[SACD-R][OF] Sonny Rollins - Way Out West (Analogue Productions) - 1957/2002 (Jazz)

The timeless Way out West established Sonny Rollins as jazz’s top tenor saxophonist (at least until John Coltrane surpassed him the following year). Joined by bassist Ray Brown & drummer Shelly Manne, Rollins is heard at one of his peaks…..

Another great opportunity to compare a JVC XRCD pressing to an SACD is Sonny Rollins’ Way Out West. It was made in the middle of the night on March 7, 1957, in the shipping room of a small Los Angeles record company, with an underpaid engineer recording a trio playing cowboy songs on a 1st-generation stereo Ampex tape deck through a homemade mixing console. It seems an unlikely setting for 1 of the greatest jazz recordings of all time, musically & sonically. But the players were Sonny Rollins, Ray Brown & Shelly Manne, & the engineer was the intuitive genius Roy DuNann. He could mix live-to-2-track on the fly, using state-of-the-art AKG & Telefunken tube microphones, manipulating the variable attenuators of his simple board in an archetypal application of the straight-wire-with-gain ideal.

Way Out West, originally released on Lester Koenig’s Contemporary label, is another album that has been reissued many times over the years in every format, & the best sounding version until now has been the JVC XRCD. The XRCD pressing is so good, with Shelly Manne’s cymbals shimmering in free air & Rollins’ embouchure both fiercely articulate & finely nuanced, that for SACD to improve upon it is conclusive proof of its importance. The attacks of Rollins’ expletives are more explosive in SACD; we are more aware of Rollins’ movements as he swings his horn in front of the microphone; a last thin veil falls away.

This analogue Productions version was “mastered off the original 2-track tape recorded with a tube AKG-C12 microphone on a tube Ampex 350 machine. Features Ray Brown on bass & Shelly Manne on drums. Over his long & distinguished career, Sonny Rollins has made many dozens of albums. Among those recorded during the 50s, Prestige’s Movin’ Out & Colossus, Blue Note’s A Night at the Village Vanguard, Riverside’s The Sound of Sonny, & Way Out West on Contemporary qualify as all-time Rollins classics.”
The session for Way Out West, Rollins’ 1st ever in California, was called for 3 a.m. to accommodate everyone’s busy schedules. Sonny, who could never be accused of overstatement, announced after 4 hours of recording: “I’m hot now.”
“This SACD reveals the musician’s dynamic shadings like never before. Stereo it is, but the sound is so 3-dimensional that I didn’t mind the lack of 5.1 surround mix. To be honest, I’m thankful they didn’t tamper with this classic. I’ve heard too many botched attempts. The whole affair feels very live, very in the moment – you know, like a jazz record.” – Steve Guttenberg, Home Theater

MWC says:
There is some controversy over this particular version from AP. Some say Doug Sax screwed up again, over getting the wrong tapes and did not use the master tapes. Some say the reverb was on the tapes he used, as if the tapes were mastered for Vinyl production. Others say Doug added the reverb and he did have the masters. Most say the newer SHM SACD are much better sounding and have no reverb…………
see here and here