visprashyana

The difference between 45 rpm and 33 1/3 is very noticable. The instruments just come out from the speakers. The surface noise does decrease, but the big difference is the soundstage which greatly improves. This is true with both the AP and the Classic releases. As far as the Ray Brown, Stan Ricker says that's the best sounding album that he has ever worked on. I would give amusicdirect a call and order the blue vinyl if you want that title. Half master worked for some recording companies. Overall, everyone got into the half mastering and not too many did it well. Many companies went into the technique, but didn't understand how to make it work. As jazzhound pointed out, the amplification changes considerly when going to half speed mastering. It's not used too often these days and MFSL was one of the only companies who could do it well consistently.