are better in every way.

I think your opinion has become popular because Rainblo did such a poor job with the Beatles pressings, and so many people have little experience with reissue vinyl outside of those albums, that this has become an accepted narrative. The only problem is that it's not true.

jimfisheye said:

Ha! What about the rest of us that have more proper vinyl setups and not some DJ turntable with the tracking force set to 8g or more (lathe mode)?!

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I run an AT440MLa at 1.5 grams. I've had new vinyl get quieter with repeated plays. That's not to say there aren't bad modern pressings, but you don't need a lathe to see vinyl improve.

markshan said:

Because it often sounds better.

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I sometimes disagree with the presentation of a mix or even the mix aesthetic itself and altering it sounds better to me. I always want to hear the master as unaltered and close to the source as possible for the first listen though. So that's where that's coming from.

I think I should have tried to wrap the above critique of modern vinyl with "This is what I don't like when I see it." It does read like a generalization and that wasn't my intention I don't think.

What can I say though. I do cheerlead for the HD digital formats. I don't want to get in the way of anybody still getting real things done in the analog domain. There's just this hipster thing that's more nostalgic for damaged vinyl or malfunctioning equipment than actually chasing fidelity that bugs the hell out of me. And the vinyl included in these box editions smells of targeting that.

1.9g on my BM MC-3. Guess I'm the one playing rough then.

jimfisheye said:

1.9g on my BM MC-3. Guess I'm the one playing rough then.

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Nah. Tracking too light can give stylus jitter which can be as damaging as tracking too heavy. I like to go middle to heavy end of recommended tracking weight.

markshan said:

Nah. Tracking too light can give stylus jitter which can be as damaging as tracking too heavy. I like to go middle to heavy end of recommended tracking weight.

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I went up to right where the +15db test tones tracked solid without any chirps of distortion.

The vinyl in mine is not very good either