I have the German vinyl pressing of the German language version. I love it. Haven't heard the cd pressing of this. It's at first odd to hear him singing in German, but I love the mix. The remaster of the English version is good - but as I've said earlier - it lacks that tremendous dynamic thwack at the end of Rhythm Of The Heat that can make you jump. Oh yeah, the remaster of DM's A Broken Frame is atrocious. They re-recorded some instruments and dubbed them in. Truly awful.
Oh yes, those DM ones are not good either, especially the early CD's. I discovered this when I found a Nimbus "the Singles 81 - 85". What a revelation!
Not to hijack a Peter Gabriel thread, but where did you get this idea about the Depeche Mode remaster of A Broken Frame?
For PG I - IV, Birdy & Passion I only know the 2002 remasters. They are quite good so I don't see a need to look for older versions. My ranking for So is: 1. B&W 24/48 download of the 2012 remaster - shows the potential of the new mastering without the nasty limiting and volume boosting of the 2012 CD 2. Original Virgin (Nimbus and EMI Uden are the same, DADC Austria is level shifted and has some clipped peaks). Still nice sounding and the way to go, when you want a physical disc. 3. 2002 remaster. Not too compressed, but slightly too bassy. Frequency balance not as good as the original disc - not bad but somehow not "right" sounding 4. 2012 CD remaster. Good frequency balance but too heavy limiting / volume boosting. Between 2 and 3 db less dynamic range than the 24/48 download. Avoid. The 2002 Shaking The Tree comp doesn't differ too much from its 1990 counterpart. Slightly more compression and bass, a little more clarity - in the end both are good. For Us, I like the 2002 remaster a little more than the 1992 original, since it clears up some of the muddiness.
My Nimbus is apparently a later one (with a stack ring and "Mastered by Nimbus" instead of "Nimbus England") and peaks at 75,8% as well as the EMI Uden does. My DADC Austria picture disc reaches 100% peak level.
Yeah, even the re-levels have clipped peaks. They just took the clipped mastering and re-leveled it for some reason. On that note, the only Geffen So's I've found are identical to the European releases and not the "unique" version (like the Japan for US mentioned early in the thread). I therefore can't test if the US unique version doesn't have clipping. Currently my preference is for the So UK vinyl. I'll have to test your B&W 24/48 mastering @Limopard
I'm looking to buy up copies of the 1987 UK CD pressings of 1, 2 and 3 but note there are two flavours. They can easily be discerned by their longer catalogue numbers and the presence or otherwise of a box around the bar code. Any thoughts on which are the best pressings to jump for?
Just listened to the B&W. Wasn't very impressed compared to the UK Vinyl - found the vocals a lot quieter and muddier in the 24/48 remaster and a more squashed sound (likely due to compression).
I want to get the Geffen US originals of 1 and 3, but it looks like they're quite rare. I'll have to do some digging.
Yes! I rue the day I gaily threw my original Security and Passion out because they had been remastered.....wish I'd never heard that word!
Peter Gabriel 1977 V/C PGCD 1 Peter Gabriel 1978 V/C PGCD 2 Peter Gabriel 1980 V/C PGCD 3 Peter Gabriel 1982 V/C PGCD 4 Plays Live (Highlights) 1983 V/C PGDLCD 1 So 1986 Geffen 9 24088-2 (Japan for US) Us 1992 Virgin PGCD 7 I'm still very happy with the oldies.
Hmmm, while checking my So early pressing today I noticed I don't have a Dutch pressing at all, but a PGCD 5 UK "Mastered by Nimbus" one. Sorry. Checking the EAC levels, I noticed that XLD reports 99,9% for tracks 3, 8 and 9. And not 100% as mentioned earlier. Could be a rounding problem in XLD, of course. The rest of the tracks are 100% and 90,4% for track 6, as mentioned by others.
Just thinking, could someone with the Black Triangle disc do a DR scan and post the results here or in the DR Database? This might reveal that the BT is a different mastering, although the EAC values match those of other versions.
If the EAC results are the same are the discs not identical? I thought the "software of the forum" provided numbers which assist in identifying which discs are different mastering.
Yes Barry, if the peak levels are identical it should result in the same DR number, the only time it may change is if the disc has pre-emphasis, once the eq has been added the peaks will change giving a lower DR value Big Time from my JVC US Shaking is a little better clipping wise with only 1 peak clipped
As far as I understand, the peak levels only say something about the peak level of the track, and nothing about the RMS of the signal or the level of compression. So tracks with the same peak level can have a very different DR. When most tracks are 100%, the only conclusions you can make is that the tracks were precisely level-matched and normalised. In the DR databases you can see this with Exelent Birds , which seem to have DR15 in some masterings, and DR16 in other, while these masterings all have a EAC peak of 100% for the track. This could indicate: 1) track was ripped from the cd differently 2) a rounding difference in different measuring tools used 3) that the DR15 got more compression during mastering, so it's a different master.
EAC peaks are the easiest best guess, IMHO. If you really want to be sure, you need to test if tracks from different masterings are bit-identical. If people in this thread are stating that the BT sounds better than another pressing with the same EAC peaks, I see the following explanations: 1) psychological, "it's the BT, it should sound better, so I hear it sounding different" 2) quality of pressing, resulting in less error correction 3) somehow a different mastering despite the same EAC peaks. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this. Okay, maybe I took it to far…
You know there's more to EAC than the peak levels to check absolutely identical masterings. There's the CRC checksum. If it's identical, the CD pressings are identical. Of course you can still have the same mastering but with different starting and ending points, and it would throw the CRC off.
