wmartin@brl-vgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (03/12/84)
Several times over the past year or so I have seen small items in some of the "underground" audiophile magazines regarding the "death of high-quality analog records" due to the inundation of digital recording. These usually are of the form: "We have run across a stock of <Mobile Fidelity, Sheffield, imported Japanese pressings, direct-disks, take your pick> at a local <discount house, schlock record store, wholesaler, some sort of merchant> for only $2.50 each as cut-outs! Does this mean the "death of high-quality analog recording" under the digital juggernaut?" Every time I have seen these sort of things, I am mightily irked.... Why didn't these idiots BUY all these $2.50 records and offer them for sale to us readers at $5.00 each, thereby doubling their money and making the bargains available to their supporting readers?!?!? Anybody else recall seeing such items? (I'm positive there was one in the last or next-to-last $ensible Sound, for example.) ANYHOW, this isn't just to flame about that -- I was wondering if any of the newsgroup's readers had seen any such bargain-bin wonderfulness anywhere around the country? Here in St. Louis, I've never seen any sign of such cut-outs of audiophile records -- they still are in the shops at $17.95 and suchlike list or otherwise high prices, and I still get mine mail-order instead of paying such prices. There have been a VERY FEW direct disk and audiophile cut-outs in the Berkshire catalog, from which I order most of my new records -- a couple Umbrella disks and a few Telarcs and Crystal Clears, but certainly not the whole line. Is there a treasure house of cheap audiophile records out there somewhere? If you know of such a thing, tell us all about it! Greedy for possessions... Too cheap to pay for them, and too lazy to steal... Will Martin
boyajian@akov68.DEC (03/16/84)
I've never seen any cheap audiophile records around, or at least not *that* cheap ($2.50 - $5.00). However, last week I was in a record store and noticed that in the King Crimson bin, along with the $18 Mobile Fidelity half-speed master of (at least) one of their albums, there was a slew of their albums on a label that was unfamiliar to me (dammit! I don't remember it, but it began with an "E"; I'll check on it this weekend). The discs on this label claimed to be half-speed masters, also, but they were priced at $7.99 each, the same price as the "normal" discs of the same albums. Seems fishy to me. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC Maynard) UUCP: (decvax!decwrl!rhea!akov68!boyajian) ARPA: (decwrl!rhea!akov68!boyajian@Shasta)
roger@cornell.UUCP (Roger Hoover) (03/16/84)
The King Crimson records are issued on Editions EG and are half speed mastered. They are not up to the quality of MFSL pressings and (according to Schwann) have a list price of $7.98.