The seems to be two types of sounds from what I hear on boots and official releases. One is more clean and less powerful especially guitarwise (tokyo 95 for example) and there's the more chorusy and heavy drumming sound like the one you can hear on the haloween 94 show or Chile. What is the reason for this?

Personally I love the second sound as it sounds more raw and heavy, rather than the softer and cleaner sound (that is also on the official releases). Watching audience videos on youtube, I feel like the real sound the audience experienced is more like the raw sound.

What do you think? thank you!!

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dedospegajosos
The seems to be two types of sounds from what I hear on boots and official releases. One is more clean and less powerful especially guitarwise (tokyo 95 for example) and there's the more chorusy and heavy drumming sound like the one you can hear on the haloween 94 show or Chile. What is the reason for this?

Personally I love the second sound as it sounds more raw and heavy, rather than the softer and cleaner sound (that is also on the official releases). Watching audience videos on youtube, I feel like the real sound the audience experienced is more like the raw sound.

What do you think? thank you!!

I think the US tours always had a better and stronger guitar sound,
before coming to Europe when they lost the edges and somehow turned it down:
81--> 82 and 89--> 90 and 94 --> 95. Unfortunately.

All in all the sound on the VL tour was bad. Muffled and sterile. No wonder Der Spiegel accused the band of playing playback. They compared songs from different gigs and found them identical.
To the 1/100 of a second. Even if they were wrong I still think VL had the worst sound of all tours.

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Stoneage
All in all the sound on the VL tour was bad. Muffled and sterile. No wonder Der Spiegel accused the band of playing playback. They compared songs from different gigs and found them identical.
To the 1/100 of a second. Even if they were wrong I still think VL had the worst sound of all tours.

Der Spiegel found out that the stops on Rock And a Hard Place had an
identical skip on the last one, it had nothing to do with the *bad* sound.
Btw: They sounded great when I saw them in the US in 94.

I saw them in Chile in 1995 and they blew the roof out of the stadium (the stadium actually has no roof, but you know what I mean), it was awesome. Nobody could believe what they just saw. It was my first stones experience. Unforgettable.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-12-12 16:37 by dedospegajosos.

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TooTough

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Stoneage
All in all the sound on the VL tour was bad. Muffled and sterile. No wonder Der Spiegel accused the band of playing playback. They compared songs from different gigs and found them identical.
To the 1/100 of a second. Even if they were wrong I still think VL had the worst sound of all tours.

Der Spiegel found out that the stops on Rock And a Hard Place had an
identical skip on the last one, it had nothing to do with the *bad* sound.
Btw: They sounded great when I saw them in the US in 94.

I guess you didn't read the whole article. They complained about the sound also. And I tend to agree. The Miami show is one example. I saw them live in Stockholm on that tour. And I have seen several taped VL shows also.

I attended the second Basel concert in 95 and I think it was the best concert I saw. The sound was powerful and the guitars felt good. What you hear at the concert is usually not the same as that played on DVDs, even in a microphone recording, it can not have a reliable sound. Unfortunately the Stones have never paid much attention to the audio quality of their releases, the most beautiful official DVD sound in my opinion was Sweet Summer Sun: Live in Hyde Park.
In VL in the various official DVDs and not, the sound is very flat.

In my memory, the sound of the only Voodoo Lounge concert I was able to see (Paris, under a storm!) was awesome. Remember noticing a HUGE improvement over the Urban Jungle sound, in particular in the guitar department.

C

Unfortunately, the guitars were so low during the 90's. Especially at the Voodoo Lounge Tour. On the last tours they were extremely loud, especially on the No Filter Tour.

On a lot of boots and live videos, the '94 guitar sound is a bit sanded-down and feeble, and yet on the '95 Stripped shows, the guitars are captured fierce and loud.

Hard to say since I didn't see any of those shows live unfortunately.

I attended Rotterdam, Hockenheim, Cologne and Wolfsburg. Of course, not as good as the No Filter tour. But better than Urban Jungle - which was still an awesome tour. I saw them 1990 in Gelsenkirchen as a teen and had a great time.
Personally VL is my favorite tour.

I went to 2 shows in 1994 and the sound was the best . Such a crisp and super clean sound thru the PA . I really don't understand how people rag on the 1994 tour sound . Some of the best playing since 1989 to the present day .

Saw 24 shows on '94 US tour---thought the guitar sound was too low and too evenly mixed ---not enough distinction between lead and rhythym…...bass was sterile, didn't swing, and mixed low...this is the tour where Watts' drum patterns all started to sound the same....as if he uses 4-5 patterns for everything. Jagger sounded great. Still enjoyed the gigs immensely though.

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Stoneage
I guess you didn't read the whole article. They complained about the sound also. [...]

Sorry, you haven´t read it properly. The article is named
"Every note clear and clean". They write about "sterile", "brilliant"
and "clear" sound. The mistakes on "Hard Place" and a few "muffled seconds"
after that skip led them to the suggestion, that it could be "playback", an
allegation they had to withdraw publicly weeks later.

I wrote them an angry letter, deconstructing their theories,
but they didn´t print it.

dont just the sound of a live show by the way it was recorded

Saw 2 shows in 94, thought sound was pretty good. Can next years tour of USA merchandise match 94 which had 17 shirts.

Saw 1 show in ‘94 in the USA, and something like ‘6-ish’ in EUR
All of them sounded (and I do mean: the sound; not the musical performance) awesome - one or two ‘local’ issues, temporarily, not withstanding.
So I really don’t get this thread.

I’m much more affronted by the ‘sound’ of their recent official release.

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diverseharmonics
Saw 24 shows on '94 US tour---thought the guitar sound was too low and too evenly mixed ---not enough distinction between lead and rhythym…...bass was sterile, didn't swing, and mixed low...this is the tour where Watts' drum patterns all started to sound the same....as if he uses 4-5 patterns for everything. Jagger sounded great. Still enjoyed the gigs immensely though.

Did you know about the ancient art form of "weaving" ? How Keith and Ronnie would instinctively weave there guitar parts from rhythm to lead between the 2 of them ? In essence the 2 guitars were 1 as opposed to how Keith worked with Mick Taylor where Mick Taylor played lead and The Riffmaster himself Keef played rhythm ? There is a synergy between there 2 guitars where they synched up and really become 1 , which is pretty cool and you really have to have a deep connection to play together like that .

Guitar sound was brutal in Europ 1995 -

Was on this tour they first used the Aaray Electro-voice sound system? (possibly later on Bridges Tour)

"I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon."

I always thought and still think VL was a dreadful tour. It sounded awful, from Charlie's snare to Keith's guitar sound, to Wood being absent, to the Stones merely acting to be the Stones. I thought it was as far as they could be removed from an actual RnR band.

Strangest thing about Keith is that he just came from a Wino's tour where sounded fantastic, playing and sound wise.

Mathijs

I saw all the Oakland shows, the Denver show and one Vegas show and Vegas was the only one that sounded good b/c it was in the small MGM arena. Despite the technology I've never heard great sound in stadium shows BUT Bridges was probably the best....I remember reading about how they got a brand new system and after the first couple nights the whole band huddled up and listened to a playback and Keith was grinning.

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TheGreek

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diverseharmonics
Saw 24 shows on '94 US tour---thought the guitar sound was too low and too evenly mixed ---not enough distinction between lead and rhythym…...bass was sterile, didn't swing, and mixed low...this is the tour where Watts' drum patterns all started to sound the same....as if he uses 4-5 patterns for everything. Jagger sounded great. Still enjoyed the gigs immensely though.

Did you know about the ancient art form of "weaving" ? How Keith and Ronnie would instinctively weave there guitar parts from rhythm to lead between the 2 of them ? In essence the 2 guitars were 1 as opposed to how Keith worked with Mick Taylor where Mick Taylor played lead and The Riffmaster himself Keef played rhythm ? There is a synergy between there 2 guitars where they synched up and really become 1 , which is pretty cool and you really have to have a deep connection to play together like that .

It is true and they have succeeded in this way to create a unique sound, however some recordings are ugly regardless of this.
For example, the 81-82 tour had fantastic recordings of DVDs, such as Hampton where the sound of the two guitars is fantastic.

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diverseharmonics
Saw 24 shows on '94 US tour---thought the guitar sound was too low and too evenly mixed ---not enough distinction between lead and rhythym…...bass was sterile, didn't swing, and mixed low...this is the tour where Watts' drum patterns all started to sound the same....as if he uses 4-5 patterns for everything. Jagger sounded great. Still enjoyed the gigs immensely though.

Is it in your opinion that VL Uncut is not on par with what you heard? AND To be fair, is the I Go Wild single mixed a lot better than what you were hearing?

Wembley 95 and Brixton are the best shows I have ever seen them play the guitar sound is the best I have heard from them

To widen the subject a little.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the folks responsible for mixing and mastering all the various live and "vaults " releases are deliberately mixing the guitars down because they don't realise that they're supposed to sound ragged and a bit messy.

It's as though the mixing is being done by folks who have missed the whole point of the Rolling Stones

[The guitars were always ferociously loud and dominant when you were at the show ]

I saw them two nights in a row at CNE Stadium, Toronto, September 1994. I was watching with binoculars. Keith and Ron were especially lazy during Out of Tears, and I heard guitar playing when their hands weren't on the fretboards. I always have binoculars and kept an eye out on other tours, but never caught this again.

Keith & Ron , Lazy ? ...yep that's not unusual.

But what you'll have heard when they couldn't be bothered to play their guitars would have been Chuck's keyboards, covering their skinny arses...

...as has been one of his more useful functions over the last 25 years or so



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-12-14 14:48 by Spud.

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TheGreek

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diverseharmonics
Saw 24 shows on '94 US tour---thought the guitar sound was too low and too evenly mixed ---not enough distinction between lead and rhythym…...bass was sterile, didn't swing, and mixed low...this is the tour where Watts' drum patterns all started to sound the same....as if he uses 4-5 patterns for everything. Jagger sounded great. Still enjoyed the gigs immensely though.

Did you know about the ancient art form of "weaving" ? How Keith and Ronnie would instinctively weave there guitar parts from rhythm to lead between the 2 of them ? In essence the 2 guitars were 1 as opposed to how Keith worked with Mick Taylor where Mick Taylor played lead and The Riffmaster himself Keef played rhythm ? There is a synergy between there 2 guitars where they synched up and really become 1 , which is pretty cool and you really have to have a deep connection to play together like that .

I'm referring to the mix, not the playing

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Spud
To widen the subject a little.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the folks responsible for mixing and mastering all the various live and "vaults " releases are deliberately mixing the guitars down because they don't realise that they're supposed to sound ragged and a bit messy.

It's as though the mixing is being done by folks who have missed the whole point of the Rolling Stones

[[b]The guitars were always ferociously loud and dominant when you were at the show[/b] ]

I went to dozens of 94/95 shows and yes, the guitars were loud enough, with Ron noticably playing the second fiddle to Keith...
...the sound in general was real fat in the bottom and crystal clear in the upper ranges, that all went away during BTB that was a mid-heavy desaster due to the new PA system.

The official VL tour releases (not counting the club shows of course) don't do the live sound any justice. They sound totally different, flat, low guitars, no oomp in the bottom.

With a little input from the band it should be possible to re-create the live sound from the multitrack recordings but apparently, this kind of quality control is gone. Even if the folks responsible for mixing and mastering did not attend any VL shows themselves, there are dozens of good quality audience recording boots out there that should at least give them an idea about how the live mix sounded. Instead they mix the Stones like they're Springsteen and the E-Street Band! It's just that extra bit of effort that's missing from vault releases like this one.

In the end we get an official VL tour release that simply does not sound like the VL tour.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2018-12-17 04:11 by retired_dog.