Reissue Roundup.(Review)

"Can't get no fancy notes from my blue guitar, can't get no antidote for blues."

The above quotation comes from Mark Knopfler's song, "One World," appearing on the Dire Straits smash hit album, Brothers in Arms. Judging from my initial reaction to this CD in its newly remastered version, audiophiles who are hoping to hear this album, finally, with the fancy notes they have always hoped for will still be searching for the antidote to its lackluster sound. It and five other Dire Straits albums -- Dire Straits, Communique, Making Movies, Love Over Gold, and On Every Street -- are now available in newly reissued SBM remasters at mid-price. Because they are almost completely devoid of technical details in the liner notes, one has to look closely to find that all six of these were remastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering. I thought there may be some readers who have been itching to get their hands on them, so here are some impressions.

Mark Knopfler, leader of Dire Straits, is one of the most interesting songwriters of his generation. His music embodies much from the '60s and '70s rock groups that preceded him, with biting lyrics similar to those of a Paul Simon or Bob Dylan richly portraying his often somber senses. Many of his songs deal in very subtle ways with the inequities of living in the modern world; others are not so subtle. The album titles often carry a connotation of the subject matter within, as is the case with some of these six remasters. Indeed, the group's name itself might harbor some implication of Knopfler's world view.

I started with Communique (Warner 47770-2), the group's second album. As the album title suggests, there is an urgent message contained herein. Unlike Dire Straits' first album, Communique offers social commentary and introspection through the use of diverse images and situations. Into the Rotel it went; I sat down to listen and then pushed the start button on my remote. Seconds later I was jumping from my chair to back the volume way down. This has to be one of the loudest CDs in my collection. The volume control on my SP-9 is usually set between the 9:30 and 10 o'clock positions to listen to CDs, but I had to take it down to about 8:00 to get the volume to a comfortable level (7:00 is as far down as it goes). At this level, the average SPL is somewhere in the low 90's, with peak levels extending as much as 3-6 dB more.

On the British vinyl pressing, Communique offered some amazing audiophile sonic delights from start to finish, and is, perhaps, the best-sounding of their six studio releases. In short, this import pressing of the album is transparent, musically natural-sounding and dynamic -- far more so than on the domestic pressing. Knopfler's slightly Morrison-like voice has air around it, with a clarity that allows listeners to hear the subtle shadings in his vocal articulations (especially on consonant sounds like the "w" and "th" in the word "with" -- as in "if you ain't with me, girl ..."). In this example, there is an elongation to the "w" giving it the proper "uwa" sound we hear in normal speech, and we hear the "th" trail off properly too. One of the problems with most recordings of vocal music is that such acute enunciation is somehow masked or veiled, either through equipment that cannot capture such subtle details adequately, or through improper equalization when the sound engineer makes the working masters. At times, one can hear the vibrations of his vocal chords in the lower octaves almost as well as if Knopfler were standing about six feet in front of the listener. Background vocals sound just as background vocals should: they are placed distantly enough in the soundstage to offer the illusion of a live performance. Instrumentally, the lines of the bass player on the LP show more dynamic and harmonic contrasts, especially on the first two tracks, "Once Upon A Time In The West" and "News," than either version of the CD. Not only are the bass notes more distinguishable as the bassist moves up and down the scale, but there are larger differences in levels as well. The drums on the vinyl are also far more open and natural sounding than on either CD. This is especially noted near the end of "News," where the bass drum exhibits an airiness and punchy, speedy, quality not present on either version of the CD. In my younger days, I used this track to assess the strengths or weaknesses in a speaker's ability to reproduce the bottom end with requisite depth and speed. Both versions of the CD sound less articulate and a bit bloated by comparison in this respect, and both CDs sound remarkably similar.

The biggest differences between the LP and both CD versions of Communique boil down to transparency. This is most obviously noted on the final track of the album, "Follow Me Home." Here, the original engineer used the sounds of crickets and incoming waves on a beach to transport the listener from the mental image of the previous song into the next. Critcal listeners might imagine themselves walking on a south sea island beach just after dusk; one can almost sense the dense, humid tropical air. Readers who have walked along a beach will have a good recollection of the roar of the incoming surf as the waves come on shore, and of the bubbles in the surf popping as the water recedes. Because the level contrasts between the immensity of the incoming surf and the subtlety of the popping bubbles as it recedes are nearly non-existent on the CDs, the sound falls quite a bit short of the vinyl. As noted above, all of the sound qualities that made the original recording superior to the reissues in the first two tracks continue on throughout the album. I can assume only that they were made from second or third generation copies that do not capture all of the subtleties of the original tape. When comparing the older CD to the newer one, the similarity in sound would suggest that the degradation in sound when compared to the analog original cannot be attributed to differences in the equipment used to create either of the CD masters. Nor would I think that Bob Ludwig might have taken a different approach in creating the new digital masters, intentionally masking these details.

All of this is just as true in assessing the sound quality of Love Over Gold (Warner 47772-2), Knopfler's tour de force commentary on social maladies. Even the title of the album gives one a hint of the subject matter he will find here. Like Faulkner's short story, "The Bear," the first selection on the album, "Telegraph Road," presents us with an account of the destruction of nature through the onslaught of civilization, and the degradation in the quality of individual freedoms that follows. In "Private Investigations," Knopfler speaks of the mistrust pervading much of social interaction and its psychological effects on people. In "Industrial Disease" we are faced with more of the consequences of modern life and a critique of socialism. As an artistic whole, Love Over Gold may be the best of the six reissued albums despite the fact that its popularity among record buyers was lower than the others. Peaking at number 19 on the Billboard album charts in October, 1982, the album did not enjoy the commercial success of any that preceded or followed it. As for the sound, the original analog versions (I have the domestic and German pressings) are almost as transparent as Communique, and in a few exceptional moments they're even better. The long, low-frequency synthesizer bass introduction on "Telegraph Road" is deep and spatially expansive on the vinyl. On my Velodyne ULD-12 subwoofers there is a quality to it that reveals a clear distinction in depth and a greater sense of changes in octaves than there is on either CD. The acoustic guitar and piano at the beginning of "Private Investigations" are rich in ambiance and with a degree of transparency, again, missing from either CD version. And later in the same song, the shattering glass appearing deep in the background of the left channel (at 5:40, my CD player tells me) is clear and palpable, but almost completely missing in both of the digital transfers. Each of these instances demonstrates the lack of inner detail and transparency common throughout this reissue when compared to the original vinyl. Readers who are familiar with the album will know of what I write. As with the Communique reissue, this one is rather dry and bright sounding, showing no improvement over the original mid-'80s CD release, which was itself no match for the superior sound of the record (please don't kill the messenger).