Elton John - with "Super Noise Shaper"!

Just picked up a borrowed copy of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road single disc that i wanted to compare with old double CD.

The notes at the back by Gus Dudgeon, the original producer says that "the sound has been passed through the most up to date digital recording equipment, at 20 Bit Resolution; namely The Sadie Digital System and Prism Noise Shaper. The effect is purely to "enhance" rather than "colour" the sound."

Any comments from forum members about such equipment and what it does, or comments on this "Elton John - The Classic years" release?

My original CDs appear to have gone wandering, so my planned comparisons have come to nought.

 

AE

Try an archive thread title search on "yellow" or "brick" or "elton" and much will be revealed!

 

Gus felt that some of his tapes had "softened" over the years, and that he needed to bring back the original dynamics.

My opinion? Aural memory can be fallable. Hearing changes. Sound on tape can change and soften, but *I* never experienced it. I believe Steve Hoffman has also said the same, that he never experienced tape "softening".

The Saide is just a brand of DAW, and the Prism is just a system of dithering and noise shaping a high-bit file down to 16-bit. Noise shaping can actually be used as a sort of noise reduction without actually using noise reduction. The benifit? No artifacts, in the way we are familiar with them. So, in other words, the Rocket remasters are, in effect, noise reduced! Noise reducers can change the tonality of a recording, and using noise shaping in this creative way can avoid this, if configured carefully. But, noise shaping can also change tonality. This is one of the reasons Steve does not deal with high-bit conversions for CD. Now that he does hi-rez, this may have changed a bit.

To be clear for those less familiar with this tech stuff: noise shaping IS NOT noise reduction!

 

Yes, there have been many comments here about the Elton John remasters (and I've only been around here for about 5 months!). If I may deign to summarize:

1. Everyone loves the DCC gold of EJ's Greatest Hits. (As indicated in the discography here, Steve also mastered an early MCA cd called "Your Songs" that is relatively easy to find used.)

2. Most people here don't care for the sound of the Rocket remasters. At least one person (me) has heard a distinct difference in sound between the US-released remasters and the ones that came out in Europe. (The US discs are plagued by a "smearing" of the sound; the European discs sound cleaner and more focused.) Common to both, however, is a diminished dynamic range when compared with the earlier cd's.

3. Most of the Polydor-released cd's (the issues after the MCA's and before the Rocket remasters) appear to be direct clones of the original Dick James Music cd's issued in Europe. Most of the early MCA's also appear to be clones. The general consensus is that, apart from Steve's work on EJ's material, these are the cd's to get (though there does seem to be a title here and there [no pun intended] where there is some variance between the labels).

Hopefully my "summary" accurately reflects what's been posted here. There's nothing like going to the source, though, so type "Elton John remasters" in the search engine and start reading!

 

Also worth mentioning are the four Mobile Fidelity titles: Tumbleweed Connection, Honky Chateau, Madman Across the Water, and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. These are all excellent based on what I have and what I've read here. One of these titles, I think it's Tumbleweed, has its left/right channels reversed on the MCA/DJM discs and maybe even the Polydor. The MoFi has this corrected.

This has all been discussed before.

 

D'oh! How could I forget the MoFi's!

 

First, I like the Rocket remasters, despite the problems they may have.

Second, The Polydors I had were no-noised to death! All the life had been sucked out of them, and they hurt my ears.

Third, Some of the old MCA CDs were just fine.

 

How were the Polydors no-noised Grant?

If they were mostly clones of the 80's DJM's then there shouldn't be no-noised (I hope).

Please be specific. Which ones?

 

I had " Don't Shoot Mr, I'm Only The Piano Player", and Greatest Hits, but David Modny informs us that I probably had a first pressing, because they remasterd those too!

 

The best one is: DCC's Greatest Hits... I also like Mofi's Madman Across The Water... same on vinyl from DCC, and Mofi's Honky Chateau. Great records!

 

I've had them all... DJM, MCA, Polydor, and Rocket.

The Polydors were definitely NOT clones of the DJMs. Polydor remastered all those CDs. It was quite a high profile release at the time.

Some of the early MCAs (pariticularly Yellow Brick Road and Madman) may have been clones of the DJMs. I couldn't tell the difference on those two. The MCA "Elton John" album definitely was NOT -- it sounded like it was mastered from a cassette, it was so hissy. Comparing it with the DJM version was like night and day. MCA didn't get anywhere near the master tape for that CD.

I like the new Rocket issues, but, honestly...

I wish I had my old DJM CDs back.

 

Correct. Those Polydors I had were AWFUL! They were indeed remastered for release, and they sounded like someone went crazy with the noise reduction in Cool Edit.