unusual mastering thing i noticed on Peter Gabriel SO japan-for-us cd

ok i was cranking sledgehammer really loud.

this post is specifically about the beginning of the song. first theirs the solo "flute" sound, then a pause, and the horns come in. right? well you know on a lp records if you have groove distortion or whatever you heard the stuff real soft for .5 second before the actual music kicks in, well i backtracked and listen to it at full blast 20 times, on the made by victor japan for us cd, you can aboustely hear very quietly, .5 or so sec. of the horn riff before it really does kick in. it reminded me of hearing like what an lp does, like i was talking about.


why is this? what could be going on here. my analogy to the lp prob is just a coincencdence, right.

 

Might have nothing to do with lp vs CD. Could be printhrough on the tapes each was mastered from. Sometimes there is a post echo, sometimes there is a pre echo.

 

I noticed the same pre-echo thing in the version of Frank Sinatra's "Let's Fall In Love" from his Complete Reprise collection suitcase, during the few seconds of silence in the middle of the song. If it's print-through on the tapes, does that mean pre-echo isn't necessarily a "defect" limited to vinyl?

 

It could be a tape problem. However rather then playing it 20 times at full blast it's more effective if you rip the song and look at the waveform. If is really 0.5 second long it will show quite visibly in the waveform.

 

I don't see how pre or post ehco could have anything to do with vinyl. You have a groove. The stylus tracks in the middle of the groove. You have one channel on one sidewall, and one channel on the other. For any pre or post echo, you'd have to somehow get "leakage" from an adjacent groove. Is that likely?

But then the only way you'd hear pre echo on a CD if it's unique to vinyl, is if the CD was needle dropped. That most certainly happens, but it's pretty rare for a major label release.

So it seems like tape printthrough to me.

 

I suppose you're right, but I've only ever heard it on vinyl, until the CD I mentioned above.

 

Listen to this in DTS 24/96 in 5.1 audio; it becomes very clear.

 

I seem to hear the faint beginning of the song starting before it actually starts sometimes on older CD's... I think the last one was an original Pat Benatar "Precious Time". I know I've heard it on a few in the past few months. I thought it was just sloppy mastering.

 

I believe that this assesment is spot-on.

 

I forgot to mention the title of the disc. It is Peter Gabriel PLAY; it is remastered in high definition 5.1 DTS 24/96 and sounds very good. It is a greatest hits video disc.

 

Simple way of checking - if the pre-echo is consistently 1.8 seconds before the original sound, it is vinyl cutting pre-echo. If not, tape print through.

 

But the OP is talking about a CD; I doubt that this title would be a needle drop.

 

I think this was directed at me. I'm the one who originally referenced vinyl pre-echo because I didn't know pre-echo actually happened with CDs.

 

Led Zepplin II.

 

The original WB CD release of Double Fantasy exhibits this phenomenon with the quiet tinging bells/cymbals (?) at the beginning of Starting Over - I can remember being quite disappointed/disgusted that this was still with us in the 'new' CD age...

 

wait r u saying the printthrough is even more abunduntly obvious when u listen to it in this format u mentoined?

 

WTF!

What an odd thing to find on a CD.
I have an original CD version that I purchased in 1986 when it was first released.
I checked it and found nothing like what you describe.
I ripped using EAC to WAV and examined the wave form and the line is flat at the times you mention the pre echo occurs.

As other posters have stated it could only be print through from the master tape. But you would think when mastering they would have noticed this and edited it out. Really does not make sense. I'd be interested if you ripped it, just the first bit and posted it on the web in WAV file so we can see this too.

BTW, I suggest you find an original 1986 CD to make a comparison with.
I think the original sounds pretty damn good IMHO.

 

dude mine is a japan for us in a smooth sided jewel case...it doesnt get more 1986 than that...

 

fast question, all the SACD of Peter are the best way to hear Peter on CD? or other pressings are better?

 

That was deliberately done, IIRC.
Tape print through will occur between one layer of tape to the next to varying degrees according to various factors (time between tape play and rewinding, modulation levels of the tape etc etc). As you can imagine, the tape hub speed is continually altering as the tape hub "unwinds", and thus the time between the original sound and the printed through sound will vary according to where in the hub the sound is recorded.

 

Yes, 5.1 really brings this anomily out. It is mixed higher in the mix relative to the silence and/or other musical material.

 

Especially since you can't isolate just the vocals to do a "print-through", but somehow leave out the instruments...

It was absolutely deliberately mixed that way.

 

This. ^

 

This was explicitly referred to in an extensive interview/article in Hi-Fi Plus around 2003, as an undesirable artefact of the recording process which was cleaned up for the SACD remaster.