Well, despite my best efforts at avoiding RS , I have a rediscovered Gasoline Alley and Every Picture Tells A Story- EPTAS . Which are the best sounding CD, Hi Rez or 5.1 versions available on these?

Thanks, Lar

I have the Mobile Fidelity "Every Picture. . ." and I think it's great. If you can find a reasonable priced one, go for it.

I'm happy with my remaster of EPTAS. I've got an early Repertoire edition of GA, which also sounds fine.

MoFi Every Picture for me too!

I think this is one of those albums where you can't go wrong with any of the stereo versions. They all sound good.
Chip

Is there a mono version? I'd like to see the Ron Wood involved albums rereleased with Deluxe treatment -- mono and stereo along with bonus tracks. And to once and for all use original artwork (as first released in Great Britain), with original album title for The Rod Stewart Album as An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down (or whatever exactly it was originally called). You'd think for a 40th year anniversary they might consider that. Would that be this year or next?

EPTAS - The Ultradisc is great / second best is the original Mercury
Gasoline Alley - The Dennis Drake original Mercury is the best

I found some links over at Stevehoffman.com. They are serious about their versions. It was very confusing, even for them. Apparently, the newer remasters are not well thought of. The MFSL sounds good, if not a bit pricey. Thanks for the input!! I'll look for some of the older Mercury versions. Lar

There is one particular thread that you need a bottle of Tylenol 3's to get through.

For Rod's early discs (Rod Stewart Album through Smiler) the early USA or West Germany Mercury discs will do just fine. The MFSL for Every Picture is expensive but well worth adding. but A special treat is the original West German Sing It Again Rod which lack the cross-fades and sounds incredible (much nicer than the cross-faded USA CD.

The only one I know to stay away from the the first Mercury/Chronicles 2 cd best of in the full double case with outer box, it had HORRIBLE sound. I'm happy with the standard remaster, also Universal's budget priced "Rod Stewart Gold" 2 cd set has the complete EPTAS album with adequate sound.

I don't think so. I specified stereo in my earlier comment because Larbo brought up the possibility of hi-rez/5.1 in his initial post.



That's because Dennis Drake did the earlier version, and he's considered a mastering god. But Suha Gur's remaster sounds just fine. In fact, when I first bought it, I was disappointed at what little difference there was between the two versions.
Chip

Rule of thumb on Hoffman board: All remasters are bad or at the very least, suspect.

Use yer own judgment.

It's hard for me to say, because the only version I've ever owned of this album is on the Reason To Believe: Complete Mercury Recordings box set. It sounds good to me, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts a Hoffmanite would refute me...just because.

Not true that *all* remasters are bad... it's purely subjective... even at SH.tv.
I also own the Complete Mercury Recordings 3CD set and the earlier OOP Mercury Chronicles 2CD set - I like 'em both. Same for the MFSL.
EPTAS is a great album IMO, no matter what version you may have.

I don't know about that!! I consider DCC releases as "remasters" and I have not seen a bad thing said about them in my few years on that forum.

The Rod Mercury remasters are not bad, but they did not need 'tinkering" with IMO. The original discs are real nice and can usually be obtained fairly cheap except for Smiler.

I also have that "Reason To Believe" collection and it IIRC it features the exact same mastering as the new individual discs.

On my system the 2 cd Mercury Chronicles set was really grainy sounding (i.e. distorted)

Really? It sounds really fine on my system.
Some may find it interesting that there was a mention on the Hoffman forum that Steve Hoffman himself actually likes (prefers?) the original Mercury Chronicles 2cd set.

Steve, From searching Amazon, I just noticed there are 2 different RS collections known as Chronicles. I want to make sure we are disagreeing about the same collection! Are you talking about this one?? This is the one I refer to as "horrible sounding".

Geff...

Yes, that's the correct 2 CD set.
I mistakenly referred to it as "Chronicles" because of the CD series label "Chronicles", but the correct title is The Mercury Anthology.
It has been OOP for some time.

While I personally respect Hoffman's work very much. I guess either I hear things different then S.H., or we have very different systems, or my retail copy was actually some sort of pirate.

While I no longer have it, I purchased that set at full retail soon after it was released. I very clearly remember thinking it was one of the worst sounding cd's I'd ever heard (very distorted) & being pleased with the song selection, but not the sound quality..

For me, the Rod Stewart Every Picture CD is not one of those cases (like the Stevie Wonder catalog and the Bob Seger Live Bullet reissue) where there's a drastic difference between the original CD and the remaster. I'm somewhat picky about sound, but I'm not about to start hunting down the original Every Picture CD for what might be slightly improved sound -- a difference so slight that I wouldn't recognize it when listening to each version individually anyway. (Not to mention that there were two versions of the first CD, the first with more bass, the second with less. There was an ICE entry on this subject many, many years ago.)
Chip

Have you heard the USA and WG versions of EPTAS? They are definitely different sounding (the bass and drums are more pronounced on the WG pressing). I think you would recognise the difference (I detect it on my mid-fi at best rig)

I'm sure you're right, but nevertheless I'm perfectly happy with the sound of the remaster. Thanks anyway.
Chip