Revinylization

For Warner Music Group, the Doors have been a deep vein of music gold. Their albums have never been out of print, and the catalog has enjoyed regular reissues for decades. Each new version of the Doors' first six albums sells well enough to prompt another trip to the vaults.

The latest moonlight drive down love street is a series of all-analog LPs from Rhino High Fidelity (RHF). A limited-edition numbered box set version sold out in days; un-numbered single LPs will sell until the production parts wear out. Cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearant Mastering using his Studer A-80 tape machine and Neumann VMS-66 lathe with Technics quartz-drive motor (footnote 1), they were plated and pressed at Optimal in Germany and are housed in the heavy-cardboard gatefold jackets used throughout the RHF series.

For the four-page insert booklets, Doors archivist David Dutkowski compiled excerpts from previously unpublished interviews he conducted first-person in 1971–'73, related to each album. Dutkowski interviewed Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore—all the Doors except Jim Morrison—as well as Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman, producer Paul Rothchild, and recording engineer Bruce Botnick. Eagle-eyed owners of the Doors' 50th anniversary boxes will spot inconsistencies in Botnick's memories of some technical details, but his testimony tracks well considering the half-century between interviews. For hardcore Doors fans and Doors-curious vinyl collectors, each album's booklet provides excellent background and context.

As with all RHF albums, these booklets include images of the tapes used to cut the albums; kudos to Rhino for this bit of transparency. The tape boxes offer interesting technical tidbits, because Botnick wrote meticulous notes on them. One big detail: The Doors' self-titled first album was cut from a 1978 Dolby A–encoded copy tape. A note on the box indicates that "this is the only living master in good condition," indicating that the original stereo mix-down from the four-track session tapes has deteriorated beyond usability. (RHF producer Patrick Milligan confirmed this in an e-mail.)

Also pictured in The Doors insert is the mono master box; it's a cool image but unrelated to these RHF stereo LPs. Rhino head of A&R Steve Woolard told me that dedicated mono mixes exist for The Doors and Strange Days, whereas the rest of the group's albums released in mono were "folded down" from stereo masters for the mono releases. (The Doors mono tape was cut directly to lacquer by the Electric Recording Company in 2023 and sold out quickly.)

Strange Days through L.A. Woman RHF LPs were cut from the original stereo master tapes, Milligan said. I couldn't hear any tape damage or deterioration aside from occasional print-through (pre- or post-echo), which is to be expected from tapes made from 1967–71. This absence of more obvious damage was a pleasant surprise considering how many times these tapes have been used over the decades.

The tape boxes also show that HD digital transfers (at least 24-bit, at least 48kHz sample rate) were made at various times between 1987 and 2021; 24/384 transfers were made in 2021. For the albums Waiting for the Sun, The Soft Parade, Morrison Hotel, and L.A. Woman, Plangent Process (footnote 2) transfers were made in conjunction with the golden anniversary CD/LP box sets, the digital masters cut to vinyl by Bernie Grundman.

Aside from the super-premium–priced Electric Recording LP, there have been other all-analog Doors reissues in this century. Last year, Analogue Productions released a limited-edition one-step UHQR version of L.A. Woman, cut by Grundman. In 2012, Analogue Productions released the Doors albums as 45rpm two-LP sets mastered by the late Doug Sax and supervised by Botnick; they're still available at Acoustic Sounds and elsewhere.

Soundwise, these new Rhino High Fidelity records seem to be what they're intended to be: flat transfers of the tapes without old-school "sweetening." They sound very different from the original LPs, which were mastered to sound exciting on record players of the time and over late 1960s radios. As such, the RHFs have a bigger bottom end and extended treble. They are less nasal in the midrange, with a more laid-back presentation.

I compared original copies of The Soft Parade and Morrison Hotel to the RHF versions. The remasters favor Densmore's drums with a meatier beat and Manzarek's keyboard with more and better emphasis on the wide range of tonality. The RHF version of the self-titled first album sounds like a copy tape in that the dynamics are somewhat shaved off and there's a little "hair" around keyboards and vocals. I was listening for telltale signs of a copy tape; these minor degradations shouldn't dent enjoyment of this outstanding music. On the other hand, audible wow in the oedipal epic "The End" distracts from its intensity. This wow is not audible on the 1985 two-LP compilation The Best of The Doors, which, however, was cut from a thin-sounding early digital remaster.

In my review of the L.A. Woman 50th anniversary box set, I wrote that the combination of Botnick's remastering and the Plangent Process "offer a sharply defined sound-picture, with every instrument in a specific place in the stereo mix." I further described an original LP I had at the time as having "hazy stereophony and weaker low end" than the reissue. The RHF version doesn't suffer a weak low end by any means. Its stereo image is not as pinpoint clear or as rock steady as the Plangent-to-vinyl version, but I suspect some listeners will prefer the impression of a more "filled-in" soundscape in Gray's remaster.

Variety and choice are good. For Doors fans, there's plenty.

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Footnote 1: See cohearent.com/our-system for details of Gray's complete setup.

Footnote 2: The Plangent Process time-aligns the digital transfer to the high-frequency bias signal of the original tape recorder, eliminating tape-related wow, flutter, and other time-domain distortions.