Prince - Purple Rain Deluxe Edition 2017

For those of you with Qobuz, you can get it now.

 

Are the now pulled 2013 HDTracks masterings of Prince's catalog any different from the old CD masterings?

I checked them on the DR Database and they all have the same DR numbers as the original CDs. Might be a waste of space to have 24 bit versions.

 

Apparently in the liner notes Joshua Melton is the one credited as the mastering engineer for the remastered PR disk. To me that explains a lot, the album he did with Prince in 2014, Art Official Age, is loud and compressed as well

 

Guys, I hate to pile on here, but the DVD looks worse than the recent transfer I did of my laserdisc. Far too "smeary" (likely an attempt to cover up graininess in the original) and colors that look over-saturated. On the plus side, the audio of the DVD is great!

 

listening now on spotify

 

Luckily I have the actual 12" single, from back in the day. I haven't looked - is it that hard to find a copy now?

 

Why did they have to use that...? (By the way it's Joshua M. Welton, I guss you lost part of the name.)

There is already a page for this at princevault, which includes some of the technical information: Album: Purple Rain Deluxe - Prince Vault

It seems Bernie Grundman is only credited for the "original mastering", so was he actually not involved with doing any work on this release at all?

 

Wow, that would explain a lot. We probably wouldn't have gotten our hopes up that much, if Grundman's name hadn't been mentioned.

 

Available at HDTracks, 96kHz/24bit

Deluxe (Discs 1 & 2): Purple Rain Deluxe - New | HDtracks - The World's Greatest-Sounding Music Downloads
Deluxe, Expanded Edition (Discs 1 - 3): Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded Edition) | HDtracks - The World's Greatest-Sounding Music Downloads

 

The only hopes we should have is that when the estate starts putting out unreleased Prince they will do right by Prince and right by his legacy.

There is no precedent set so far, so one can only hope for something like the Hendrix estate, or even better Dylan's archives.

 

Wow this release literally sounds like a mess! I was going to head to Best Buy in the morning and grab a copy but this is a brickwalled mess! I figured just having the bonus tracks would be worthwhile and esp the concert DVD but of course the DVD looks bad according to a recent post. I suppose if it really looked good it would have been released on its own.

EPIC pass on this. I'm sleeping in. No wonder all this in one package can be had for 25.00! You get what you pay for = bad quality.

 

I'm assuming this is the first time Purple Rain has been remastered? I have the original CD. Has there been a 'secret' remaster since that?

 

As I said in the 'Prince 4ever and Purple Rain Deluxe Thread', Prince seemed to love it loud during his last few years. The masterings of his last couple of albums were super slammed, and his concerts were almost My Bloody Valentine loud (a lot of people wondered whether he was actually going deaf). So sadly, I ain't surprised at these reports of PR deluxe having a low DR.

However, this doesn't dampen my excitement about finally buying it today!

 

Haha! NO!

 

Bless HDT! Whats the point of a 'hi-res' version of a brickwalled album?

 

What's the point of a redbook version of a brickwalled album?

 

That's what I don't like these hi-res stores. You never know what you're gonna get. They know that many audiophile customers are aware of DR values.
So why don't they add the DR values in the descriptions?

 

- Erotic City 12" has a bad drop-out at the begning. Why did no one think "Hey, why don't we take the intro of the 7" version, and put that in place of the drop-out?"

Here's the 7".



Here's the 12"




- Computer Blue has a significant drop-out, and sound issue in the begining (right channel).




- Velvet Kitty Cat is lossy sourced.




- Our Destiny/ Roadhouse Garden could not be more obviously spliced from two sources.

 

Did anyone pre-order this through amazon Canada? It is listed as temporarily out of stock.

 

Prince apparently sat with the engineer and worked on the remastering. There's a possibility he just sat around drinking tea, but that doesn't sound like the little control freak perfectionist we know. You guys on this site put WAYYYY too much stock into DR Loudness Wars Database... You have all the 12" versions on CD for $20 and you're passing? Come on...

 

Disappointed with the drop out on computer blue hallway speech version but overall much better than any bootleg I've heard.

 

Thanks for posting. Just amazing how WB screwed this up.

PS what software did you use for comparisons?

 

Adobe Audition.

 

And what's all that got to do with the question I asked?!

 

I assumed but was curious. I never liked the workflow with Audition (especially when editing audio for video via Premiere), but it has a nice feature set.

Has anybody confirmed yet whether PR is indeed sourced from a new transfer of the master tapes?