ICE Mag Watchdog Answers Stones SACD Questions

Probably not, though if I recall, they will take exchanges for YA-YA's, since they admitted it. I have the 'faulty' copy, but for some reason--not least because I like the album a lot but don't love it--I think I'll keep it and wait for the used copies to turn up that I can audition to get the corrected one. No biggie there. They should do something about "Ruby," but I think it's true: they don't want to own up to too many mistakes, or else everything we've been posting would be true. Can't have that!

ED

 

My FAVORITE explanation is about the COAs.

There are 20 COAs which were RANDOMLY inserted into the cds. There is no mechanism to assure yourself of all 20 BUT if you want all 20 there are places on the Net where you can trade for 'em.



mud-

 

I WANT A REMASTERED VERSION OF "THE SINGLES COLLECTION" WITH
THE CORRECT SINGLES VERSIONS!!!!!

I have not yet received the latest issue of the ICE-magazine so I don't
know if they wrote anything about "The Singles Collection".

But I think we should all try to get ABCKO Records to release a
correct version with the TRUE singles versions of songs like
The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man, Ruby Tuesday,
Tell Me etc etc.

I read somewhere that Bob Ludwig used the original vinyl singles
to compare with when he did the remastering. Didn't he HEAR that
the versions used on some songs are not the correct versions????
I believe that the old CD version of "The Singles Collection" at least had
the true versions of the songs mentioned above! I will stick to my old
"Singles Collection" until a correct remastered version is released!

How about using the information from the FAQ by David and Luke and
send messages by e-mail to ABKCO records???

Is there anyone who has an e-mail adress to ABKCO records???
I checked at www.abkco.com but did not find any adress!

Christer
Stockholm
Sweden

 

Christopher-
When you reach the ABKCO home page, there is a section for comments. You can register your group(s) of interest and leave any comments in the accompanying block. My comments have not met a response--anyone else have some luck?

 

Pardon my ignorance, but what is the Metamorphosis issue?

 

Digital clicks and pops and such.

 

It's taken from a mostly fake stereo mastertape and it has digital clicks all over it.

"No fake stereo" my ass.

 

I can't think of any fake stereo off the top of my head, just a lot of mono tracks with stereo overdubs (ie, Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind).

 

Well, yes, but the "mono" tracks are often REALLY heavily processed, and the overdubs are buried. Thus, tracks can sound like fake stereo...oh, but there's some slide guitar in the right channel!

The pops/clicks bother me more, though...it's Tommy all over again,and *that* never got fixed.

-D

 

Why does the correct Ruby Tuesday (with double-tracked chorus) appear on 40 Licks? Ludwig did that one too.

 

Because it doesn't. I have 40 Licks and I noticed it instantly.

And the only two of the new Stones CDs I have are Beggars Banquet (thank you to all on the board who recommended it; it was the first I bought) and Metamorphosis (because it had not been on CD before). So I didn't hear the "wrong" version of "Ruby Tuesday" elsewhere.

 

The correct Ruby Tuesday has what sounds like a "triple" tracked chorus...

-D

 

Overall, which are better in your opinion, the Londons or the current releases. I'm aware that Aftermath London is better, etc...but what about overall? The London CDs get a lot of praise but would there be similar nitpicks of those releases? Just curious.

 

Overall? *Probably* the SACDs, but the thing is, there are so many issues here and there I have a hard time giving them any kind of "universal" recommendation. Then again, I can't do that for the London CDs either, but those are kind of a different ball game. That is, it more or less "just happened" that some of those discs turned out really good. With the SACDs, a big deal was made about "doing it right", which just makes the problems that much more of a letdown.

One thing to point out is that ABKCO *still* hasn't used the original stereo master for Got Live If You Want It, as confusing as that is/was. Nor have they used the mono master, for that matter. Just the same remix/reconfiguration used for the original ABKCO CD. I wonder what piece of vinyl Bob Ludwig used to compare *that* one to...

 

I think it may be worth pointing out that Luke has never listened to any source material and has no basis to judge Bob Ludwig's work, the reasons behind noise or anomalies, nor the reasons for selecting one tape over another for transfers.

Without hearing the source material, the complaints about noise reduction and whether one mix would have been preferred over another including mono vs stereo boils down to malcontented hand-waving with zero basis in reality.

As for anomalies, those can be introduced later in the production process, as with the Vince Guaraldi SACD from AP.

 

*No basis*?

I don't think that's fair at all. There's the London cds, the vinyl in many different flavors, and of course the pre-release SACD that Luke has, where he can and did do direct comparisons and can tell where the sound was fiddled with in a negative way on the final pressing. So in at least one instance, Luke *has* effectively heard the source material, on the promo SACD.

 

Umm, what? "Zero basis in reality"? "Malcontented hand-waving"?

One does not need to hear the master tapes to prefer one mix to another. How are previous issues of the material *not* a "basis to judge Bob Ludwig's work"? If a CD from 1985 sounds great without any noise reduction, isn't that enough "proof" that NR wasn't needed on the SACDs?

What you're basically saying, Greg, is that nobody (other than engineers involved in the recording/mixing/mastering process) can judge the sound of any CDs/LPs/SACDs/etc, since they haven't heard the master tapes themselves. Do you *really* agree with that statement? We can't think Peter Mew did a bad job on the original Badfinger CDs, despite the fact that we have Steve's, which sound much better, for example?

As far as anomalies go, noise reduction artifacts don't simply show up "later in the production process". Clicks, maybe, but not the sound of digital noise reduction.

Greg, have you even *heard* the SACDs? The London CDs? Other previous issues of this material? Do you prefer the sound of the Aftermath SACD to the London CD? Or are you just trying to be argumentative?

 

Well, the above article, and Luke & D's FAQ, pretty much sum up the situation; you might want to check out the latter before lashing out at his opinion, which I pretty much agree with, having been buying Stones vinyl since 1964. What's more, you seem to be implying Bob Ludwig is beyond reproach; fact is, he did some fine work for this series, but I'd like to hear him--or anybody else involved with the remasters--explain away the new, strange mix of "Ruby Tuesday"; the missing stereo and mono; the missing 45 versions; the missing UK 1 & 2; and other blown opportunities. The point being, overall, I'd give this set of redos a B+; had other things been done right--and easily could have been, let's face it--you're talking at least an A overall. You might also want to remember it was guys such as Luke who pushed Abkco into responding in Ice; no way in hell they explain anything if enough listeners hadn't been very vocal in the displeasure over certain aspects of this project.

Let's see....London US, Decca UK, German and Japan, MoFi vinyl....London/Decca CDs from Europe and Japan...US Abkco and now the remasters, in addition to boots and promos and other odds'n'ends...how much more should Luke--or any of us--have to listen to, to be considered 'knowledgeable'?

Not enough for you, apparently; more than enough for me.

ED

 

Merry Christmas everybody!

Just to rehash: Ludwig used as little NR as possible. Meaning, he treated 2 or 3 quiet intros with it. BFD, if I may be crude on this holiday. Considering that "Miss Amanda Jones" on the sampler did not have the NR on the intro, the decision to reduce the noise was made higher up than Ludwig. Ludwig does not tell ABKCO what to do--they hired him. And, except for maybe a thousand people in the entire country, the decision to cut back the hiss on a couple intros was a good one. I guarantee you there would have been tens of thousands of normal listeners complaining about the hissy intros if nothing had been done.

Luke, is "Aftermath" the only London CD you like? It seems to be the only one you ever mention. Why aren't all the other ones equally as appealing to you if they played the masters on their razor-sharp-tolerances deck and didn't screw with them?

Greg's point is a good one. None of us has heard the master tapes, only assorted vinyl and tape and CD versions. Our judgments are thus seriously handicapped.

 

Ed,

The problem I have with these criticisms is that they are so minor and the same ones just keep getting brought up over and over. "Ruby Tuesday" has been mentioned about a hundred times. It's like Luke mentioning in every Who thread that there's a click on "Who's Next."

I prefer the mistaken "Ruby Tuesday" mix anyway. I think it sounds better without the extra overdub.

There are about 9 or 10 people in the world who care if the soundstage was narrowed slightly on some particular song. And narrowed compared to what?--the master or some vinyl release?

If ABKCO got a singles mix or two wrong, that's just the way life is. Please tell me of any significant project in the history of mankind that was rendered perfectly. Or even tell me of a single record that has ever been released which everyone in the world found flawless.

ICE has a watchdog column all the time. Luke had nothing to do with ABKCO responding. The Stones releases did get some interest outside of us on this board.

 

Who knows what 'normal listeners' think? If they're normal, they don't even notice the hiss. The normal listeners I know don't have elaborate sound systems, they just want the music; haven't heard one in this town complain about sound quality, just happy to have what they like. Even if they do notice some hiss, what of it? Hiss is part of the analog experience; you can hear it on plenty of vinyl, and I don't recall anyone bitching about it back in the day.

Again, I repeat: read the FAQ, and you'll find out what Luke & D have listened to before jumping to erroneous conclusions. And, yes, some of us--not just Luke--have heard the old import CDs, and yes, that AFTER-MATH is superior to the SACD; wider separation, very natural sound. The SACD sounds more like the compressed import vinyl to these ears: still pretty good, but not the true master tape sound. And you're assuming Ludwig used all first gen masters; that remains, in some instances, to be proved.

As for judgments being 'seriously handicapped' you might start with label owners and mastering engineers who take it upon themselves to process tapes and leave behind anomalies that weren't originally there. You might also want to consider your own judgment as well. What have YOU listened to? What makes YOU think one has to be in bed with the master tapes to hear what's going on with the CD/SACD versions? The pluses and minuses are all very obvious and been gone over enough times already.

ED

 

No, as little NR as possible would have been none at all.

I don't necessarily blame Ludwig here, but we don't know either way *who* made that decision. For all we know, it was Bob who did some more listening and decided to add NR. We don't know.

It's one that I like a lot. The Hot Rocks discs are very good as well. I've *never* claimed that all of the London CDs were superior.

First of all, it's clear that not all of the London CDs came from the masters. Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed are good examples of this. I've pointed this out in the past. Second, sometimes things *need* "screwing with". It just happens that in the case of Aftermath, what MoFi *didn't* do really helped the sound.

How so? Why do we need the master tapes to determine how one CD compares to another?

 

I'm sure some people "prefer" the version of Under My Thumb on Odds & Sods without a lead guitar. Does that make it right?

How do you know? Have you taken a poll of every Rolling Stones fan in the world?

Go take a trip to the BSN board sometime. I'd bet there's at least a few hundred people there that would care if things were narrowed down.

Both. The separation on vinyl isn't quite as extreme as that possible with CD, but it's more than the narrowing that took place on a number of songs.

This isn't "a singles mix or two". It's noise reduction, narrowed down stereo, poor sounding mastering, incorrect versions, lack of stereo mixes, etc.

 

OK, I'm Jewish, so I can do this. Screw you. Screw your hypocrisy, your obvious desire to be a contrarian, your ridiculous desire to MARGINALIZE a group of people by saying "Hey! There aren't MANY of them! Their opinions can't possibly matter!"

Never mind that this is on a forum where the minute variations of things etched into dead wax ("If it says 'RhZKKO-1,' you've got the first pressing personally supervised by Alan Parsons while he was taking a bath in all of the money he made off of Dark Side of the Moon").

So because the hiss reduction (which, by the way, you don't seem to get our problems with, so I'll explain it to you: hiss fading up after intros sounds gross, sounds amateur...****, *I KNOW NOT TO DO THAT*. I'd never do that. It sounds ridiculous. It's completely unnecessary and artificial...but that's besides the point. What's awful about it is that THEY LIED INITIALLY AND SAID THEY WEREN'T GOING TO DO IT. REMEMBER THE HYPE? I SURE DO. I WAS AROUND.) is noticed by, oh, a few people...only a few people...well, a few people and then those who read our FAQ...oh, and it's more than a few songs...it doesn't matter? Great. Let's go firebomb HMV Canada, then, for providing that stupid Who's Next to the "six or seven" people who actually aren't satisfied with the 1995 (not Jon Astley, remember) remaster.

Is your problem that you don't like hearing Bob Ludwig denigrated? Great, we can agree on that. He's largely done good work, and my view on this is that he had to make *lots* of compromises for ABKCO. IIRC, *he* issued assurences that there would be no NR...clearly, that wasn't his decision, and his unfortunate backpedling paints HIM in a bad light where he really doesn't deserve it. BY all accounts, he's a great guy, and *he isn't the one we're displeased with*. He didn't do it. If the entire reissue programme had been like the sampler, there'd be a lot less to complain about (recap: Metamorphosis would probably be fine, some of Aftermath would be slightly narrowed, but...)

Y'know, with ABKCO's masturbatory self-congratulatory THIS IS A HIEBREEED SACD ******** that dotted the reissues, you'd think they would make an effort to say THIS REPRESENTS THE SOUND OF THE ORIGINAL TAPE THERE IS HISS WE ARE PRESERVING FIDELITY YADDA YADDA YADDA. THey didn't. And in what world do people complain about hissy intros, as opposed to "well, that intro was kinda muffled, and then it sounds like the track was hit by a wave?" Is this like letterboxing the intros to movies (As "normal people" don't care about intros) and then going to "glorious" pan'n'scan for the rest?

Have you heard the London Aftermath? Probably not, but hell, I might as well pretend like you haven't telegraphed that out the wazoo. Look, here's the deal: The London Aftermath is grand. It is also, to mine ears, the only London disc to which the current SACD is *clearly inferior*, in both sound and design. I really dig many of the other London discs! But in many cases, the new ABKCOs are either better (a point you seem to be missing when we say it) or just different. For example, December's Children was always pleasent on London, but the new ABKCO does the sensible thing and doesn't use a copy tape of the album for the first time. It still sounds rushed, but rushed with MUCH better sources, so it's a moot point. Self-Titled/Englands is just "different." More Hot Rocks is just "different," mostly. Buttons is almost incomparable, with the London sounding more like the original US LP and the ABKCO sounding more like some of the foreign pressings I've heard. But the Aftermath stands above 'em all, as it's the one (well, the "other," as I'm pretty sure that self-titled is from a damn good source) that's clearly mastered from a GREAT...if not the BEST...tape. Fluke? Sure. A nice fluke...y'know, like those "flat transfers" on Sony SPecial Products the people here seem to love.

Well, that's lovely. Let me explain to you why: Ruby Tuesday is a *big song*. It is a *big song* that's played on the radio several times every second. It's a big song that, suddenly, is very, very different. Guess what? I find this version to be pleasant. That said, it's absolutely bizarre that nobody's a) acknowledging a ****-up's been made, or b) attempting to fix it. Or provide an alternate. I.e. they could put out a Ruby Tuesday/Spend single for $2 with the original mono/stereo mixes of each. Delightful! DOESN'T THAT FIX THE PROBLEM?

And some other problems for you: the tampered-with Tell Me, the missing short Tell Me on the singles set, the tape drag at the beginning of "Confessin' the Blues," the click-fest that is Metamorphosis, the narrowing down of Honkey Tonk Women, etc.

OF COURSE THIS IS NITPICKING. NITPICKING IS WHAT WE DO. It's much more palatable to the public than the sweeping condemnations of ABKCO for not spending their 15 years doing more, like actually putting together a logical version of the catalogue, assembling rarities, realizing that THROUGH THE PAST F*CKING DARKLY HAS A F*CKING OCTAGONAL COVER. LONDON *JAPAN* REALIZED THIS. HOW DOES THE CRAPPY DIGIPAK RESEMBLE THAT AT *ALL*? and that THE ORIGINAL ALBUMS DIDN'T HAVE STUPID CIRCLES WITH TRACKLISTINGS ON THE BACK, and IF YOU'RE GOING TO USE THAT AS AN EXCUSE TO SKIMP OUT ON BONUSES AND EXTRAS, AS LEAST *DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU WANT TO DO*.

I can't even begin to fathom what you're trying to convey here. So since mankind is naturally flawed, mistakes should not only be accepted, they should be expected and treasured?

Whatever. I wash my hands of this. Clearly, an attempt to draw together a comprehensive differences FAQ is senseless, as it would only be for the depraved, the needy, the obsessive...probably lepers, all of them. You've been demonizing Luke and I as the above for about a week now...tell ya what. You want a nice, receptive audience? Join Undercover. They hate us there, too! Because we're such awful people.

Happy Holidays. I hope a reindeer kicks Santa's head in.

[Profanity edited by Claviusb]