What's wrong with Direct Metal Mastering?

[danieldust]

I have heard people say bad things about Blue Note's Direct Metal Master releases. Are all DMMs bad, or is it just the Blue Notes? Are there examples of good DMM records? I have a few and can't seem to find anything wrong with them, but I'm not the hardcore audiophile that many here are. What's your take on them?

[zwhita]

I have an '84 DMM print of Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else and think it sounds great. Seems quality materials. Not sure what the problem would be.

[flavio81]

Nothing is wrong with DMM. DMM is great. Any problem with sound quality can't be atributed to DMM but to monkeys disguised as engineers.

DMM was the culmination of decades of Teutonic ingenuity in vinyl cutting.

[dovstar]

If you Wiki DMM you'll read something about the high frequencies being different from the traditional method. I guess you'd need to have both kinds to do a comparison.

[scrutney]

I have a few and can't seem to find anything wrong with them,

i have a dmm of frankie goes to hollywood's 2nd album, "liverpool".

as i remember, the only thing wrong with it was that it wasn't "welcome to the pleasuredome."

[Cabbage Patch Elvis]

I have a few and can't seem to find anything wrong with them,

i have a dmm of frankie goes to hollywood's 2nd album, "liverpool".

as i remember, the only thing wrong with it was that it wasn't "welcome to the pleasuredome."

You make an excellent point. Bravo!

[MonkeyBoy]

Sara K's "Water Falls" is DMM and a number of us here use it as a reference record. Have you heard anyone say anything good about Blue Note's DMMs?

[danieldust]

Have you heard anyone say anything good about Blue Note's DMMs?

Not that I can recall. I've only seen a couple references to them being bad sounding, and I'm only a beginner when it comes to collecting Blue Notes.

[danieldust]

The Wikipedia article on DMM is fascinating, dovstar. Thanks for the heads up.

[gabriel1998]

DMM are friggin AWFUL. Don't know about other DIGITAL MASTER METAL or what ever it is but Blue note DMM are terrible when compared even to some later Capitol Blue note reissue. I rather download an MP3 than to listen to Blue Note DMM. Some morons are asking 50 Bucks for DMM pressing on ebay. A sucker is born everyday! The most I've paid is 5 bucks and that's because Eric Dolphy "Other Aspect" Lp has only been released on DMM. Its still extremely thin and metallic.

[philbrown]

DMM are friggin AWFUL. Don't know about other DIGITAL MASTER METAL or what ever it is but Blue note DMM are terrible when compared even to some later Capitol Blue note reissue. I rather download an MP3 than to listen to Blue Note DMM. Some morons are asking 50 Bucks for DMM pressing on ebay. A sucker is born everyday! The most I've paid is 5 bucks and that's because Eric Dolphy "Other Aspect" Lp has only been released on DMM. Its still extremely thin and metallic.

I'm curious how many DMM-which, by the way, stands for Direct Metal Mastering-masters you've cut to have such an opinion? And how many years as a mastering engineer? Because you clearly must have a deep understanding of the process to feel so strongly about it.
Oh, and just for the record I'm one of the morons who used to cut DMM masters.
Phil Brown

[Dr Pan K]

hi phil

the way i record it the DMM technique was design to skip one passage so theoretically the sound should be better, but due to some technical reasons of the period the final result was somewhat compressed.

could u tell us a couple of words about the DMM ??

[pivot]

My personal opinion is much of the hubbub about DMM has to do with the fact that early digital recording/mastering was coming out at approximatly the same time.

I have DMM mastered LPs that I think sound just fine AND I have DMM master LPs that sound thin, compressed and harsh. For the most part the "bad" DMM are also from digital, either originally recorded or remastered tranfers of analog tape.

The Blue Notes I have that are DMM and not from digital masters sound "okay" to me BUT I do not have previous issues non-DMM copies of these titles to compare to. I would not be shocked if original pressings from near the orignal release date sound better.

They DO NOT sound like MP3. Direct Metal Mastering is NOT a digital process in and of itself but many, not all, early "digital" LPs were cut using DMM.

IMHO DMM gets tarred with the early digital brush.

[gabriel1998]

DMM are friggin AWFUL. Don't know about other DIGITAL MASTER METAL or what ever it is but Blue note DMM are terrible when compared even to some later Capitol Blue note reissue. I rather download an MP3 than to listen to Blue Note DMM. Some morons are asking 50 Bucks for DMM pressing on ebay. A sucker is born everyday! The most I've paid is 5 bucks and that's because Eric Dolphy "Other Aspect" Lp has only been released on DMM. Its still extremely thin and metallic.

I'm curious how many DMM-which, by the way, stands for Direct Metal Mastering-masters you've cut to have such an opinion? And how many years as a mastering engineer? Because you clearly must have a deep understanding of the process to feel so strongly about it.
Oh, and just for the record I'm one of the morons who used to cut DMM masters.
Phil Brown

I'm curious to see how an "ENGINEER" failed to comprehend my post? I'm confused? Did I call the people who "Mastered" these DMM....morons? or was it the ebay seller trying to get 50 bucks for a blue note DMM? and has been trying to sell this Blue note DMM pressing for the past year now. oh, my bad! Are you the ebay seller So now we need to be engineers to have an opinion on how they sound? a deep understanding of the process? lol. Blue note DMM sound friggin awful to me, Period. And just in case you missed it. Which seems to be alot. I don't know about other DMM's which I clearly stated in my last post. But I'll tell you what. For people who are just starting to collect Blue note's, Here is an article published 15 years ago:

http://kleene.ss.uci.edu/~rmay/Bluenote.html

And here we have Londonjazzcollector. Actually, the first time I ran across this article, His description of people who thought that BN DMM sounded good was at the time, the most histerical piece on vinyl collecting I've ever read. I'm still laughing Now there is just some story about a village or island.

http://londonjazzcollector.wordpress.com/