r. l. burnside MFSL SACD
therockman
Posts: 349
The new SACD on the Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs label called R. L. BURNSIDE FIRST RECORDINGS, catalog UDSACD 2026, is one sweet sounding disc. This is a real field recording of one man playing the blues all by himself, in his own home out in the Mississippi delta. The recordings were done by George Mitchell in 1968 on a battery powered tape recorder at Burside's shack out at the end of a long dirt road near Coldwater Mississippi. Because of this field recording nature, these songs are real basic, Burnside playing his guitar and singing some real blues music. That is the extent of this disc. This is honest to God blues.
But the effort that has gone into bringing this music to life is a story unto itself. The original master tape was played back on a custom made Studer A-80 tape recorder and transfered straight to DSD using the GAIN 2 mastering system. The analog output of the Studer A-80 tape recorder has a 60,000 hertz bandwidth, and the DAC used to covert this analog soundstrean to DSD utilizes a special ultra-low jitter clock made by Sony. This DSD information was then sampled at 2.8 MHZ through pure class A discrete circuits that produced the flatest sounding musical waveform with no feedback, with a flat frequency response of 0-100,000 hertz.
The result of all this is that the sonics and natural timbre of the original setting is reproduced exactly as you can imagine the original notes to be played. If you close your eyes when you listen to this disc you almost feel the presence of an R. L. Burnside in your living room playing the blues just for you.
Rocky Bennett
But the effort that has gone into bringing this music to life is a story unto itself. The original master tape was played back on a custom made Studer A-80 tape recorder and transfered straight to DSD using the GAIN 2 mastering system. The analog output of the Studer A-80 tape recorder has a 60,000 hertz bandwidth, and the DAC used to covert this analog soundstrean to DSD utilizes a special ultra-low jitter clock made by Sony. This DSD information was then sampled at 2.8 MHZ through pure class A discrete circuits that produced the flatest sounding musical waveform with no feedback, with a flat frequency response of 0-100,000 hertz.
The result of all this is that the sonics and natural timbre of the original setting is reproduced exactly as you can imagine the original notes to be played. If you close your eyes when you listen to this disc you almost feel the presence of an R. L. Burnside in your living room playing the blues just for you.
Rocky Bennett
Rocky Bennett
Post edited by therockman on
Comments
-
Hey Rocky,
Thanks for that information, it makes me want to get an SACD player. Seriously.
My wife and I saw R.L. at a Baltimore Folk Society concert, the first set he did was all acoustic and really great. After an intermission he sat on the stage and talked with people. He was a soft spoken person and seemed a bit embarrassed that people were so taken with his music. Then the second set he played an electric guitar and got the place jumpin'.
It was a medium sized venue, the auditorium of an art museum, I think, and an attentive audience.
Thanks, Ken -
Wow Ken, that sounds great. If you do not own any of his recordings, this would be a great one to buy. I forgot to mention that this disc is a hybrid, it has a redbook layer that would probably sound almost as good.
Rocky BennettRocky Bennett
![[Deleted User]](https://w8.vanillicon.com/83b82048d67877ca27bbc25d5d38f9d3_100.png)