Wednesday, 19 June 2013, 12:29 EDT (Reuters) - The Rolling Stones released a career-spanning digitally re-mastered back catalogue on Apple Inc's iTunes Store on Wednesday as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations.

Full details at: [www.reuters.com]

I saw that yesterday...ah, the cash grab. I suppose for a young fan first getting into them, downloading all their albums at once ($240) could be nice. It certainly would have saved me some time back when.

The problem is the sound. All the new remasters are completely blown out. Examples...

Brown Sugar - The brickwall mastering causes the song to have no dynamics. The chorus has no swing because the volume stays blazingly loud the entire time.

All Down The Line - No breathing room. Modern mastering makes the snare not pop. Buries other details that were already muddy.

Miss You, Beast Of Burden, etc... - The songs on vinyl and even early CD have lots of dynamic range. On the new remasters they have been ruined and have no presence. Just loud music, no room to breath. Every single thing that happens (vocals, guitar, bass, kick, snare) sounds like it is fighting every other part of the song to get out of a box. Compression kills these tracks.

She's So Cold - Every time the kick or snare hit you loose detail with the guitars. Those beautiful notes get buried in the compression.

I could go on and on. Eventually I hope that we get a 60 year anniversary set where Bob Clearmountain works with an engineer of his choice to fix albums like A Bigger Bang that were ruined in mixing, and preserve the original sound of the pre 90s albums by not destroying them in mastering.

[/ranting]

Here the links:




The Rolling Stones 1963-1971





The Complete Collection 1971-2013



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-06-19 21:40 by Irix.

same old complaints about sound and mixing. Again...guys...they are "mastered for itunes"

Those "great" vinyl and older CD versions when made into digital files sound awful on ipods.

Theses releases are iTunes only for a reason! They sound MUCH MUCH better thru itunes/ipod/ipad/phone than ripping old versions into itunes.

Quote
lettingitbleed
same old complaints about sound and mixing. Again...guys...they are "mastered for itunes"

Those "great" vinyl and older CD versions when made into digital files sound awful on ipods.

Theses releases are iTunes only for a reason! They sound MUCH MUCH better thru itunes/ipod/ipad/phone than ripping old versions into itunes.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-06-19 22:11 by His Majesty.

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lettingitbleed
I saw that yesterday...ah, the cash grab. I suppose for a young fan first getting into them, downloading all their albums at once ($240) could be nice. It certainly would have saved me some time back when.

I'd only get individual songs from each release...which apparently you can do on iTunes (via my phone).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-06-19 22:21 by nightskyman.

Yes, that's fantastic!

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lettingitbleed

I saw that yesterday...ah, the cash grab. I suppose for a young fan first getting into them, downloading all their albums at once ($240) could be nice. It certainly would have saved me some time back when.

Or if you want to make a special single album 'The Rolling Stones 50' with all songs official released from 1963-2013 for your Smartphone or Tablet and for less money. It's convenient if you have the songs otherwise all on CD or Vinyl. It takes approx. 3 GB for 380 songs. The Discography on TimeIsOnOurSide helps with the exact order. As cover you can use the Rolling-Stones-50 logo. And then play this album in random mode .....

Maybe this is why Amazon UK have a lot of special offers on Stones CDs at the moment.

Itunes just plays mp3s. Mp3s do not have to sound bad. My entire mp3 collection is either V0 (variable bitrate) or 320kbps. If the source is good the mp3s are fantastic. Itunes does not inherently make things sound terrible.

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flacnvinyl

Itunes just plays mp3s.

Uuhh?

The songs in the iTunes store are in AAC format with 256 kbps (this is better than a MP3 with 320 kbps). iTunes itself can play AAC, MP3, ALAC Apple Lossless (e. g. in HD quality 88.2 kHz/24bit), AIFF as well as WAV (see Wikipedia).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-06-19 23:45 by Irix.

Things have changed.

Nowadays it's clearly ABKCO who puts most effort into their releases.
Where The Rolling Stones 1963-1971 includes every studio recording, including a new "No Stone Unturned vols 1 & 2", the catalouge from 1971-2013, called "The Complete Collection" is a sloppy attempt with only studio and live albums and no non-album tracks. Poor.

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lettingitbleed

Theses releases are iTunes only for a reason! They sound MUCH MUCH better thru itunes/ipod/ipad/phone than ripping old versions into itunes.

What's next? A new "remix" designed to sound great in elevators? Itunes is the anus cancer of the music world.

I really hope Neil Young's HD Pono player takes off and shows the Stones how things should be done ( = not try to lick the Iph0ney-touting hipsters' private parts).

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lettingitbleed

Theses releases are iTunes only for a reason! They sound MUCH MUCH better thru itunes/ipod/ipad/phone than ripping old versions into itunes.

What's next? A new "remix" designed to sound great in elevators? Itunes is the anus cancer of the music world.

I really hope Neil Young's HD Pono player takes off and shows the Stones how things should be done ( = not try to lick the Iph0ney-touting hipsters' private parts).

I just got my hands/ears on a HD rip of the "Tattoo You" vinyl and MAN it sounds beautiful!

Quote
lettingitbleed
same old complaints about sound and mixing. Again...guys...they are "mastered for itunes"

Those "great" vinyl and older CD versions when made into digital files sound awful on ipods.

Theses releases are iTunes only for a reason! They sound MUCH MUCH better thru itunes/ipod/ipad/phone than ripping old versions into itunes.

Actually, my vinyl rippings sound awesome on my iPod.

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flacnvinyl
The problem is the sound. All the new remasters are completely blown out.

[/ranting]

Are they new remasters or the same UMG 2009 remasters that were previously issued on CD ?

I'm going to buy the whole set and never open it. It'll be worth a lot of money someday.

The ABKCO set doesn't include the live albums and the Promotone set is missing NO SECURITY and countless B-sides. Yet another missed opportunity.

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Rocky Dijon
The ABKCO set doesn't include the live albums and the Promotone set is missing NO SECURITY and countless B-sides. Yet another missed opportunity.

Do you mean seized opportunity?

Why do we need to buy it on iTunes when all the releases (except No Security) is available on Spotify or other streaming services?

The sound quality is good enough (Ogg Vorbis), and with a subscription there, you can take the music anywhere...

Hopefully they will release a box set of CDs or vinyls. I dislike iTunes, love spotify though

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Irix

Quote
flacnvinyl

Itunes just plays mp3s.

Uuhh?

The songs in the iTunes store are in AAC format with 256 kbps (this is better than a MP3 with 320 kbps). iTunes itself can play AAC, MP3, ALAC Apple Lossless (e. g. in HD quality 88.2 kHz/24bit), AIFF as well as WAV (see Wikipedia).

Exactly my point. I referenced mp3 since that was the only format being discussed. ITunes is just a music/media management application. Those of us who hate iTunes happily use Winamp or any other preferred solution. iTunes does not inherently make things sound bad.

The fact that it still can't play flac at this point is still comical to me. And that it uses such a crazy amount of ram.

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kowalski

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flacnvinyl
The problem is the sound. All the new remasters are completely blown out.

[/ranting]

Are they new remasters or the same UMG 2009 remasters that were previously issued on CD ?

They are mastered for iTunes.

iTunes says "Every single album from The Rolling Stones' six-decade career has been newly Mastered for iTunes, which means that the original masters have been specially engineered for higher fidelity sound, so you can hear one of the greatest rock bands like never before."

Since iTunes is below CD quality... what exactly does "specially engineered for higher fidelity sound" mean? We've made it sound even better... yet still not as good?

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GasLightStreet

Quote
kowalski
Are they new remasters or the same UMG 2009 remasters that were previously issued on CD ?

They are mastered for iTunes.

iTunes says "Every single album from The Rolling Stones' six-decade career has been newly Mastered for iTunes, which means that the original masters have been specially engineered for higher fidelity sound, so you can hear one of the greatest rock bands like never before."

Since iTunes is below CD quality... what exactly does "specially engineered for higher fidelity sound" mean? We've made it sound even better... yet still not as good?

From what I understand "mastered for itunes" means they used high resolution files as source to encode their lossy files.

Full descrpition here : [www.apple.com] [pdf]


Question is what do they call "original masters". Maybe they used the 2009 remasters as high resolution source for encoding their lossy files. The same files were used for the blu-ray edition of GRRR!

Maybe I'm blind, but why didn't they include "Get Your Ya Ya's Out" and the early outtakes of the Mega-Deluxe of Grrr!? [itunes.apple.com]

... and "Got Live If You Want it" (EP and LP) is missing ...

you clearly don't understand the stones' business model.

if it truly was complete, then that would prohibit them from future releases of a "complete collection"

this way, they can hit everyone up for more money in 4-5 years when they releases the "super duper complete" version.

i recently updated, increased my rolling stones dvd, cd collection.

by buying from amazon 2nd hand.

no complaints and i paid about £3 average for each cd or dvd.

i have in excess of 45 cd,s and a dozen dvd,s and paid only a fraction of the price that i would pay for itunes collection.

anyone know where i can get bootlegs on cd, at reasonable prices

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RobertJohnson
Maybe I'm blind, but why didn't they include "Get Your Ya Ya's Out" and the early outtakes of the Mega-Deluxe of Grrr!? [itunes.apple.com]

Because this is only the core studio recordings from 1963-1971. Plus, of course, the deluxe set of Grrr! Would be superflous.

It's pretty clear that ABKCO has done their own collection and The Stones have obviously been uninterested, since there are no non-album tracks, except for the pair of studio recordings from last year. A shame, really, since ABKCO has clearly taken care of their product.