Zappa.com

Interestingly and opposed to Trendmonger's believe that this is because of new high resolution transfers made by the ZFT, this was made from FZ's original 1987 digital transfer.

Th.

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Active forum member since 2005 - R E T I R E D from this forum in 2013

Agreed.

Generally speaking I suspect that crappy masters are widely responsible for that bad reputation CDs have.
Back in the early eighties, many CDs have been made from LPs quick and dirty transfers or using low quality converters.
But now that we have wonderful technologies, no such issues can occur, studio engineers intentionally FUBAR any master with ugly compression.

I used to be a hi-fi salesman in the 70's and used a few Zappa's for demo (as well as the Nonesuch Varese album, heh)
Grand Wazoo was great on vinyl, very clear and spacious with a lot of dynamics (like the horn honk in Cletus)
It also seemed to sound particularly good on the JBL Prima's for example.

One Size Fits All was the other album I used regularly for demo, especially Sofa No 1 which I would use to demo the Cerwin-Vega 15T
towers to great effect.
Even with a mere 400 watt Phase Linear amp, the effect of the synth bass frequencies on that track were inexplicably powerful and majestic.
On several occasions, unsuspecting customers would defecate uncontrollably after several minutes of being subjected
to these frequencies. I think this may be understood by anyone familiar with Hans Jenny's 'Çymatics' series of science films.

Normally solid or semi-solid objects, when subjected to the right frequencies, will start bubbling up and liquifying
A more extreme example is the US military's 'sound cannon', which, at 200 decibels, has the ability to totally dislocate and rearrange
the internal organs of enemy combatants. At close range it can bore holes through solid concrete!

However, I digress...back to the topic
After years of comparing both Australian & US Zappa vinyl I found that the Australian WEA pressings were better, but
only from JABFLA to the ST/OF/Sleepdirt trilogy. Sheik Yerbouti was a bit 'toppy' & tweezed for my taste, but maybe
that was when Frank started to lose the top end in his hearing.

(Will have to post the CD comparison later because my scrollin' ain't workin')

I'm so glad that the horn honk from Cleetus has been mentioned somewhere on this forum! You're right, it sounds fucking amazing on the original vinyl!

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"drums are too noisy, 'n you've got no corners to hide in"