Jon Astley's CEDAR Award

http://www.cedaraudio.com/news/jonastley.html

http://www.sadie.com/news/archive/cedarawards_nov01.html

Read and weep....

 

He should be de-clicked.

Mud-

 

This has been linked on other threads. Guess we can all cry again..

 

I feel like crying every time I hear one of his 'remasters'

 

ROTFLMFHO!

 

Hmmm...Nice piece'O cedar.

 

I had to join this excellent forum just to reply, i know i'm not saying anything new to you chaps.

I didn't realize this guy was responsible for LED ZEP BBC Sessions and unbelievably won an award for it (WTF?).

This was the first CD that I actually noticed noise reduction being used. On the Beatles CDs i know its there but you cant hear it like you can on this Ledzep cd.

It really is bl**dy awful and constricts what should be dynamic open sounding live performaces.

Its not as if it even reduces the noise it just replaces the natural sound of tape hiss and microphne static with very wierd sounding high pitched garbled artifacts.

Unlike tape hiss this unnatural noise is not constant and very difficult for the mind to ignore. It is very distracting.
Noise reduction should never be used to this damaging and distracting extent, ever............

I also have GHs "All things Must Pass" which apparently this man also had a hand in. I have to say this isn't as bad as the Ledzep cd but you can tell the NR is still there though strangely not on the first track?

Anyway after that i just wonder if anybody can tell me what else has been ruined by noise reduction (what to avoid) and is the Led Zep cd about as bad as it gets?

 

Found another link;

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/jan02/articles/jonastley.asp

Never knew he remixed Who Are You in surround.

He talks about how he did The Who, Zeppelin, Clapton and Harrison albums here, including the 5.1 mix of Who Are You.

 

This is an award essentially stating that they are using their product.

 

Welcome, JJ75

from new newbie to another.

The worst example of NR that I've heard is the 20 bit remastered version of Frank Sinatra's "Only the Lonely." I really began to understand the difference NR makes when I read the fascinating and informative "Frank Sinatra" thread started by MMM: it really opened my eyes to just how artificial NR can sound (do a search in the archives for "Frank Sinatra" and read everything MMM has posted). Inspired by MMM's "tutorial," I found an old rainbow Capitol LP of "Only the Lonely" and, despite ithe LP's surface noise and the tape hiss that the CD's NR "covered up," it sounds 20 times better than the CD.

I now use the CD as a coaster.

Larpy

 

Hi JJ75,

First off, I'd avoid anything with 'CEDAR' or 'Sonic Solutions' logos on the back, as these are the two main manufacturers of 'noise reduction' technology. The problem is many recent noise-reduced discs don't carry these logos.

As for discs to avoid, off the top of my head "Live At Leeds Deluxe" (The Who), "Live At The BBC" (The Beatles) "Oldies But Goodies" (Compilation) all suffer from bad NR. Good (non NR'ed) alternate sources for these sessions are the Live At Leeds Complete bootleg and the Great Dane BBC boxset.

Welcome to the forum, I'm a newbie myself, I've found that everyone here i've conversed with is really knowledgeable and helpful.

 

The early Animals stuff is CEDARized. Listening to that stuff is like sticking rolls of wet toilet paper in your ears.

Mud-

 

Well, at the risk of beating a dead horse (for most of these guys, anyway, they've heard it all before), stay away from stuff mastered by Jon Astley or Peter Mew if you don't like NR, which all of us here don't. Astley uses CEDAR, while Mew uses Sonic Solutions NoNoise. Neither of them do the music any good, of course.

What else has been ruined:

* David Bowie remasters
* Judas Priest remasters
* Beatles 1
* Wingspan (Hits & History)
*etc.

Yeah, I know, these were all done by Mew or Astley, but I really can't think of any other glaring examples.

And so long as you asked, the worst I've seen NR go is the Judas Priest Screaming for Vengeance remaster, remastered by our good friend Mr. Astley. I have all the Priest remasters (won the entire box off the radio ) So many songs on there have been ruined, especially the intros, which is odd, 'cause usually Astley only uses it in on the endings. "Devil's Child" is completely lifeless and you can easily hear the artifacts, and... well, I'm not going to ramble again, but it's BAD.

 

Exceptionally bad non-Mew or non-Astley examples of NR:

Great Move (the Best of the Move), mastered by Ron Furmanek
Classic Sinatra, mastered by Bob Norberg (apparently all the Sinatras by Norberg are bad, but "Classic" is the only one I've heard with my own two ears)...

 

Re: Welcome, JJ75

Thanks Larpy. I appreciate that you feel I've "inspired" you to investigate this further on your own.

 

Actually RF only made digital copies of the masters,Kevin Reeves mastered it re:The Move.

 

I've actually used CEDAR De-Noise on a SADIE, the same system the BBC Zeppelin discs were done on. I can use it to remove mild tape hiss and not hear any apparent problems with the resulting sound. That is until I push the system just a little too far, and it starts making its own warbly digital sound. I wonder if my monitoring situation (perhaps like Mew's, etc) isn't capable of resolving damage done, before that OBVIOUS threshold. I personally didn't catch any funk on the Zeppelin BBC disc (or the Beatles for that matter), so I'll have to listen to them again more carefully. My monitors at work are powered Mackie speakers, that sound very good to me at moderate listening volumes, though they appear to sound more harsh as the volume goes up. My home system, listed in my profile, is probably superior to 90% of the home sound systems in the world, and is yet only mid-fi to entry level high fidelity, compared to the reference systems of the audiophile press, etc. Any thoughts? Hope it's not my ears.

 

Pinknik,

It looks like you have a nice system.

Anyway, I truly believe that some people can hear the "sound" of de-hissing more than other people. By this, I mean beyond the rather obvious artifacts of an NR system being "pushed" hard, like noise-pumping, "rubs" from the processor filling in the gaps, etc. But some people DO have a problem hearing the electronic "tinge" as I like to call it as it appears on say "Beatles 1" or how it often occurs on many of the Sinatra Capitol "Entertainer of the Century" CD's that I talked about in the "Sinatra Capitol 20 & 24-Bit Masters" thread om this forum (Beatles 1 and all these Sinatra's NR'd with Sonic Solutions No-Noise). In simple terms, this "electronic tinge" gives many listeners the sense they're listening to music that sounds more like coming out of a computer and less like the real thing. Definetly not the "breath of life". To further explain this "electronic tinge" from heavy handed NR, it's as if the natural "flow" and "pace" of the music is slowed and the music just doesn't "flow" naturally. One person that I had listen to some of the Sinatra Capitol 20 & 24-Bit EOTC CD's in my house said he felt it sounded as if the tape was "dragging" - his term for saying it sounded like the tape was playing back too slow (though the tapes were actually played back at the correct speed when transferred). This was an uncoached response to the "tinge", I promise (although I did make him know I didn't care for the sound, but I didn't give him specific examples to listen for as to what is wrong with the sound - I just told him to listen to everything that was going on with the sound).

I remember the night when I brought home "Beatles 1" - the day it came out. I put this thing on and went (in my head) UGH. Before I even looked into the booklet I heard the use of Sonic Solutions No-Noise on it (then I saw the mention of Sonic Solutions No-Noise in the booklet which confirmed what I was hearing). It too has this "tinge" throughout, though it's more noticeable on some tracks than others if I remember correctly. But "electronic tinge" isn't the only problem that often occurs with the use of NR to get rid of tape hiss. Recently I compared one track from "Beatles 1" - "Hello Goodbye" to a good LP (the German Apple "Magical Mystery Tour" LP - the one that's basically a flat transfer, not the version with added bass). On "Beatles 1", the top end on "Hello Goodbye" seemed to be not as extended in frequency response as it should be, while "other" frequencies below the missing top-end were boosted during mastering in what seems like an attempt to restore "life" to the song after "higher" high frequencies were wiped out by being put through the No-Noise processor. It had a lack of differentation of the various tonal "colors" of the music and had a more generic "character" instead, and there was also a "hot" character to the sound - though this "hot" character is not an effect of the No-Noise processor itself. On the other hand, "Hello Goodbye" on the German MMT LP exhibited none of these problems. One example: the cymbals sounded more like actual cymbals when listening to "Hello Goodbye" on the German MMT LP, instead of the crunchy "maybe that's a cymbal"-like sound of the cymbals when listening to the "Beatles 1" version of this track.

 

As Martin knows, I'm no fan of the Sinatra de-noised CDs either. But I confess (with fear and trembling) that I've occasionally used digital noise reduction on some personal projects (sourced from cassettes) -- mostly from Cool Edit Pro and similar programs.

The hiss you hear from old, but professionally recorded, tapes is usually fairly benign, even if the tape is several generations down, and it should be left alone. But sometimes you have to choose between ending up with a) a really dull-sounding track, b) one with lots of gorgeous high overtones accompanied by *really* annoying, shrill, peaky hiss, or c) a de-noised version of b). It can be a tough call -- especially on less than professionally produced sources. The more digital n.r. you use the more metallic and/or constipated the thing can become, not to mention time-smeared and burbly. Unless the hiss is really driving you crazy its better to leave it alone.

If there's only a little noise to begin with you may be able to eliminate it with minimal damage; but then, if there's only a little, why bother? (To answer my own question: I once was recording a recital and the DAT tape ran out. But there was a cassette recording covering the gap. The cassette quality was quite good, and I was able to dub the missing bit from it; but the added hiss from the cassette, though slight, drew attention to the edit. I was able to de-hiss that section digitally so that it matched the DAT, and no one was the wiser - but it was only for a few seconds, so I got away with it.)

De-clickers are a different animal. It is certainly possible to push them to where they do really nasty things, but carefully used they can work wonders.

Ok. I've let my ugly secret out of the closet. Don't hurt me!

Oh and by the way, noise reduction problems did not begin with Cedar and NoNoise. Various versions have been around to annoy us ever since RCA used to try to minimize noise when mastering their 78's from session transcription disks (phono-to-phono dubbing) back before tape was around.

Another n.r. pet peeve is people playing back non-Dolby tapes with (usually) Dolby-A switched on by mistake (or vice versa, like the recent Tea for the Tillerman LP, though it's more benign that way, that is, playing a Dolby tape without decoding.)

 

I should add here that the reason NR'ed stuff mnay sound "slow", or "sluggish", is because the higher you set the FFT level, the more time slurring you get. It is an undesrable artifact, for sure, caused by overdoing things.

Don't Astly and Mew hear and UNDERSTAND all this serious criticism of their work? Don't they care that their names are being associated with bad sound? Is it a British/European thing? Is all the criticism coming from the US? It's not that they use NR, but they overdo it! can't they just back off a bit if they HAVE to use it?

 

One possible reason that some people do not hear the difference introduced by no-noise/cedar is that they are listening to the signal AFTER it has been through the circuitry. Merely putting the music through NR circuitry will degrade the sound.

A comparison of this degraded signal to the sound after a touch of NR has been applied might lead the listener to believe that NR does not cause a significant problem.

 

But John, that makes no sense! You can't just arbitrarily put a tape through NR without hearing it first! NO engineer would just run a tape through without hearing it first.

Remember, it's not like they just push a button, they dump the tapes into a DAW and analyse it first. They know EXACTLY what they are doing!

I just listened to the latest ABBA collection on UTV Records, and Astly ruined it! The space and sonics are gone, the bottom end is cut, there is signal pumping, and the thing is painful to my ears. Everything isn't just in your face, it spits in it. There is NO sense of air. It all sounds like bad digital! These are 70s vintage recordings!!!!