Lou Reed - Lou Reed debut LP (Dolby A fixed)

Lou Reed - Lou Reed debut LP (Dolby A fixed)

Lou Reed BVCP-2065 1992 Japanese CD > XLD AR verified rip > iZotope for Dolby A encoding w/AudioThing's A Type plug-in > Audacity for soft limiting a handful of stray peaks > iZotope for gain adjustment and shaped dither > XLD for flac encoding. Was kept at 32-bit floating wav until final dither.

1) I Can't Stand It
2) Going Down
3) Walk and Talk It
4) Lisa Says
5) Berlin
6) I Love You
7) Wild Child
8) Love Makes You Feel
9) Ride into the Sun
10) Ocean

According to the Lou Reed - Beyond Thought & Expression boxset liner notes 'Lou was less enamored with the sound of the final release. “I kept saying (to Robinson) this is very bassy sounding, this is not the way it’s supposed to sound. The album is not defined enough.” While remastering the 3 tracks from his debut album for the Beyond Thought & Expression release Lou finally found out what the problem was. The album was not recorded with Dolby A but when it was mastered it was Dolby A decoded. The net result was a thuddy, bass sounding release minus most of the high frequencies.'

For the first time all of the album tracks have been corrected here.

I was confused when first reading the liner notes because it made it sound like the issue was merely that they had mistakenly turned on Dolby A when playing the tape for mastering of the LP (and apparently every other release before and since the Between Thought box). However, this would mean that the solution is to just not turn on Dolby A when playing the master tape. I can’t believe it’s that simple since every other release using the album mixes of these tracks has had this error. For the box set tracks, I think either they found tapes without the Dolby error or they did what I did and added Dolby encoding to offset the erroneously added Dolby decoding. I’m heavily leaning towards the latter. My results are strikingly similar and since no other release has been without the Dolby error, I don’t believe that they have tapes without it. I believe the Dolby error was introduced at the mixing stage. That the multi-tracks were being played with Dolby A switched on while they mixed down to 2-track for the album mix. This would mean the error is baked into the mix. The Wild Child / Walk and Talk It single has different mixes and these mixes are without the error. The I Can’t Stand It / Going Down single, which uses the album mixes, has the error.

After experimenting and comparing, I have come to the conclusion that the 1992 Japanese CD is truest to the mixdown master tape, if not sourced from it. This is the most muffled digital release of the album, but that’s what we need as a source for the Dolby processing. One that hasn’t been EQd or compressed. All other releases were EQ’d or from an EQd tape copy. The Lou approved remaster (HDtracks) is only slightly different in EQ and may’ve worked ok, but it’s brick walled with heavy hard limiting. Leaving the 1992 Japanese CD as the best choice and imo, the results confirm this.