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Old 02-13-2019, 12:23 AM
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Default Bob Dylan - The Discography - The Audiophile Reviews

Bob Dylan's contribution to music ever since the 1960's has been incalculable. Whether you like his voice or not, his music has stood the test of time and influenced countless numbers of musical artists throughout the years......as for audiophile standards, this one is gonna be tough and let me explain why. Dylan's music has never been demonstration grade material, yet Mobile Fidelity has released many of his albums on high quality vinyl and SACD. His albums have also been released on hybrid SACD before MOFI got involved...many of them sound pretty good but MOFI took it up another notch. As far as the MOFI catalogue goes, his albums have never sounded better, yet still they're not what you would reach for when grabbing something to show off vocals. So this thread will be devoted to the Bard and whether or not any of the MOFI masterings (as well as others) can bring any audiophile qualities to the table. I'll start off with his debut album in mono and I'll go from there.

Bob Dylan - Self Titled, 1962, Columbia Records
Review version - 2017 Mobile Fidelity vinyl (mono), mastered by Krieg Wunderlich @ Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs





From Wikipedia: The album was ultimately recorded in three short afternoon sessions on November 20 and 22. Hammond later joked that Columbia spent "about $402" to record it, and the figure has entered the Dylan legend as its actual cost. Despite the low cost and short amount of time, Dylan was still difficult to record, according to Hammond. "Bobby popped every p, hissed every s, and habitually wandered off mike," recalls Hammond. "Even more frustrating, he refused to learn from his mistakes. It occurred to me at the time that I'd never worked with anyone so undisciplined before." Seventeen songs were recorded, and five of the album's chosen tracks were actually cut in single takes ("Baby Let Me Follow You Down", "In My Time of Dyin'", "Gospel Plow", "Highway 51 Blues", and "Freight Train Blues") while the master take of "Song to Woody" was recorded after one false start. The album's four outtakes were also cut in single takes. During the sessions, Dylan refused requests to do second takes. "I said no. I can't see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That's terrible." The album cover features a reversed photo of Dylan holding his acoustic guitar. This was done to prevent the neck of the guitar from obscuring Columbia's logo.

1. You're No Good - Dylan's harmonica is very crisp and front in center, his vocals are fairly full and smooth (as much as Dylan's can be on his debut album that is). The Mobile Fidelity recording does a pretty good job of recreating an image of Dylan singing along with his guitar in your room, but it doesn't have the characteristics of a good vocal recording.

2. Talkin' New York - Bob's voice sounds a bit more processed on this track, the guitar and harmonica do sound much bigger on this track than the first. His voice is less constrained on this song, it reaches much wider in the soundstage than it does on the first track.

3. In My Time of Dyin' - This is a better example of the strength of Dylan's guitar picking, the strings ring out clear on this track but that's about it.

5. Fixin' To Die - Dylan's vocals on this song are bit more distant in the mix than the last few tracks...guitar still is solid and centered nicely, so far though, this album has been much more uniform than others that I've listened to so far, of course that should be expected with just his voice, the guitar and harmonica.

7. Highway 51 - One cool aspect of this song is that you can really hear the dynamics of Dylan's guitar playing, he does a masterful job of varying the intensity of his playing, it gets louder and softer which can be heard pretty vividly in the middle of the soundstage. It's easy to hear.

9. Baby, Let Me Follow You Down - Dylan starts of this song with more of a spoken word performance, you can get a good idea of what's to come since this song sounds more like a traditional Dylan song on his future albums. His voice sounds pretty natural, more so than at the beginning of the album.

So what did I learn from Dylan's debut album? MOFI did a fantastic job with the recording, it sounds smooth and natural for what it is. It's also a very uniform recording due not only to the simplicity of it being one man with a guitar and harmonica, but also because one song doesn't sound remarkably different from another. I did hear just a bit of difference with "Talkin' New York" but other than that, it's fairly straigtforward. As far as demo material, I probably wouldn't pull this album out for any of that, there will be much better opportunities in his future albums. All in all, this is great teaser for what was to come but for an audiophile I probably wouldn't get very excited about his debut even with the job that Mobile Fidelity did with this.

Audiophile Rating: 2/10 (overall sonics)
Demo Rating: 0% 0/13 (number of cool demo tracks/tracks on album)
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Library: Speakers: Avalon Acoustics Isis, Subwoofers: (2) REL Acoustics 212SE Amplification: D’agostino Momentum preamplifier, D’agostino S250 stereo amplifier Digital: dCS Rossini CD/SACD transport, dCS Rossini DAC/streamer/master clock. Analog: Brinkmann Taurus table, Lyra Etna Lambda, Audio Research Ref. Phono 3
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