Paul McCartney - Remasters by DCC Compact Classics

From Records, CDs and Music (recordscdsandmusic.blog), August 16, 2024:

In these days of waning physical media there seems to be way less attention paid to how good an album sounds.

Not to sound old but back in the day there were actually people who used to show off their stereos and loudspeakers who took pride in their sound systems and loved how vinyl and then later CDs could sound with the right stereo system.

I remember searching high and low, especially in the heyday of vinyl, for the best sounding version of a particular favorite recording and looked through many a dive of a record store to locate just the right version of an album that just took my breath away.

There was no streaming, no downloads, just the excitement of the chase for the best sounding version you could find whether that version came from the US, the UK, Japan or any part of the world that had a better sounding record.

Once the advent of the CD happened in the early eighties when I was in college, yikes that’s over forty years ago, the quest for the better sounding version of a particular album grew even more interesting.

You see the CD era brought about the best and the worst in sound reproduction. At its best the CD can produce stunning depth and wonderful bass and a clarity that’s amazing. At its worst it can produce shrill and sterile sounding discs that are fatiguing and even painful to listen to at least on a good stereo system.

In the early to mid 1990s there was a trend in the music industry to pump up the sound of CDs which produced what was called the loudness wars. At that same time illegal downloads were becoming all the rage and with the Ipod leading the way music listening transferred from big stereos to tiny computer speakers and car speakers to eventually phones.

Fortunately there were several boutique record labels like Mobile Fidelity and DCC Compact Classics to fill in the gap for superb quality sounding CDs and vinyl with engineers like the esteemed Steve Hoffman taking the time to track down the best source of a particular album.

Both of these companies tried to locate the original master recordings of an album and took the time to carefully master it so it sounded the best it could possibly sound. DCC Compact Classics in particular aimed for the breath of life in sound for their discs which enabled the listener to hear things in the recordings that may have been buried on other versions of that record that were previously issued.

These small boutique record labels licensed classic rock, pop and jazz recordings from the major labels who didn’t want to take the time to track down the best versions of recordings as the public was just as happy with a loudly mastered album and didn’t seek out any better quality version as they most likely didn’t listen to it on a decent system.

That brings me to this blog post. 

Today I’m sharing what I consider to be the best sounding versions of six Paul McCartney albums that were released on the DCC Compact Classic label: “McCartney”, “Ram”, “Red Rose Speedway”, “Band on the Run”, “Venus and Mars” and “Wings at the Speed of Sound”.

Not only is the sound on each of these six discs rich and warm with great stereo separation and great clarity they have an oomph in the sound without being the least bit fatiguing to the ears and a pure pleasure to listen to and enjoy.

The packaging of these six discs is also superb with nice glossy booklets with all the original posters that came with the vinyl, in miniature form of course, but also photos of the original vinyl labels and lovely gold-plated CDs that supposedly can stand the test of time better and played more accurately than standard CD pressings.

Of course these premium looking and sounding discs came at a price; they retailed for usually twice the price of standard discs thus they appealed to collectors and fans much more than the general public and were pressed in much smaller numbers than the standard CD versions of these albums.

Unfortunately they have only gone up in price since they were released as they quickly went out of production and now command quite a hefty price in the secondary market if you can find them.

Are they worth the money?

Well it depends on how much you like the albums and how concerned you are with hearing the best sounding versions of these albums.

Are they better sounding then standard CD issues of these albums or the recent McCartney Archive versions of these albums?

I have to say that these particular DCC Compact Classic versions still win as the best sounding versions of these particular Paul McCartney albums. They most certainly were worth it at their original price but as for paying the price for them now it all depends on how much you love these albums.

The Paul McCartney Archive versions of these records do sound great as do most of the first issue UK versions of these albums on CD. None of them however have the nice balance of oomph along with the midrange magic that the DCC Compact Classic versions provide. 

While the original issues of these CDs are fine they just don’t have the magic in sound that the DCC Compact Classics CDs or vinyl have and are to me worth having in your collection. They are, pardon the pun, the gold standard versions of these albums and are well worth seeking out if you’re a fan of Paul McCartney’s music. […]

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.