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Sipuncula

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crumbling_mice
This is all very interesting...and whilst i was aware there were differences between the varying editions, I wasn't aware of the reasons and variation extremes. What I still don't understand is that these so called professional producers/engineers etc can turn out finished cd's with such awful mistakes as Sweet Virginia on the 80s version and all the'brickwalling' on the later releases. If us mere mortals are aware of such crass work...then why the hell do these guys get paid huge amounts of money. Kowalski...how would you have produced the re-issues if you had the opportunity?

The brickwalling is intentional. It's a trend in the industry, becoming both more prevalent and more "loud" in recent years.

Well, they are just being silly!

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kowalski

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crumbling mice
Kowalski...how would you have produced the re-issues if you had the opportunity?

Try to find the best analog source and just transfer it to digital. No EQ, compression or whatever..

Actually this is how were done last year's SACD version of '71-'86 Stones albums. And they sound great! Natural and well balanced sound, and respectful of the original recording.

If you have a SACD player or a blu-ray player that can read SACD this is the way to go for digital Stones.

Try SACD if you have a chance.
Keith's guitar sound is obviously different.
It's a brave new world.

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crumbling_mice

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Sipuncula

The brickwalling is intentional. It's a trend in the industry, becoming both more prevalent and more "loud" in recent years.

Well, they are just being silly!

Brickwalling is intended at people listening to music on tiny earbuds. With every part of a song set to the loudest volume you will hear everything clearly in any conditions.
Problem is for people listening to the same music on decent audio systems. As all the brightness and the unsubtlety of the mastering jump out of speakers you get ear fatigue very quickly, and after 3 or 4 songs you also get an impression of boredom as they all sound the same. At the end you just don't want to listen again to this kind of record.

Very good post Kowalski!

Yep...Kowalski I have to commend you on your very informative posts - really helpful and cleared up a lot of things. I vote for a Kowalski corner where all new issues are given the once over and analyised for us by this man! Thank you.

Thanks but nothing new here. Brickwalling started back in the 90's, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication being one of the most well known first brickwalled album. And Oasis' What's The Story Morning Glory being maybe the first one (released in 1995).

Also all that remastering trend started at around the same time. Most of the time it was about raising sound level and compressing music so that old albums would sound like today's bands. Nowadays they even remaster albums originally released in the 90's.
For example Nirvana's Nevermind was remastered last year by Bob Ludwig (the same Bob Ludwig who remastered Stones post '71 catalog in 1994 and 60's albums in 2002) and according to some fans it wasn't good at all. There's an interesting analysis of the problem here : [www.lostturntable.com]

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crumbling_mice

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swiss
hi guys - super interesting post.

So, how do you think would the original vinyl compares, in that respect, to the 3 CD versions above?

Crumbling, if you have a turntable I would love to hear your take on that - how the vinyl compares to your ears.

- swiss

Hi Swiss...good to have you back again. I still have my original Exile, with the postcards! Unfortunatly I don't have a turntable any more, which is ridiculous as I have about 200 vinyl LPs. From memory the vinyl was a much warmer sound with more depth. I played my copy to death so it had a lot of clicks and jumps on it, but that kind of adds to the experience!! I should reinvest in a new turntable and see what I have that is worth hanging on to.

I'm glad some of you pointed out the weird volume drop in Sweet Virginai ion the original cd - I always thought it was just me that had a dodgy copy... it is terrible, you are singing along, getting ready for the real loud bit and.pppftt it just drops away. I find it incredible that a professional engineer could let this happen, but even considering that, I still prefer the original cd to the various re-masters. I havent got a brilliant set up - NAD Amp, Sony CD player and some big floor standing B&W speakers, but through that set up it certainly has something the others don't.

hi Crumbling - it's nice to be back, and to see your thoughtful-as-ever posts! Well, I enthusiastically support your picking up a turntable and spinning your vinyl again.

Have enjoyed this smart thread a great deal. Some threads I post a lot, and others I feel like I'm in a room with a great group of guys listening and learning, like hanging out with my brothers or my guy friends Things were getting rather heated over in the Gram Parsons' thread, so this is an especially welcome chill-out-and-enjoy place to spend some time!

- swiss



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-03-14 03:19 by swiss.

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kowalski
Thanks but nothing new here. Brickwalling started back in the 90's, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication being one of the most well known first brickwalled album. And Oasis' What's The Story Morning Glory being maybe the first one (released in 1995).

Also all that remastering trend started at around the same time. Most of the time it was about raising sound level and compressing music so that old albums would sound like today's bands. Nowadays they even remaster albums originally released in the 90's.
For example Nirvana's Nevermind was remastered last year by Bob Ludwig (the same Bob Ludwig who remastered Stones post '71 catalog in 1994 and 60's albums in 2002) and according to some fans it wasn't good at all. There's an interesting analysis of the problem here : [www.lostturntable.com]

Even more astonishing, haven't they even remastered ABB? Ridiculous

I have listened to Exile in its various cofigurations for close to 40 years , and feel the new Japanese Shm-Sacd far surpasses any of the earlier versions.

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kowalski
Thanks but nothing new here. Brickwalling started back in the 90's, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication being one of the most well known first brickwalled album. And Oasis' What's The Story Morning Glory being maybe the first one (released in 1995).

Also all that remastering trend started at around the same time. Most of the time it was about raising sound level and compressing music so that old albums would sound like today's bands. Nowadays they even remaster albums originally released in the 90's.
For example Nirvana's Nevermind was remastered last year by Bob Ludwig (the same Bob Ludwig who remastered Stones post '71 catalog in 1994 and 60's albums in 2002) and according to some fans it wasn't good at all. There's an interesting analysis of the problem here : [www.lostturntable.com]

Read the whole thread, and yes - thanks Kowalski fort all the information.
I'm glad someone mentioned Oasis albums because that is the first artist who comes to my mind when discussing this audio trend.
Kowalski really summed up the reasons for this direction in the huge music business - tiny players, tiny files and tiny ear buds. No created for audio philes.

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1specialrider
I have listened to Exile in its various cofigurations for close to 40 years , and feel the new Japanese Shm-Sacd far surpasses any of the earlier versions.

Agree. These new SHM SACD have the perfect sound.
Too bad they only release them in Japan though.

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kowalski

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1specialrider
I have listened to Exile in its various cofigurations for close to 40 years , and feel the new Japanese Shm-Sacd far surpasses any of the earlier versions.

Agree. These new SHM SACD have the perfect sound.
Too bad they only release them in Japan though.

Seriously...better than vinyl? That is excellent, and more for me to spend my money on. I must have 10 copies of exile in various formats already.

wah!

So...I wonder, there was always a rumour going around since the original vinyl release of Exile that you could hear the pots and pans been clanged about in the kitchen at Nellcote...at the time I didn't have good quality sound system and ever since I've tried to hear these things...I've tried on the best speakers with vinyl, I've tried on the nest headphones I could afford, I've tried the various cd issues and I still cant pick out these culinary clankings...I've heard all sorts of weird noises and voices and instruments bleeding in and out...but I really want to know if the pots and pans rumour is true and if so which song is it on and at what point in the song....help!

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crumbling_mice
So...I wonder, there was always a rumour going around since the original vinyl release of Exile that you could hear the pots and pans been clanged about in the kitchen at Nellcote...at the time I didn't have good quality sound system and ever since I've tried to hear these things...I've tried on the best speakers with vinyl, I've tried on the nest headphones I could afford, I've tried the various cd issues and I still cant pick out these culinary clankings...I've heard all sorts of weird noises and voices and instruments bleeding in and out...but I really want to know if the pots and pans rumour is true and if so which song is it on and at what point in the song....help!

Sounds like bull poop to me.

From Musician Magazine, April 1987

Rolling Stones on CD: You Can Get What You Need.
By Scott Isler

"When you consider the type of people the Stones were in those days, you can imagine the approach they took in the studio." Greg Calbi, mastering engineer at Sterling Sound Studios in New York, speaks from experience: He digitally remastered Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street, Some Girls and Emotional Rescue for Columbia Records. "I don't think they really had the patience," Calbi continues. "Because it's the Rolling Stones and it's your favorite record, a lot of times you think a record's gonna be a lot better sounding than it really is. These records were never really recording gems but they were rock classics. That's their big conflict with digital."

Calbi's job - along with Vladimir Meller, the CBS Studios mastering engineer who handled Columbia's other Stones CDs - was to resolve that conflict. Their modus operandi was identical to Klein and Oldham's with the earlier Stones albums. "We bought each of the albums in a store," Calbi says, "and listened to what people had available to buy right now. Then I would go back and listen to the master tape. In some cases they were better, in some cases the record sounded better: Mastering, eq-ing doesn't go onto the master tape; that's done through the recording console. The main thing was to have plenty of time to compare all this stuff and see what was on the market and try to improve on it."

Calbi praises Don DeVito, Columbia's coordinator and supervisor for the Stones CD project. "He was very open to any suggestion. A lot of A&R people might just get the most convenient tape and say, 'Here, make a record out of it.' A few years ago I think they were just interested in getting a CD out. Now the competition is pretty serious. I think they know that if they get bad reviews in any of the magazines, that's just going to hurt the whole catalog."

Calbi and Meller were flooded with tapes: original masters, equalized masters, safety copies of original masters - several different versions for each album. "That gave me a tremendous advantage right off the bat," Calbi says. "In mastering, every stage is so important as far as differences in sound."

Nothing brought that home to Calbi like working on Exile, his self-described "favorite record" when it originally came out. "Exile On Main Street was probably the most perplexing one of all" the Columbia Stones CDs, he says. "The master tape sounded so drastically different from the record that was out on the market. I wouldn't want to insult anybody, but the master tape I had was dreadful. It was very muddy and there was very little separation between everything. It was obvious that whoever mastered the album did something magical to it, something which I couldn't figure out. I worked for two or three days on it, and I just gave up. I thought maybe over the years the tape had lost some quality. I couldn't get it to jump out. I did the best I could.

"Three days after I sent out the final product, they found another tape. It was an equalized tape done when they cut the record. I put it on, and it's phenomenal. With the help of some people at Columbia, we stopped production on what we had, and went back and actually used the equalized master that was done for [vinyl] disc. It just sounds fantastic.

"On the other hand, something like Sticky Fingers was fairly easy to improve upon. The bass response particularly was very lightweight and flimsy on disc. The bottom was so much fuller and richer when I got the master tape and played it on my Neve console."

"If you hear bass on an eq master that came out on disc," Meller says, "it's not enough for CD. You can put much more highs on CD. When someone buys a CD, the first thing they expect is more dynamic range than on disc, so why transfer the same sound to CD?"

Calbi cites a "transistory midrange" endemic to early-70s recordings. "The harshness is a hard thing to get rid of. But when I mastered Sticky Fingers I just went for the excitement, for the guitar growl. I figured the people who are going to buy those records want 'em to kick."

By the time of Some Girls (1978), the engineers' job was much easier. "I had all the cutting information at my fingertips," Calbi says. "I had the master tape. I opened up the bass a bit. I reduced the amount of compression considerably. The drums are clearer and louder now."

FYI,
SHM-SACD is made by 2011 DSD remaster based on UK original Analog tape.

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Toru A
FYI,
SHM-SACD is made by 2011 DSD remaster based on UK original Analog tape.

The part written in Japanese on the obi strip says so, but in the liner notes they also say "DSD transferred from analogue master tapes".
So I assume it was not remastered the way it used to be done until recently, ie with compression, EQ, noise reducer, etc.
My guess is it's only a "flat transfer" with all the imperfections inherent to the original master. And actually you can still hear the original tapes hiss on the new SHM SACD.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-03-15 21:35 by kowalski.

Thank you kowalksi for this very interesting example -- I have shown it to some of my mastering friends who master CDs for a living and they found it really interesting as well. Thanks!

but what about the pots and pans?

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crumbling_mice
but what about the pots and pans?

Must have originated from the same guy that once wrote you can hear wrecking bottles noises on Stooges' Metallic Chaos...

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kowalski

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crumbling_mice
but what about the pots and pans?

Must have originated from the same guy that once wrote you can hear wrecking bottles noises on Stooges' Metallic Chaos...

Next they'll be saying there's a car horn in Country Honk.

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kowalski

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Toru A
FYI,
SHM-SACD is made by 2011 DSD remaster based on UK original Analog tape.

The part written in Japanese on the obi strip says so, but in the liner notes they also say "DSD transferred from analogue master tapes".
So I assume it was not remastered the way it used to be done until recently, ie with compression, EQ, noise reducer, etc.
My guess is it's only a "flat transfer" with all the imperfections inherent to the original master. And actually you can still hear the original tapes hiss on the new SHM SACD.

Exactly.

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crumbling_mice
but what about the pots and pans?

I couldn't hear any pots and pans noises as far as Shm-Sacd version of Exile is concerned.
However, a lot of unheared noise were heared on Shm-Sacd version of Let It Bleed.

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crumbling_mice
but what about the pots and pans?

On every version at the beginning of Sweet Virginia, when Taylor starts sweep picking that little lead intro, you can clearly hear bottles clanking or somthing. Miller was known to record acoustic overdubs for Exile in the kitchen.

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kowalski
Thanks but nothing new here. Brickwalling started back in the 90's, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication being one of the most well known first brickwalled album. And Oasis' What's The Story Morning Glory being maybe the first one (released in 1995).

Also all that remastering trend started at around the same time. Most of the time it was about raising sound level and compressing music so that old albums would sound like today's bands. Nowadays they even remaster albums originally released in the 90's.
For example Nirvana's Nevermind was remastered last year by Bob Ludwig (the same Bob Ludwig who remastered Stones post '71 catalog in 1994 and 60's albums in 2002) and according to some fans it wasn't good at all. There's an interesting analysis of the problem here : [www.lostturntable.com]

Well, I have found that the reissue of Nevermind sounds, without any actual devices to prove it - the same as the original. It's not louder. It sounds just as good/the same as the original. He also remastered the Soundgarden 2010 hits comp and that sounds really good - and different even, from their albums. He must've turned the treble down a little bit.

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theanchorman

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crumbling_mice
but what about the pots and pans?

On every version at the beginning of Sweet Virginia, when Taylor starts sweep picking that little lead intro, you can clearly hear bottles clanking or somthing. Miller was known to record acoustic overdubs for Exile in the kitchen.

Thanks Anchorman...I'm going to check this out, I do seem to recall it was Sweet Virginia that it was alleged to be on.

Jebus, folks can make a claim about anything and someone somewhere will believe it.

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His Majesty
Jebus, folks can make a claim about anything and someone somewhere will believe it.

Not quite sure who Jebus is, but you are correct. I'm even starting to worship this guy Jebus!

............mmmmmm and b is away across town from s .....



ROCKMAN

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crumbling_mice

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His Majesty
Jebus, folks can make a claim about anything and someone somewhere will believe it.

Not quite sure who Jebus is, but you are correct. I'm even starting to worship this guy Jebus!

He's a handy fella.

My 2 bits, probaly a bit boring for most but here it is:

Hard to tell looking at the whole 1 minute wave file, but I'd say the middle one (or possibly the first one)is probably going to sound best.

If you look closely there is a peak near the 50 second mark which could have been the limiting factor in mixing the whole tune a bit lower in volume. The worst possible outcome in a digital mix is to have one or more of these peaks literally cut off (or squared off) at the top. This is digital clipping and usually sounds bad.

Ideally if only a few places are much higher than the rest of the song, these can be mixed down or compressed and then the whole track can be increased in volume to get a normalized volume level with the most dymanic range. Dymanic range being the difference between the loudest and the softest sounds.

Compression, expansion and normalization are the three processes in a mix which effect the overall volume in addition to just plain moving the volume fader up or down on individual tracks or the whole mix. Most people forget about expansion and assume it is part fo compression. I'll do a quick summary for those people who are interested.

1. Compression: This process takes the loudest sounds in a song and makes them less loud without effecting the softer sounds.

2. Expansion takes the softest sounds in a song and makes them louder without effecting the louder sounds.

3. Normalization is the peocess of increasing or decreasing the overall average volume of an entire song to some preset standard.

4. Mix volume is the just turning the instrument or whole song volume up or down by turning a knob or adjusting a fader.

The addition of compression and expansion to a mix is what causes the squashing effect of reducing the overall dynamic range of a tune. Some people incorrectly refer to this as simply over-compressed. When you hear music over FM radio is is naturally over-compressed to allow the FM transmssion to work efficiently. If you played your wave files above over FM radio and re-recorded the wave file, even more dynamic range would be lost.

Normalization became somewhat nesessary when recordings were being released at many different average volume levels and it became annoying to most. You've probably heard a home recording where one song come on and it's suddenly WAY TOO LOUD compared to the others. Normilization fixes this problem. The trend had been to normalize things louder (hotter) to make that mix sound better against other mixes.

So much can be done with the sounds it can make the recorded and mixed music sound much better than the live music. People are analysing and tweaking everything to such a degree to tryu to achieve the perfect mix.

I generally like mixed with the most dynamic range and less squashed. The drums sounds usually suffer with over done mixes and if I want to turn it up, I'll do it myself.

It get ever more complex than that with today's technology where certain frequencies within a mix can be compressed or expanded. I look at so many wave files these days I can usually tell with a glance what the mix is going to sound like.

I'd love to see a shorter time interval in the above mix say 5 or 10 seconds near where that peak is at about 50 seconds, to analyse the wave file more accurately. peace