Definitive Audiophile pressings

Mather said:
I have it, it's pretty solid.

Also side note, just picked up the Parlophone Coldplay "Parachutes" on yellow vinyl and holy crap, this sounds incredible. It's the only Coldplay album I need to own and wow. 3 songs in and this is gorgeous.

Url: Coldplay – Parachutes (2020, Yellow Translucent, 180 Gram, Vinyl)
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Yep. I was VERY surprised by this one. Mine had a bunch of static which caused pops but hit it with the zerostat and it sounds really nice. I remember reading something about how that album was recorded and there's no surprise that the album sounds great on vinyl:

Ken Nelson's approach to the recording process is best described as 'classic'. He prefers to record to analogue 2-inch tape, if possible bypassing the desk's mic amps and using high-quality stand-alone preamps instead. "I like different mic amps. If I haven't got any I'll hire some. The project studio at Parr Street has only got an A&H desk; the mic amps are OK, but they're not as good as some of the mic amps that I have myself. So it's quite a lot of trouble and it means a lot of leads, but I'll plug into the mic amps, and then go straight through a compressor to tape, or straight to tape. I use whatever's available in whatever studio I work in, but there has to be a certain amount of gear, like compressors, to make sure that the session's going to go smoothly.

"On the Coldplay album a lot of the stuff just went straight to tape, as clean as I could — the shorter the signal path, the better — and a lot of it wasn't compressed. It's not something I've really concentrated on before, but because we had the time, we decided that that would be a good way to do it, to get it so that what goes down on tape is what was played. When you haven't got the time, it is quicker just to compress things to make sure that you're not peaking. But we were recording to analogue anyway, so we could go a bit hot, especially as we were doing it without noise reduction. Obviously you can always compress later. I did compress the bass, and some of Johnny's guitars, but there's no compression on the drums, and the acoustic guitars were all put down without compression, and any keyboards as well. It adds more life to the track.

"As the album went on there were a couple of songs that we couldn't quite get on analogue. 'Yellow' was one of them: we tried it a few different ways, and a few different recordings of it, and we were never really happy. We ended up using Pro Tools; we got Pro Tools in to get the feel of it just right. We enjoyed using it, and once we'd got all the takes into the computer, we then put it down to the 2-inch, which I found was a great way to do it. In the future I'll work with a hard disk recorder, whether it's Pro Tools or whatever, because that suits — not so much for the editing side of it, just to get perhaps three takes, and if one bit's good from one, you can just cross over between them. And trying to maintain the live feel of the track, which I love. I'm not into sitting in front of the computer, chopping everything up and saying 'Does it look like it sounds good?' I'd rather just listen."
 
MikeH said:
it's crazy how fast these sell out now. pretty much as soon as they emailed out to the MoFi mailing list they are gone.
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I still feel like something is going on, not sure if it's the industry, more people getting into the hobby, more people going with quality pressings over $1 bin, or more people think they can become rich flipping, but something seems odd as of late.

Even Youtubers are all about MoFi's now that never were before.
 
MikeH said:
Yep. I was VERY surprised by this one. Mine had a bunch of static which caused pops but hit it with the zerostat and it sounds really nice. I remember reading something about how that album was recorded and there's no surprise that the album sounds great on vinyl:

Ken Nelson's approach to the recording process is best described as 'classic'. He prefers to record to analogue 2-inch tape, if possible bypassing the desk's mic amps and using high-quality stand-alone preamps instead. "I like different mic amps. If I haven't got any I'll hire some. The project studio at Parr Street has only got an A&H desk; the mic amps are OK, but they're not as good as some of the mic amps that I have myself. So it's quite a lot of trouble and it means a lot of leads, but I'll plug into the mic amps, and then go straight through a compressor to tape, or straight to tape. I use whatever's available in whatever studio I work in, but there has to be a certain amount of gear, like compressors, to make sure that the session's going to go smoothly.

"On the Coldplay album a lot of the stuff just went straight to tape, as clean as I could — the shorter the signal path, the better — and a lot of it wasn't compressed. It's not something I've really concentrated on before, but because we had the time, we decided that that would be a good way to do it, to get it so that what goes down on tape is what was played. When you haven't got the time, it is quicker just to compress things to make sure that you're not peaking. But we were recording to analogue anyway, so we could go a bit hot, especially as we were doing it without noise reduction. Obviously you can always compress later. I did compress the bass, and some of Johnny's guitars, but there's no compression on the drums, and the acoustic guitars were all put down without compression, and any keyboards as well. It adds more life to the track.

"As the album went on there were a couple of songs that we couldn't quite get on analogue. 'Yellow' was one of them: we tried it a few different ways, and a few different recordings of it, and we were never really happy. We ended up using Pro Tools; we got Pro Tools in to get the feel of it just right. We enjoyed using it, and once we'd got all the takes into the computer, we then put it down to the 2-inch, which I found was a great way to do it. In the future I'll work with a hard disk recorder, whether it's Pro Tools or whatever, because that suits — not so much for the editing side of it, just to get perhaps three takes, and if one bit's good from one, you can just cross over between them. And trying to maintain the live feel of the track, which I love. I'm not into sitting in front of the computer, chopping everything up and saying 'Does it look like it sounds good?' I'd rather just listen."
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Just looked at this and seems to be selling out in the UK. Amazon Uk are now selling it for a bargain £46, I think it was £16 a few weeks back.
 
AnthonyI said:
I still feel like something is going on, not sure if it's the industry, more people getting into the hobby, more people going with quality pressings over $1 bin, or more people think they can become rich flipping, but something seems odd as of late.

Even Youtubers are all about MoFi's now that never were before.
Click to expand...
It's a little bit of everything I think...COVID seems to have made more people enter their collections on discogs. A lot of people started snatching up the "cheap" copies of albums for audiophile labels. MoFi in particular has more brand awareness in general now. The restocks get posted on reddit. Even 2-3 months ago, nobody on reddit was posting MoFi albums to r/vinylreleases. Now people who never even heard of MoFi are buying because they see them selling out so quickly.

There's a bit of FOMO involved too of course. MoFi is supposedly only getting 500 copies of stuff at a time and that goes on their site + to MD + to any backorders + to wholesale buyers, so they sell out on the MoFi site real quickly. I see so many people flipping MoFis too across every site. You have people on facebook and hoffman forums and eBay regularly flipping albums that they just bought for almost double what they just paid on it, and people are snatching them up. It's maddening hah. There are two people in particular I keep seeing that are calling albums "out of print" and selling them for 2-3x the price they just paid in a restock and they keep getting purchased.
 
Mather said:
Yep, that's exactly why I bought it. Started to vanish and I saw the reviews and grabbed it locally.
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I bought it from a UK shop when I first saw the reissue announced because I wasn't sure that it would be for sale in the US. The EU/UK pressings were announced first. Then mine got lost in the mail and the shop quickly sent me out another copy. I didn't really see anybody here talking about it, which is strange because the OGs and BN copies go for crazy money.
 
MikeH said:
I bought it from a UK shop when I first saw the reissue announced because I wasn't sure that it would be for sale in the US. The EU/UK pressings were announced first. Then mine got lost in the mail and the shop quickly sent me out another copy. I didn't really see anybody here talking about it, which is strange because the OGs and BN copies go for crazy money.
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I just had no idea it would sound this good. And I have no idea who mastered it or who pressed it.
 
Andy said:
Just looked at this and seems to be selling out in the UK. Amazon Uk are now selling it for a bargain £46, I think it was £16 a few weeks back.
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Haha, did the same, and it is getting pricey here too. That's the only Coldplay album I can stand so wouldn't mind owning it if it sounds so great. Is this 2020 edition special or just yellow?
I think AS has this one for $18:
www.discogs.com

Coldplay - Parachutes

View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 2017 Vinyl release of "Parachutes" on Discogs.
www.discogs.com www.discogs.com
if it's the same but just black I would grab that one I guess.
 
MikeH said:
I bought it from a UK shop when I first saw the reissue announced because I wasn't sure that it would be for sale in the US. The EU/UK pressings were announced first. Then mine got lost in the mail and the shop quickly sent me out another copy. I didn't really see anybody here talking about it, which is strange because the OGs and BN copies go for crazy money.
Click to expand...
Wow, I had no idea the BN copy was still trading that high...I have it but thought it would have dropped in value when the yellow version was released.
 
MikeH said:
It's a little bit of everything I think...COVID seems to have made more people enter their collections on discogs. A lot of people started snatching up the "cheap" copies of albums for audiophile labels. MoFi in particular has more brand awareness in general now. The restocks get posted on reddit. Even 2-3 months ago, nobody on reddit was posting MoFi albums to r/vinylreleases. Now people who never even heard of MoFi are buying because they see them selling out so quickly.

There's a bit of FOMO involved too of course. MoFi is supposedly only getting 500 copies of stuff at a time and that goes on their site + to MD + to any backorders + to wholesale buyers, so they sell out on the MoFi site real quickly. I see so many people flipping MoFis too across every site. You have people on facebook and hoffman forums and eBay regularly flipping albums that they just bought for almost double what they just paid on it, and people are snatching them up. It's maddening hah. There are two people in particular I keep seeing that are calling albums "out of print" and selling them for 2-3x the price they just paid in a restock and they keep getting purchased.
Click to expand...
Music Direct has to play into the MoFi thing a bit too, no? there's something super sketchy about them have 50+ of a title in stock and selling it at double the price.
 
Mr Moustache said:
Haha, did the same, and it is getting pricey here too. That's the only Coldplay album I can stand so wouldn't mind owning it if it sounds so great. Is this 2020 edition special or just yellow?
I think AS has this one for $18:
www.discogs.com

Coldplay - Parachutes

View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 2017 Vinyl release of "Parachutes" on Discogs.
www.discogs.com www.discogs.com
if it's the same but just black I would grab that one I guess.
Click to expand...
There's no pressing info so I have no idea if it's the same one. I did see one person on cogs saying the yellow sounded better but it's cogs so take that with a grain of salt...
 
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