Now that would make sense.

What I want to know is, HOW or WHY do the Stones lose these kind of things? That is just nuts.

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R

If it hasn't occurred to anyone to email Mr. Sax for his opinion, or to set the record straight, I just did. I'll pass on any info I might receive.

edited for clarity:
I've emailed Doug Sax about this and will pass on any info he gives me.

ULIM, you work for Linn obviously.
I have an AKURATE DS and a LP 12 (I will get it back tomorrow after a revision and MC cleaning made by my Linn retailer). Sound does matter.
I will listen to Exile Vinyl 2010 tomorrow night again but when I first listened to it I found it quite good, I must say as good as the ripped cd on my Nas.

"we know it's a bit late but we hope you don't mind if we stay"

sorry to say, I think ULIM is right and other audiofile's agree....you don't have to be a vinyl expert but if you're passionate about the analog sound...collect past pressings & compare, the new EOMS is not what some of us hoped it would be...when people say that it sounds good to them,I always say you should hear what it is supposed to sound like...frankly, it is not so important to most people but if you could hear a side by side comparison, you would never argue the point..IMHO......peter

Source is everything and until Mick stops taking the Michael and locates the tapes, because lets be honest.

We have documented evidence that the Stones were accompanied buy relatively sane people in the form of their personal management crews, Ahmet Ertegun was paying for this do we really think he allowed the product to be misplaced. I'd check the family vault.

And why wouldn't you utilise Johns is beyond me. He didn't shoot up in his ears did he?

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cc

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R

If it hasn't occurred to anyone to email Mr. Sax for his opinion, or to set the record straight, I just did. I'll pass on any info I might receive.

edited for clarity:
I've emailed Doug Sax about this and will pass on any info he gives me.

That's what I said, genius. As yet I've heard nada.

I A/B'd side three this morning and perhaps my ears were in a different mood. I have to say Ulim's analysis that the original is superior is spot on. You can't change Happy much as it's practically mono. The middle songs too seem to vary little as they are so murkey but the differences in "Shine A Light" are stunning, especially in the drums.

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skipstone
Now that would make sense.

What I want to know is, HOW or WHY do the Stones lose these kind of things? That is just nuts.

That sort of thing actually happens more often than you'd think, with all kinds of major artists (like The Beach Boys, for instance...the original un-EQ'd mono master tape of "Pet Sounds" was lost sometime in the early-to-mid '90s...the individual songs are believed by some to have been "de-spliced", meaning separated, and buried unlabeled in a vault somewhere). In the Stones' case, none of the original tapes (meaning the multi-track session reels) were labeled according to Don Was, so perhaps that's also the case with the EQ'd production master of "Exile". But what would REALLY be tragic, would be if the UN-EQ'd stereo mixdown tape were missing...usually when an old album gets remastered for CD, the artist and/or producer prefer to go back to THAT source anyway, and use the opportunity to make the new CD sound (in their opinion) BETTER than the LP (since they were oftentimes not present at the LP mastering session, and therefore unable to voice their opinion on whatever compromises needed to be made to produce a master where the stylus wouldn't jump out of the grooves due to there being too much bass...or they just simply weren't happy with said compromises in the first place). Jagger has recently stated that he was very involved in the new remastering, and was able to make some sonic "improvements" to the album, which he originally considered to be "muddy" sounding and lacking in the bass. An artist will often say "The new remaster is the way we always intended it to be heard".

I doubt they intended for Exile to be this heavily compressed back in 1972 (I'm talking about the CD version here).

So no, I don't think that's the case here. There may be some improvements, but the remastering is a step back at the same time.

Otherwise, you are right - it is indeed possible to use the mix tapes to produce a superior-sounding CD version. Sadly, it just never seems to happen.

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R

That's what I said, genius.

right--as I wrote, my post was an edit for clarity. I deleted the conditional "if" clause, which was needless and confusing, since you said you'd already emailed the guy regardless of whether it had or hadn't occurred to any of us non-geniuses. Thanks, looking forward to an update.

I'm confused. Go to http://www.rollingstones.com/photo-gallery/masters-film-archive

The image caption on the seventh picture says these are the original Exile masters still boxed.

Who knows how old that picture is...

And do they really have TDK D120 cassettes in their archive? I can't imagine them storing anything important on those!

I just compared the vinyl with LP 12 revised and cleaned and the Cd ripped on AKurate. Clearly the ripped files sound better : dynamic, bass are better. At the moment Sweet VIrginia is running.
To be sure it would be appropriate to compare with another LP edition.

"we know it's a bit late but we hope you don't mind if we stay"

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akgameboy
I'm confused. Go to http://www.rollingstones.com/photo-gallery/masters-film-archive

The image caption on the seventh picture says these are the original Exile masters still boxed.

It also purports to show a 'master' of WILD HORSES when in fact it's a tape of a '75 show....


...HEY!?!

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CMan
An artist will often say "The new remaster is the way we always intended it to be heard".

Yeah, that's a load of tripe innit. If that's the truth then that means they didn't really mean to release it then because that would mean it's just a temporary example, which is bullshit! Mick says Exile is muddy and would like to remix it - fine, then DO IT. Ahhh but he can't be BOTHERED. He should just stop complaining about it and fix it. Or leave it. It's known the way it is and when messed with, well, people start to lose respect. Give us the option - like Pearl Jam did - and that way things stay in tact - and respected.

Here's a review by Michael Fremer:

"Now, about that sound: first I just played the new reissued double vinyl mastered by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab. How many times have I heard this record? Probably hundreds. This new re-mastering sounded compacted, spatially flattened, deliberately dynamically compressed and shockingly bass-shy. The horns that are supposed to cut through with a mean edge on “Rocks Off” were limp, Charlie’s signature snare sound was soft. I mean it really sucks on a stereo but probably will sound swell on an iPod played back with cheap earbuds. The mastering gamesmanship does produce the sensation of more detail and greater transparency but it's sham detail and sham transparency. This production has had it's balls cut off.

Switching to the Stephen Marcussen mastered CD produced essentially the same blah results (you can hear the same tape "crinkle" 3 minutes into "Casino Boogie" on both) so blame him not Doug Sax who cut the vinyl from 44.1k/24 bit files and it sounds like it. The added bit depth does make the vinyl sound somewhat more detailed but why bother with the vinyl? Too bad, because the pressing quality is excellent. I have trouble believing this was pressed at United in Nashville. I bet it was pressed at Rainbo in L.A., which has really stepped up to the quality plate.

In fact why bother with this at all when if you play Bob Ludwig’s CD mastering for Virgin years ago, you’ll hear what this record is supposed to sound like, as intended for a real grown up stereo system, with bass, full dynamic range and as much three-dimensionality as redbook CD can manage, which admittedly isn’t much.

I compared original American, Japanese, Polish and German vinyl pressings to this limp noodle and even the Polish pressing, clearly from a copy of a copy of the master at best had more balls, but of course more noise and less detail and even less transparency.

I used to think the German Electrola pressing was the best but now I think it’s the original American, mastered at Artisan in L.A. It’s really the original since the record was mixed at Sunset in L.A. and it has a similar midrange to this latest reissue, but it also has bass and treble and dynamics. The German is hyped up in the presence region and the bottom end, giving the kick drums lots of punch and the horns great edge, but that sucks out the middle where Mick’s already dipped voice resides.

No doubt the Stones approved the test pressings that became the original issue. I certainly don’t think they listened much to this latest reissue before it was approved for release. If they did, what’s their excuse for this sorry sounding, limp noodle?

If it was to make it sound “good” on earbuds, well that’s not good enough and a sorry way to leave it until someone does it right for a future generation interested in getting their butts kicked by good sound. That will happen, I’m sure. Meanwhile, find yourself an original American pressing or Bob Ludwig’s Virgin CD and wait it out.

Or if you’ve bought the deluxe box as I did, put your original pressings inside and you’ve got a swell souvenir and good sound."

[www.musicangle.com]

"In fact why bother with this at all when if you play Bob Ludwig’s CD mastering for Virgin years ago, you’ll hear what this record is supposed to sound like, as intended for a real grown up stereo system, with bass, full dynamic range and as much three-dimensionality as redbook CD can manage, which admittedly isn’t much."

Ahhhhh. See? I'm not so full of shit!

Three-dimensionality? That's something I've never heard from two speakers... Nobody has ever been able to explain to me how this would even be possible either.

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akgameboy
I'm confused. Go to http://www.rollingstones.com/photo-gallery/masters-film-archive

The image caption on the seventh picture says these are the original Exile masters still boxed.

Those are probably the 16-track multis, especially since the caption says outtakes are included (those were never mixed down since they weren't actually completed at the time). Also, as I said, the UN-EQ'd stereo mixdown master is obviously still in the archive, as that's what has been used to make the new remasters in '94 and 2010. What's definitely missing (according to Was) is the EQ'd stereo master, which was used to cut the vinyl LP in '72 (BTW, there would've also been a separate EQ'd stereo master for cassette & 8-track production).

In the 'for what it's worth department,' this morning I A/B'd Side Four and I must conclude that I am in agreement with the criticisms aired here. The new Exile is compressed and the illusion of aural space present in the original is almost entirely lacking. The bass and drums on the original are vastly superior. On the new version I DID hear a Chuck Berryish lick within ADTL that was new to me however.

What's most ironic is we are now singing the aural praises of an album that has been dismissed and chastised for nearly forty years as one of the murkiest, muddy sounding recordings ever made.

It was pressed at United, 31,000 copies to be close to exact

I need a clear information about the best vinyl source.
I met a guy yesterday in a vinyl shop. He told me the 72 edition is the best one. There would be one from 79 (?) and there is this one from 1994 (?) for sale on the bay [cgi.ebay.com]

what about the RTI version ? [cgi.ebay.com]

"it's certainly better than the RTI 180 gram pressing, which is a disaster" really a disaster ?

"we know it's a bit late but we hope you don't mind if we stay"



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2010-06-19 11:27 by toomuchforme.

Japanese import from the 80's. Superb!!!!!

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toomuchforme
I need a clear information about the best vinyl source.
I met a guy yesterday in a vinyl shop. He told me the 72 edition is the best one. There would be one from 79 (?) and there is this one from 1994 (?) for sale on the bay [cgi.ebay.com]

what about the RTI version ? [cgi.ebay.com]

"it's certainly better than the RTI 180 gram pressing, which is a disaster" really a disaster ?

There is the CBS issue from 1986(?) as well I believe. I avoided that one.

Isn't that the series where they removed the actual zipper from Sticky Fingers for the first time?

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whitem8
Japanese import from the 80's. Superb!!!!!

seems the 79 is the japanese issue !!

from eil.com :


ROLLING STONES Exile On Main Street (1979 Japanese Toshiba-EMI issue of the 1972 18-track double LP, gatefold picture sleeve with picture inner sleeves plus fold-out 6-page Japanese/lyric insert and twelve tear-off postcards in two strips of sixESS-50049~50).

"we know it's a bit late but we hope you don't mind if we stay"

Yup that is it! I have it and bought it in 1980. It sounds amazing! And the entire album package is a work of art. Thick stock cardboard, lyric sheet (with a lot of translation errors), and the postcards. Nice!

torrent for flacs of the us vinyl 1st pressing is still active at the usual place.

the sound reproduced by a cd player will not be the same.
I placed a bid on Japanese issue LP.
Done. I will have it and will compare with the 2010 issue

"we know it's a bit late but we hope you don't mind if we stay"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-06-21 23:01 by toomuchforme.

Interesting article about the new Exile vinyl here:

[www.musicangle.com]


[....] Now, about that sound: first I just played the new reissued double vinyl mastered by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab. How many times have I heard this record? Probably hundreds. This new re-mastering sounded compacted, spatially flattened, deliberately dynamically compressed and shockingly bass-shy. The horns that are supposed to cut through with a mean edge on “Rocks Off” were limp, Charlie’s signature snare sound was soft. I mean it really sucks on a stereo but probably will sound swell on an iPod played back with cheap earbuds. The mastering gamesmanship does produce the sensation of more detail and greater transparency but it's sham detail and sham transparency. This production has had it's balls cut off.

Switching to the Stephen Marcussen mastered CD produced essentially the same blah results (you can hear the same tape "crinkle" 3 minutes into "Casino Boogie" on both) so blame him not Doug Sax who cut the vinyl from 44.1k/24 bit files and it sounds like it. The added bit depth does make the vinyl sound somewhat more detailed but why bother with the vinyl? Too bad, because the pressing quality is excellent. I have trouble believing this was pressed at United in Nashville. I bet it was pressed at Rainbo in L.A., which has really stepped up to the quality plate.

In fact why bother with this at all when if you play Bob Ludwig’s CD mastering for Virgin years ago, you’ll hear what this record is supposed to sound like, as intended for a real grown up stereo system, with bass, full dynamic range and as much three-dimensionality as redbook CD can manage, which admittedly isn’t much.

I compared original American, Japanese, Polish and German vinyl pressings to this limp noodle and even the Polish pressing, clearly from a copy of a copy of the master at best had more balls, but of course more noise and less detail and even less transparency.

I used to think the German Electrola pressing was the best but now I think it’s the original American, mastered at Artisan in L.A. It’s really the original since the record was mixed at Sunset in L.A. and it has a similar midrange to this latest reissue, but it also has bass and treble and dynamics.

The German is hyped up in the presence region and the bottom end, giving the kick drums lots of punch and the horns great edge, but that sucks out the middle where Mick’s already dipped voice resides.

No doubt the Stones approved the test pressings that became the original issue. I certainly don’t think they listened much to this latest reissue before it was approved for release. If they did, what’s their excuse for this sorry sounding, limp noodle?

If it was to make it sound “good” on earbuds, well that’s not good enough and a sorry way to leave it until someone does it right for a future generation interested in getting their butts kicked by good sound. That will happen, I’m sure. Meanwhile, find yourself an original American pressing or Bob Ludwig’s Virgin CD and wait it out.

Or if you’ve bought the deluxe box as I did, put your original pressings inside and you’ve got a swell souvenir and good sound.

Also an interesting link, concerning the artwork of the new Exile release - near the end of the article I posted a link to above :


EXILE IN PIXELVILLE
by Pete Bilderback

[floweringtoilet.blogspot.com]

Do you see anything wrong with the image below?



I see plenty wrong with it, and any visual artist I know would absolutely hit the ceiling if their work were reproduced in this way. The image is, of course, the iconic cover to the Rolling Stones' Exile On Main St album a photo collage of Robert Frank photos created by John Van Hamersveld. This is a scan of the new deluxe edition artwork. Resolution issues aside (which are partly the fault of my scanner), the first thing I noticed about the new cover is that the color balance is off. The whole cover has a reddish tint, while the original LP had no tinting whatsoever. To my eyes the tinting looks "wrong," although I admit it could be considered a legitimate artistic choice. But as you will see below, there are some other things about the way the image was manipulated that are very hard to understand.

More annoying to me is the fact that to fit the original square-shaped cover to the rectangular dimensions of a digipack, someone has done a Photoshop hack job on the image. Take a look at the blue highlighted selections below. Do they look familiar?



They should, as they've simply been cropped out of the original image and repeated. See the areas highlighted in red below to see the parts of the image that have been duplicated.



Once I noticed this repetition of images, I found it incredibly distracting. My eye is continually drawn to the elements in the image that are repeated. I understand that they needed to do something to fit a square image to the rectangular dimensions of a digipack, it's just that I feel they found the worst possible way to do it.

Here is a photo I took of my Exile On Main St LP cover using nothing more than a Canon Digital Rebel SLR camera with stock lens:



cleaned up the image slightly in Photoshop then cut the text to a separate layer. Next, I used the "desaturate" adjustment to make sure the cover was truly black and white. This probably took me around ten minutes.

Once I started looking at the original cover, I noticed something interesting: I had originally assumed the repetition of images for the deluxe reissue was needed to prevent cropping the image, but in fact someone cropped a significant amount of material out of the original image to create the deluxe artwork. See the highlighted areas below to see what was cut out:



This makes the choice to repeat material even more mystifying to me. Somebody actually chopped off some of the horizontal information, which makes no sense if you are trying to transform a square image into a horizontally aligned rectangular one.

If they had merely cropped the image in the way you see it below, it would have fit the dimensions of the digipack perfectly with no need for repeating images. Yes, some of the original cover would have been lost, but no more than was cropped out anyway.



If they wanted to keep the entire original album cover intact, they could have added some sort of sidebar, as I often see on such deluxe reissues. I created a possible example below, although I am sure someone more creative than me could do something much more interesting. But at least this way none of the iconic album cover is lost.



I didn't spend very long manipulating any of these images, and I admit they are far from perfect. If I had better equipment, a better source, and more time I could have done a lot better. Nevertheless, I think the options I've presented here would have been preferable to the very strange and unappealing artwork that was created for this deluxe reissue. Of course if they had chosen to go with standard jewel case packaging, none of this manipulation would have been necessary in the first place. I personally don't believe digipacks are mandatory for deluxe reissues, although they do seem to be the norm.

Okay, I realize there are bigger problems in the world than botched CD reissue artwork. I'm honestly more puzzled by this than anything: the more closely I looked at the artwork, the more questions I had, and the less sense any of it made to me. I'd be interested to hear possible explanations for what I consider some very strange choices. But considering how iconic this album cover is (John Lydon has admitted that it was a huge influence on the visual aesthetic of punk rock), I think it is a real shame to see it treated with so little respect.

If I haven't said anything about the music on Exile On Main St yet, it's because I assume you know it's great: a near perfect fusion of rock, blues, country and gospel. It is the fullest realization ever of what Gram Parsons envisioned as "Cosmic American Music" despite the fact that it was (mostly) made by five Brits living in France.

The deluxe reissue is worth picking up for the bonus disc, but not, in my opinion, for the remastering. Target is selling an exclusive "rarities edition" that is just the bonus CD for $10. It's refreshing to have an option not to repurchase the original album but still be able to get the bonus tracks for a reasonable price.

I know Exile is supposed to be a "bad" sounding recording, but if you find a good copy on LP and play it back on a decent system, it is actually a very lively and real sounding recording. The warts and all sound shocked a lot of people back in 1972 because the Stones chose not to adhere to the post-Abbey Road norm of slickly produced multi-track rock music. The album sounds all the more vital today because of that fact.

Unfortunately, the new remaster does adhere to today's norm of dynamically compressing older recordings, which to my ears ends up emphasizing the murkier aspects of the recording. For the best sounding Exile on CD I recommend finding a used copy of the 1994 Virgin reissue that was remastered by Robert Ludwig. Better yet, find an Artisan pressed original UK or US LP, as none of the CD reissues have bettered it sonically.

Update:

I looked at the non-deluxe edition CD in a record store today, and the cover art on that also features some strange repetition of images, even though the image is rectangular. Some of the images that were cropped from the bottom of the original cover reappear, but there is another band of repeated images at the bottom. Weird.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-06-22 13:49 by Erik_Snow.