Bernie Grundman and Chad Kassem Discuss the Steely Dan Reissues 

Thanks to everyone for this project. I know it’s going to be great.

You know you’re a middle-aged white guy when you’re listening to an hour-long conversation about Steely Dan mastering on a Saturday afternoon. I love the attitudes of both Chad and Bernie toward their work. You can sense the professionalism, the love of the music, and the respect for their licensing clients/partners and the end customers (us). Best of luck to them!

Got home from work today and had a marvelous package. Can’t Buy a Thrill. UHQR. Off work tomorrow. Turntable is ready. Can’t wait.

For those that are relatively new to vinyl, without Chad's drive & vision in the days when it was a dying format most of the industry wouldn't exist today. And what can you say about Bernie, a real mench indeed. A real treat Chad, stay well.

Thanks for sharing these monumental releases ON Steely Dan . Having Bernie Grundman on hand to discuss the tapes and the process and challenges you were both faced with on these releases are going to be well worth the wait. Can't Buy A Thrill is just around corner. Thank you Chad!!!

Thanks for your dedication to this art, both of you. Sincerely.

All ordered and waiting for them to show up! 🤩 Anxious to see how the are, Chad! 👍

Good info on the variable speed from outer til inner groove - I will go for the SACD…

Thank you Chad for letting us into the room to get to see the process. You’re a great ambassador for our community.

oh man, what an epic view, these two legends with a pile of Steely Dan Original Master Tapes just sitting there. This is audio royalty right there! :) Thank you!

Steely Dan is a dream come true One of my favorite bands Have all the ABC originals and best remasters The players worked it to perfection Then laid back and went beyond perfection Timeless Nuanced All the subtleties captured

Hi Chad, It's great to see you and Bernie chat. Very nice! Chris Muth, formerly chief tech at Sterling Sound.

wow Chad, what a great video you did with Bernie. And you are so so spot on about what the customer wants who is really into vinyl or high speed tape.

What a treat, seeing those SD master tapes! 😍 Thanks for showing a little 'behind the scenes' and some discussion on it. This is going to be awesome.. _Really_ looking forward to these! Especially excited for Katy Lied & The Royal Scam.. My favorites. 😎

Great video I always learn from them. I own all first pressing on Steely Dan and today Can't buy a thrill arrived . It's just sounds outstanding. Chad I am so glad you did this. 5 Decades collecting vinyl. These are great times for vinyl and you Chad are taking it to another level. Bernie is a treasure.

"this is what's goin on now" Chad you're the best. this video will be watched years from now and only fully appreciated then. I was fascinated the whole way through. thanks

I got the Can’t Buy A Thrill and I’m hearing Becker’s bass lines more pronounced than ever before. Amazing job you guys!

It is great news these albums are coming out on SACD!

I wish Bernie had talked about the SACDs coming out. It would also have been nice to hear a discussion about whether any of the Steely Dan CDs over the decades were from the masters versus a safety copy.

Watching Bernie checking playback on Bodhisatva with Chad at his side, very cool. Great interview Bernie and Chad.

These videos are so cool! Keep it up Bernie and Chad!

Great discussion guys Very engrossing the amount of detail & effort to make these exciting releases

They say your ears deteriorate over time but Bernie keeps churning out quality masters.

Bernie and Chad thank you for these wonderful discussions and insisting on the highest standards when it comes quality and packaging to represent the artists work. I’ve learned so much from these interviews.

Wonderful interview! Wow! The masters in view! My copy of Can’t buy a thrill just shipped! Thanks Chad!!

Absolute legend, the amount of albums I bought back in the late 70s and 80s that had been mastered by Bernie, knowing they would sound great before I'd even played them. what a treat to see and hear from the man himself talk about his passion for perfection.....LOVE IT!!!!!.......

I FEEL GOOD WATCHING THIS . THANKS !

I love you guys !!! Steely Dan is not my cup of tea but i like the records and work from the artist i like available from Acoustic Sounds !!! Keep up the good work i am a fan from The Netherlands !!!

Nice to see RVG’s photo on the cutting lathe. 👌

Thanks guys for the interview. Fun stuff. Look forward to hearing a couple.

Thank you for making a dream come true. Love your passion, I really appreciate what you've done.

Enjoy watching you guys talking mastering and making records

Excellent stuff! So good that Bernie is humble enough to say that some Steely Dan is already so well recorded that he may not even touch parts of it. one can only imagine what this new release will sound like-close to perfection? Thanks for sharing.

Chad thank you these videos are such a treat.

When the first few notes of Do It Again came out of my speakers I just said WOW. Blown away by the CBAT re-issue, you guys knocked the first one out of the park!

Bernie is amazing! Thank you Chad. I continue to learn from him! 💗

Got the first two reissues: they are both sonically superior to the original vinyl copies I own, especially the clarity, punch, and amazing lower frequencies. Pretzel Logic just dropped and I will be purchasing in the next few days! Thank you guys for your hard work making this finally happen in my lifetime!!

Just got my first SACD player a month ago and placed a pre-order on three SD titles. Looking forward to hearing them! I really appreciate videos like this!

Very interesting and insightful discussion.

What a great relationship and discussion this has been. Two genuine guys after the same goal!

Great video…Very informative.

Hydrolysis. That's the process where water molecules combine with the binder on the tape to form a sticky mess. Baking it drives the water out, buying you some playback time. :)

Wow! This was some much more than I expected. Thanks guys!

The UHQR's retail for £225 in the UK so hopefully Bernie cut lacquers at 33rpm for a standard AP release sometime in the future.

love this video, excellent information

We really need more people in this industry it worries me to know there is only one company that makes lacquers

Great insightful talk, thank you.

Halleluiah! I love this interview and what an amazing man and acompishment! THe feeling of the recordings, can't wait to own some of these!

Awesome video Thank you

Bernie Grundman, just a brilliant engineer. People like Bernie and Bob Ludwig have so much integrity in their work.

Chad: "...It's easy to be the bad job, it's hard to be the good job...You buy the best, you only cry once." Well said!

They’re not SME turntables on the lathes. They are Technics SP-10MKIII’s driving the Scully lathes with SME tonearms for playback.

Awesome! Great interview, great insight, great information. What a treat to watch.

To paraphrase George Clooney's character in 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou'....Chad's clearly a 'Steely Dan' Man....😎

Bernie is the man. Need 12 guys behind him learning and taking notes!!!! Chad keep it going can’t wait till your next surprise!!!!!!

Life Long SD fan. Just picked up Can't Buy a Thrill on LP. Sounds awesome. This video is fascinating. Thank you!

Fascinating stuff 🤗

am I the only one thinking this is the best explanation I've ever heard about the advantages of 45 over 33?

@5 min in approx..... this whole thing Bernie is talking about here is basically bashing everything wrong with Vinyl. yes it is def reduced by doing it in 45 but yet he is still saying the further into the record you go, the more quality u lose. with Digital isn't this all eliminated? ESPECIALLY if its an audiophile label like Analogue Productions and Mobile Fidelity who take great care in making sure the sound of the product is top tier. And by great care I mean transferring the master tape to like DSD 256. Not saying digital is better than vinyl but it does raise the question that maybe this is a VERY STRONG plus to digital. And with a great digital hi fi play back system can definitely compete with the sound of vinyl! This is curious to me cause AP is putting out all these Steely Dans on SACD. why wouldn't they talk about the positives of this? And why wouldn't they talk about the Steely Dan SACDs AP is doing. It says on the site these albums are mastered direct to DSD by Bernie. Why cant we see, have a mention of what Bernie's process is for mastering these tapes direct to DSD? Does he go DSD 256 like Mofi does? Are the A/D converters Bernie uses custom made and hot rodded? @44 min in.. the digital/cd bashing... I love Bernie and he is the true ultimate mastering engineer. But I have some MAJOR problems with the cd/digital bashing here. yes of course u can hit a brickwall in digital and it can start to clip and not be as dynamic.... if the mastering engineer sucks and its not DONE right! but cmon... us sacd/cd/digital fans know that when an album done in digital is done RIGHT these brickwalls will not be hit. ESPECIALLY with DSD. I'm willing to bet Bernie takes great care when doing his DSD transfers. Wish it was mentioned. Anyway, I have plenty of regular CD's from the 80s as well that have amazing Dynamics. CDs from the label ECM and GRP for example. Analogue Productions SACD's sound incredible too! Also, when these discs are played on a hi fi system with a hi fi transport and DAC, the results can be incredible! Bernie says vinyl can sound great or worse due to the quality of the cartridge. Well the DAC quality for digital is like the Cartridge quality for vinyl. The better the DAC you have the more out of the sound you'll get off the CD and SACD.

Wow, I learned so much from Bernie in this video.

whish they'd discussed the well known issues with Katy Lied, having that under Chad's elbow was such a tease

Thank you Chad and Bernie!! 🙏👍

Very interesting, I wonder how good the Newer Albums are? Tending now since (Middle 2000's) the Newer bands are cutting Album from Digital and they are trying to keep the cost down?

Incredible that this happened… The Dan

Got my orders in looking forward to hear them.

While you have the master tapes right there, could you please do a SACD release as well - and from that you can issue lowly ole Compact Discs too!

Really great video! Thank you! Will be buying all of these :)

Bernie is Amazing

It *is* magic; drag a rock through a plastic trench and out comes music.

Fantastic discussion! I can't wait to hear the payoff when the first Steely Dan UHQR arrives. I tried to find which European record pressing plants Chad was referencing. I've only had issues with GZ. Are there other European plants guilty of polishing?

Based on the excellent reissues done by Acoustic Sounds, and I have their "Are You Experienced" on vinyl, it would appear that there have been no audiophile recordings in nearly 50 years. Well, that's based on the attention given to the kinds of content they release. One could say, they only give attention to really old stuff. I personally, would like to see something more modern get that same level of attention. But... modern stuff is rarely analog so I guess there's no winning in that regard. I would love to see some classic Alice Cooper like Welcome to My Nightmare, stuff like that would be cool.

For RM interveiws - I never hear them discussing how they handle Dolby A. Here Bernie touches on it a little. Chad- any interviews on the making of the SD SACDs. Thanks.

One thing I've noticed in the original cuts of Aja is a lack of air/sort of tiredness in the vocals that later digital versions seem to have overcome. I'm in for all of them but really hope the new cut will be especially revelatory for Aja.

What a combo Bernie and the brilliance of the Dan.

I have a killer turntable and I love The Dan. Not sure if I'll be buying any of these on vinyl. I have Can't Buy A Thrill on SACD ordered, which I will rip so I can listen using my Benchmark dac which is so good. I've got so much steely on vinyl already...multiple copies!

Love you guys! Chad, did you compare your new Katy Lied remaster to the one Bernie did for an Alto test pressing long ago? I have it and will check when yours arrives, but in case you compared already, your findings would be welcome.

oh . . I am in the right world, after all .. that this is happening . with these two fine folks .. wow: what a blessing !

God of mastering 🙏

Would love for Bernie to take us through from stem to sternum in a mastering session. This was fantastic, but I want more. Chad knows Im greedy and always push for more lol.

Great session! I’m curious if people like Bernie who have these “golden ears” have their hearing tested to see if they’ve lost high frequency sensitivity over the years due to aging and just natural deterioration of human senses that happen with the passing of time?

I am very excited to collect my favorite bands classic albums and mastered by my favorite mastering engineer in the business. I would love to interview Bernie as i could spend hours getting important details from his thought process to the finished product. But I have a couple questions of these versions curious about. One most of these albums Bernie did the original masters. Why not use those and if not why not ? Do you master the music differently when it's going to be cut to 45 rpm vs 33 ? How will you master these differently and what sonic attributes will you be striving for with these new releases. Thanks

I hope the final product is worth all the hype… and the price.

Get the hi-res downloads of these, everybody. Skip all this hoopla with the 2 songs per side and oversized boxes.

Question! Because you only cut 10 min per side at 45... are you cutting at a fixed pitch to avoid using a tape preview head and if so, what LPI ? or... if you are cutting with variable pitch, how are you doing the delay?

No one told the Japanese that traditionally only one side of the lacquer has to be perfect, so they went ahead and made both sides perfect. 😂

Sending some blank 1/4" tapes over Bernie, if you can just run off a couple of safety copies please. Cheers!

Oh my goodness, picking up actual Steely Dan masters, turning them over, reading the labels.... Wow.

Hi gents, like the ketchup commercial for Heinz it is all about ANTICIPATION! As of today what is your projected release dates for these gems? Thanks.

I wish that the record pressing biz worldwide was run by Chad. There are and have been, too many snakes just out for a dollar. Only Chad and his wonderful team can be trusted with the Steely Dan legacy of albums.

Looking forward to this! How many copies of each album will be printed?

The question is: given that analog tape degrades with time and that Roger Nichols made digital safety copies of the original analog master tapes in the early eighties, which source is best for doing a remaster - an old analog tape or the digital safety copies made on early eighties AtoD converters? I believe Roger Nichols was of the opinion the he would pick the digital safety copies. I wonder what was used for Citizen Steely Dan? Apparently the original MFSL releases used analog tapes.

I did not know that about polishing, or de-horning. I guess scuff marks are a good thing.

Bernie: can you explain how you did the digital mastering compared with the analog mastering?

Two legends

I just got my Can't Buy A Thrill reissue today. It's sooooo nice sounding.

Can't these recordings be transfered to CD and not be clipped and therefore maintain that wonderful sound?

Finally so excited! Will the sacds be from digital masters or analog ? Either way will buy my favs.! Thank U!!

Fascinating.

Can someone tell me where did Chad find these tapes I thought they were burned up in the 2008 fire? Sorry answered my own question, this was made from copies.

I was hoping this discussion was going to be about the tapes and the work done with those, not just the vinyl cutting.