Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit – Live From The Ryman

Agreed with the general consensus here. So much potential given the band and the venue, but lacking execution here. All of this being said, not a terrible record for the JI fan collection, and happy to Jason and the team. Don’t buy this record unless you just want to complete a 400 Unit collection.

Chad’s mix sounds fantastic across the board. Jimbo is loud and clear but boomy and lacking any punch. Jason’s vocals sound a bit muffled and muddied with delay, and his guitar is too loud and trebly. Sadler guitar sounds sexy as hell as usual, but his vocals a bit flat and muddied. Amanda violin sounding like she’s stuck behind 2-3 moving blankets. Was Derry even at this show lol where are the keys here.

Pretty packaging, but crappy paper inner sleeves come so caked onto the vinyl that you have to pry it off and brush the hell out of the vinyl before playing.

Does anyone know if the other colored pressings sound better mix-wise? I didn’t know if the issues were confined to the black wax pressing. Because yeah, it’s unlistenable and I don’t totally understand what happened here.

Pretty disappointing in of the sound quality. If the objective from a mix standpoint was to have me believe that I was out in the audience under the roof of some outdoor amphitheater then SUCCESS because that is what it sounds like. A bit distant with no real clarity between the instruments. As another reviewer commented: it sounds like the drums are intentionally muffled and JI’s voice track is abnormally “tinny.”

No pops or cracks and a nice nice flat disc with appealing gatefold but at the end of the day this should have been sonically cleaner….just better. Pretty disappointed.

This could have been a spectacular live album but the mix is extremely disappointing. The vocals are way high and the band is extremely muted. The drummer sounds like he's playing a cardboard box that's been wrapped in a blanket. The A-side is the worst and it gets a little better the more the album goes on but it's still not great. It reminds me a little of those early fan-recorded Springsteen bootlegs from the Darkness Tour which is a bit disappointing for an official release. The digital sounds a little bit better on the acoustic songs, but not much. Could have been a 5 star album if it weren't for the production.

The drum mix is horrible on the first two tracks. It is delayed and offbeat and the snare hit sounds more like a muffle hand clip. The vocals are too high and hot to my ears. I’m quite disappointed to be honest