Hi-Res Download News (HDTracks, ProStudioMasters, Pono, etc.) & Software/Mastering Part 12**

I can't be certain... just going by what Mr Hoffman has said in the past.

 

Still gives me hope for the future.

 

Brightness is the new compression

 

Maybe I am old...Maybe I am not with it or maybe I am just a fool but "How The West Was One" although not "Rock Of Ages" sounds o.k. to me. So..How bad was the source material? Are you referring to the performances or the sound quality? It was recorded to 16 track yes?

My opinion - I didn't think the performance or the sound quality was great. But everyone kept praising it like it was The Dead Sea Scrolls or something. The material from Earl's Court and Knebworth sounded great from the DVD.. I am aware of the reason Lead Wallet changed his mind about releasing those two shows as complete sets but his reasons were stupid.

 

Don't start! My landlord has warned me, "No more jumping off the roof John!....Slit your wrists like a normal person.) What they did to Van Halen was criminal.

 

I enjoy my bacon crispy, not my music

 

I’m refering to the mix of HTWWW.

 

They have to make it crispy. A lot of kids (anyone under 30) are using cheapo ear buds. They need to blast the top end for the lack of top end in kiddies Fisher Price Ear buds and they need to bring down the mid bass because little baby's ear buds can't handle the full bass.

One 17 year old stopped buying good earbuds because the chord kept fraying. His solution was to buy $10 (No low bass here!) Ear buds. He makes fun of my $140 I Turbo Beats II as if they were so expensive. I told him, "In the audiophile world this is entry level. Hell, in the audiophile world these Turbo II's aren't even considered audiophile."

For all those that bash Beats....Please continue.
No seriously, most people who bash Beats haven't heard any. If they have heard a Beat most of the time they are counterfeit. 99% of the I Beats and Senniehiers on line are fake. All the web reviews are from web purchases so ignore them. Is a Beat Studio (wired) as good as a Grado 220I? Of course not? And at $300 they are overpriced. And they fall apart in normal use. But for portable sound that can play loud without the use of an external headphone amplifier you can't beat it. But this nonsense about the Beats being all bass is crap.
I mix, record and master my own horrible music as well as mix and master at my Uncle's studio.
If the Beats were heavy on the bass I would be the first to know. The Turbo 1 has a 2 db boost in the 150 hz range. But the Studio and the Turbo 2 is reasonably flat. The treble and midrange is subdued. It is no where near as detailed and lifelike as say a Senniehier CX-300 Mark 2. But they are smooth. And with today's super bright remasters I need smooth and not detailed. The Beats produce low bass it just doesn't have an detail to it.

Anyway I digress. All crappy mastering decisions come from engineers trying to accommodate the lowest common denominator - that is most people's crappy ass systems.

A few days ago I was watching a guy argue the merits of CD over Super Audio CD / SACD over Utube. And so he journeys off into a brief history of the two formats. He is well informed and seems to be making a lot of sense. So he finally describes his HI-FI system. It's not a 5 figure audiophile setup. It's not even an entry level audiophile system. He has a cheap SACD player, a Mid-Fi Receiver and ahh...Wait for it...a home cinema in a box! At best it's like 100 - 12 000hz. He says the SACD disk version blew his subwoofer. I HAVE SOME NEWS FOR YOU GUY - YOU NEVER HAD A SUBWOOFER.
You have a home cinema in a box and you are on the web debating which format is better?
The distortion in thise things can reach 15% THD easy. Does Mr. HI-FI understand that his audiophile opinion has as much weight as a Vegan's opinion on a Keg burger. MEANINGLESS.

It's the same reason why every relaese (analog or digital) of Pet Sounds has the bass radically dropped... Every engineer thought - Too much bass. Except for the DCC release. Even though half deaf Brain Wilson had mixed it that way.

 

Sorry. But you mention the source material. What was wrong with the mix?

 

And still there is worse. It used to a professionally done album got mastered by a pro engineer. You would be surprised at how many new releases are being mastered in house. Or worse being done by "a friend" for cheap. A couple famous releases I could mention like, Iron Maiden, "It's A Matter Of Life And Death" was mastered by Kevin Shirley. He is great at recording and mixing but he is not a mastering engineer. And mastering requires A FRESH SET OF EARS. Mastering your own music is much like cutting your own hair.

In the case of Iron Maiden's, "Dance Of Death" no mastering was done at all for the CD. I can't speak for the high definition thing. To make a long story short Steve Harris gave the 24/96 master file to world famous mastering engineer (drum roll please!) George Martino. Well Mr. World Famous went off on how the master was all wrong. The bottom end was all wrong and the top end was too something or the other. According to Kevin Shirley this criticism of his mix caused him to second guess himself. When the "mastered" file got back to Harris he uttered, "This isn't the mix!" Harris did like the demo CD that Kevin Shirley had made from the master for the band. This was made by pushing the hell out of a very old apolgee converter. Harris said, "That's our album - the demo CD. Print that."
So, the CD you have of "Dance Of Death" is a copy of the demo CD made on an old converter.

Three versions were made of "Dance Of Death."
A 24/96 version, a 16/44.1 version (demo disk. No file) and an analog 1/2 inch tape at 30 ips.
The mix is completely automated so all three versions come directly off the analog mixing board. And when you get the vinyl you are getting pure analog. The Caveman uses 2 synchronized 2 inch analog 24 tracks with no noise reduction (Modern 24 tracks built in the early 90's have a signal to noise ratio of 70 db A weighted. Back in 1974 it was 64 db A weighted.)
As Kevin says about noise reduction, "It doesn't need it."

 

um, the vinyl reissue of Dance of Death is from 24 bit files, and what was sold as a download was 24/44.1.

I am looking for a 2003 original if it is indeed all analog as you say!

Enjoy your posts...

 

Quick......someone hide me! Ahhhh....You know my info is straight out of the mouth of The Caveman himself. It's on the bonus DVD disk of Death On The Road which has a 40 minute feature on the making of The Dance Of Death album. No professional engineer records in 44.1khz (Except for my own horrible music I make at home. I need audiophile disks to test new converts, monitors and such. And friends and family keep asking my opinion on what HI-FI to buy. So my own disks have loads of bass, DR of 20 and No compression which is great for testing components.) Lots of Long time engineers will record in 48 khz because they feel higher sampling rates ruin the sound of the recording. So NO WAY that could be the original file.

And If the vinyl isn't from the analog 1/2 inch tape they made then why did Kevin go to all that trouble of making an analog master as well as the digital ones?.... I saw in HMV Canada (which no longer exists) many years ago the 24/96 DVD audio disk. And there was a teaser sticker right on the front that said 24/96. I don't know what you have but NO WAY was that the original high definition release in 2003. This is what happens when you go from good old disks to files over the web. The record company can alter this stuff at their whim. They can fool with with the sampling rate and all kinds of nonsense.

Go on Ebay and look for the original DVD audio release. And probably the original vinyl was cut from the half inch analog tape too.

Or maybe he made that analog tape just to fudge with us.....

 

Oh I have no doubt your info is correct.,.,

but I am am also 100% correct in what ended up as available to the consumer.

There is a sticker right on the front of the Dance of Death Reissue saying it was cut from HiRez files, and from the Iron Maiden
web page:

"Unlike the 1980’s reissues which were cut from the original analogue master tapes, the audio on these releases has been cut from the high resolution remasters of 2015 when the Maiden catalogue was digitally upgraded. They will be packaged in identical artwork to the initial vinyl releases."
Iron Maiden announce next series of album vinyl reissues

Certainly, the original 2003 release was probably all analog as you detail..

And here is Dance of Death for sale at HDTracsk at 24/44.1-
Dance of Death (2015 Remastered Edition) | HDtracks - The World's Greatest-Sounding Music Downloads

I am well aware that many 24/96 and 24/192 remasters are downsampled to 24/44.1 for sale..unfortunate..

Also, I know for certain that many current digital multitrack projects are recorded at 24/44.1, and 24/48.

check sticker in this photo...

 

I can check tomorrow night, but IIRC the sample rate on the dvd-audio was 88.2 khz.

Last post in this old thread says the stereo is 88.2/16 while the multi-channel is 88.2/24.
How did this slip past me - Iron Maiden Dance of Death DVD-A

The original vinyl pressings of "Dance Of Death" may have been from the analog tape, but it was a picture disc pressing and reportedly pretty noisy. Maiden seems to have found every way possible to screw up the sound on this release.

 

it occurred to me that based on what John Morris says, the Dance Of Death CD is a UNIQUE version of the album not available in any other format..
which means I need to re-rip it to my server, since I deleted it after getting the 24/44.1 "upgrade"...

I happen to like this album a lot, along with A Matter Of Life and Death, Final Frontier, and Book Of Souls..although I feel Souls has some weaker tracks.

 

...indeed comparing them they are different versions...thanks John Morris!

 

Can someone post the current discount code for use at prostudiomasters?

 

Prostudiomasters

Enjoy 15% Off

Enter Code BRAVE  At Checkout

* Applies to regularly priced albums site-wide.
Expires Monday, September 24, 2018 at 11:59 PM Pacific

 

Ahhhhhhh!!! I hate those stupid IRON MAIDEN CRAPPY PICTURE DISKS. What is the point of making a high quality analog half inch master to make the vinyl, use 180 gram heavy weight vinyl and then put it on a picture disk? They have been doing this for years. Why? Why?

My Uncle just told me, "Because you idiot (it's just the way he talks.) die hard fans love picture disks. The 180 gram and the analog master is so that the nasty picture disks don't sound as horrible as they usually sound. Tell your Hoffman friends the original vinyl was not for audiophiles. Just for collectors, fans and fools. The recent vinyl will be better."
I ask him why didn't they cut the new ones from the analog master? Apparently it's too much trouble and expense to ship the half inch tape to God knows where to cut the record and then ship it back. A high definition file can just be sent over the web much easier. Why 24/44.1 and not 24/96?
Why knows?

The stereo mix has to be a sample rate down coversion. Only three masters were made: A high definition version that was 24/96 and not 88.2 khz (20:50 - 21:32 from "The Death On The Road" Bonus disk. Kevin Shirley clearly says 96 khz version.) , a half inch analog at 30 IPS and the 16/44.1 for the CD. And we know it's 16/44.1 because the commercial disk was made from the demo CD which was studio burnt (HB Pro burner. Very good CD recorder. One of the best every made. And I have used it.) for the band. No fooling around with the demo disk. Harris just said just print the disk as it is. They obviously dropped the sample rate to 88.2 khz. and I have not the chocolate fudge reason why. Maybe it couldn't fit in the disk at 96 khz.

Anything else being offered is a manipulation and fans are being ripped off.

 

I wonder why the "hi-rez" stereo is only 16 bit while the mch is 24.

 

M

I like a member who does his research. Yes, some small time basement professional studios are using 44.1. I was referring to the big boys. But if you check out Gearslutz they are a few mavericks who record to 44.1.

Just like they are a few mavericks who mix on headphones. But even that is a half lie. They do 80% of their mix on cans which is great because they don't have to keep pulling their chair back to the sweet spot. (Lazy turds!) Good for setting up reverb return levels and panning and editing. Then when they finish the mix on cans the engineer continues the mix on the near fields fine tuning and correcting for errors made on the headphones. Bass and kick are the hardest thing in a mix to get right. And monitors are a must for getting proper bass levels. And I don't care what Graham says on the Recording Revolution. He tells people YOU DON'T NEED MONITORS in his Utube videos. And yet all the while you can clearly see KRK Rocket 8's in the background. I think that's kind of hypocritical. And then the engineer moves to the big full range 15 - 26 000 hz far fields for final mix adjustments and stuff.
Some people make it sound like audio engineers mix an entire album completely on headphones. And never check the mix on full range monitors. They just slap a demo disk in their car and see how it sounds there. Rush use to do the car mix test thing. Rush thought Vapour Trails sounded great in the car. And we all know how that story turned out

I have gone off topic somewhat. Sorry.

Some engineers feel 44.1 is fine because it's gonna end up on CD anyway. And some believe a higher sampling rate makes no difference. We make sure such engineers are on medication Oh yes esteemed member plenty big Pro 48 khz projects. For over a decade engineers recorded at 24/48 on the Sony DASH 3348HR. $250 000 dollars back in 1993 and now they almost giving them away or throwing them out.

But the high definition version of Dance Of Death was not recorded at 44.1. Check out the bonus disk for "Death On The Road". (20:00 - 24:00). Kevin Shirley clearly says 96 khz version. The only 44.1 version is the commercial CD. I am referring to the three masters that were ofcourse.

I understand the high definition version is a 5.1 mix. Funny, Kevin mentions nothing about any surround mix. I am guessing that the DVD Audio disk holds both 5.1 and stereo high definition mixes. Or maybe the 5.1 mix was done later. The mix moves are all recorded. They can reproduce the same mix as many times as they need.

I am now confused.

 

I have no idea what is going on. If Kevin Shirley did go back and do a stereo high definition mix why would it be 24/44.1 or 16/88.2? In my line of work high definition is 24/48 and above. Did they change the rules or what?

 

Has anyone checked out the hi-res Pearl Jam albums on the site? Specifically No Code through Riot Act? I was just curious as to how those compare to the original CD issues

 

Better than the CDs, but no DR shining star.