I recently picked up couple albums from Johnny Cash's American Recording series (specifically, III and IV). I was excited about it as I've been meaning to get them for a while. To my dissapointment, both albums sounded terrible, sounding really "hot" at many places with distortions.

My questions is, are there good versions of the American Recording series? I really want to listen to them, but I just can't get over the distortions.

Don't know, but wouldn't be surprised if there isn't -- Rick Rubin produced them, and he's usually a hard rock/heavy metal producer.

Damn, that's not what I wanted to hear.

They are all available on vinyl, so that may be an option. Having said that I do not recall that III and IV were recorded that hot. I'll have to go back and listen to them as its been a while.

They can probably be fixed a bit but you never know how it may come out.