Jazz fan here, and some of my favorite albums are from Blue Note from the 1950’s & 60’s. I listen to vinyl and CD’s, and I’m starting to think recently that mastering matters more than format in terms of audio quality.

Problem is for much of the Blue Note catalogue from that era, the CD remasters are inconsistent or problematic. Many of the first generation of CD remasters were by Ron McMaster, and they’re ok but it was still early days of learning how to make CD’s sound great. Later came RVG Edition series, remastered by the original recording engineer, the legendary Rudy Van Gelder. Which sounded great in theory, but many of those CD’s are also a bit problematic.

So that leaves vinyl. Blue Note’s own reissues have been inconsistent, for example 75th Anniversary got lots of bad reviews. Music Matters and Analogue Productions reissues I hear are great, but out of print and/or very expensive. Blue Note’s Tone Poets and 80th Anniversary series are getting strong reviews, but to date the catalogue is still very thin on those two series, with most of the most legendary titles not available. And of course vintage Blue Note pressings are very expensive.