I’m quoting myself to say that I did end up running waveforms as I mentioned above. I found that indeed the opening sounds of the beach and dolphins are definitely lowered in sound and peaks on the GH Japan Deluxe Cd 2. I was expecting it to be exactly like the PW Physical Deluxe but it’s not.
I do most of my listening using headphones. As I said way back earlier in the thread "I noticed a slight bit of distortion on the word "and" in the line "and it might help you too" just before the second chorus so I compared the various versions I have. I noticed that it wasn't present on my MCA discs but was present on the Festival remaster." It is my thought that even under optimal conditions no two transfers will ever be identical -even if you transferred the same tape twice on the same day there will be minor variations between each transfer. I believe that the 1998 Festival remasters were the most comprehensive digitization of Olivia's recordings. The early 90s had seen a "digitize everything, ask questions later" approach to archiving. Slightly off-topic but to my point: back in 1993 Readers Digest UK released a multidisc compilation called "Merry Christmas Everybody". Whoever compiled it seemed to think that anything with Christmas or Snow in the title was probably appropriate for the package. This meant that Elton John's "Cold As Christmas (in the middle of the year)" was included on the package - a song about marital discord not the holidays. Someone was definitely not paying attention because they also were able to access digital masters of Elton's "The Snow Queen". For those that don't know, this was the b-side of the "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" single. Bernie Taupin's lyrics were less than charitable to Cher: the "Snow Queen". Elton and Cher met sometime after this and became friends and he regretted the song's biting lyrics. As a result the song never made it's way onto any of the expanded remasters or box sets for over 25 years. In 2020 Elton issued the "Jewel Box" and included it. The version on the box set is I am pretty sure the same transfer as on that Readers Digest compilation - it is not brick-walled or otherwise futzed with. Back to Olivia, I think that she (well her management company) had all her recordings digitized in the mid to late 90s and provided Festival with digital copies that were used for those 1998 remasters. Some of us had noted that following the 1977 MCA lawsuit, Olivia owned all her masters. Festival would have then done their own mastering - EQ, compression etc. for the Festival remasters. As to Olivia's pre-1976 recordings - I don't know if she owned the masters at this point in time - some may still have been owned by EMI UK for example. So back to that slight distortion I noted on one word in "Sam" - it first appeared on the Festival remaster. On a positive note, it would have been the norm by this point to do transfers at 24 bit and 96KHz - hopefully flat transfers without added compression or noise reduction. It gives me hope that there is a better digital version of "Fool Country" safely stored away as well as live recordings etc. Could the bonus tracks on the Japanese reissues have been from that same set of transfers? If stored simply as a digital file, it could also be that the alternate mix of "Carried Away" was created back then too. It certainly makes more sense than that an alternate version would appear on an assembled analog master tape. Whew! Sorry to take so long. Am I making sense?
Olivia's catalog is confusing enough for me on CD, but as I look at digital files it is just as bad. On Qubuz, The early albums that have already been released plus the American LP "If You Love Me Let Me Know" are all available from Primary Wave. The rest of her classic years albums indicate they are from Geffen records, except for the "Have You Never Been Mellow" album which has two different versions, one from Primary Wave and the other from Parlophone UK. I haven't listened yet to see if the two versions of HTNBM sound like two different masterings. All of these files indicate they are CD quality. Amazon HD is even worse, with a couple of the albums being from MCA and a few showing they are only MP3 files. I have no idea if any of these masterings have ever been used on any of the CD versions, I didn't even know that Geffen records ever had control of those classic titles.
Did you notice there are a couple of different vocal lines on the DSB (and now Primary Wave GH) versions of Sam? They come at the end of both choruses on the “Sam, Sam, you know where I am” part. It’s subtle but they’re definitely different to the version I grew up listening to. The versions on the original GH and DSB albums are correct, though. I seem to remember this getting discussed years ago. Probably on the OO forum! It’s hard to explain properly, but I remember noticing this the first time I played the DSB CD!
Mine is going back to. Thought about exchanging it, horribly pressed, but I’m sure they are all bad and of course the mastering isn’t going to sound any better. It’s such a shame some of these labels simply don’t care. This was one of the sloppiest reissues I have ever run across. Terrible cover quality art, and I think most of us agree the sound is pretty awful. Mud city on my system. It gets slightly better on the newer songs but clearly this was sourced from awful low rez digital files. Anything PW puts out will be a hard pass for me. What a shame.
Mine, bought in 1987, had that. It was misprinted on the artwork and also on the the longbox the CD came in! It was correctly called Tied Up on the CD itself though. I didn’t realise until years later that there was an earlier version of the GHV2 CD that had the full artwork…
There is just no way they used THE master tapes. Whatever was used, likely digital files that technically were sourced from tapes only because the original recordings were recorded on tape (meaning any label can use that term for albums of that era), the source was multiple generations away from the original, and that is a lot of the reason why they sound dull and also why the dynamics are, imo, pretty bad. So, you start with a 4-5 generation copy and then start screwing around with compression, plus trying to compensate for some loss due to generation loss issues, and this is what you get. This is a joke compared to my nice early copies on vinyl. I am stunned this got issued this way, that this was actually approved for release. Many of you are being awfully kind!
I would bet the Geffen releases sound pretty decent. They seemed to care how their releases sounded. David Geffen, I suspect, didn’t tolerate inferior sounding product. I think the Back To Basics on CD was good, and I don’t even like the sound of cds. I really hope by some miracle UMG will put that out on vinyl, and use the same decent source.
Just wanted to remind everyone on here that Richard Mudhar has re-started the Only Olivia message board. How we all loved that back in the day! One of the advantages of the MB is that you can have specific Olivia threads on there, so things won’t tend to get buried as they can do on this appreciation thread. It’s also a good way to meet ‘new’ Olivia fans who might not post on SHF. You have to register, but once you have everything should be fine. Here’s the link if you’re interested. Only Olivia
Has anyone bought the Greatest Hits vinyl (european edition)? If so, does it sound good? I'm considering buying it
I just pre-ordered the cd of "Greatest Hits", it said it will be released next Friday so i hope it's been delivered when i'll get home from work.
I pre-ordered the CD on Amazon U.K. weeks ago. First it said it was coming on 25/10, then it was updated to 11/11-12/12. But when you click on the product page now it’s not being offered by Amazon anymore. Just third party sellers. With vague release dates at that. I don’t think Olivia could have picked a worse company to handle her music if she’d tried. I’m sick to death of having to chase Primary Wave releases around the world.
I saw it on Amazon, most sellers have differend dates, i think it's just a estimated delivery time, usually the webshop where I buy my music is good, the album was also released on October 25, so I'll wait until next Friday to see if it's also been released and being shipped to my adress. I also don't really like having to wait longer for a release that should have been released much sooner, apparently it has to do with a number of reasons, shipping from US to Europe, stores that might be aware of earlier a new issue and pre-order them, and how fast do the items arrive at the shops, i know patience can be tricky sometimes, but with this release I'm not in as much of a rush as with the previous two releases because they had new songs that I didn't have yet, with Greatest Hits reissue that will be a different story And I think it's not just about sending cd's or elpee's articles, but we're in a world of crises now where everything is different now, maybe they send out less boats or planes to Europe now, and they don't fly until everything is fully loaded. maybe Primary Waves can't help it, but it might go wrong when sending the articles to other countr's.
Yes. At the end of both choruses she sings the line “Sam , Sam, you know where I am” slightly differently. The original version is on the MCA and Japan SHM CDs.
The only Festival CD’s I got were Totally Hot, Let Me Be There and Clearly Love. Not sure why I only got those ones.
Well, according to the Spotify version of GH here, they use the same version as the Festival CD with the alternate vocal lines, so you could try comparing your new GH CD with the MCA one. Of course, Spotify aren’t particularly trustworthy. They may have used the wrong version. I won’t know for sure until I get one of my GH CDs. This probably won’t be for a while!
Good ear....yes I’ve gone back and compared my US GH Deluxe to my original MCA CD of Sam in that spot you mentioned and with headphones I hear the subtle differences. On my original MCA CD at 2:58 (after the 2nd chorus) Olivia does this embellishment on the end of the word “am” and holds it a tad longer. The US and Japan Deluxe I’m not hearing that. I also hear it after the 1st chorus too she holds it a tad longer than the new deluxe versions, so it’s really subtle. It’s most noticeable for me after the 2nd chorus.
You explained that very well. I don’t know where this ‘different’ version came from, but it seemed to debut on the Festival DSB CD. The track on the MCA GH was the one I grew up listening to on my records. Very subtle changes, but I remember noticing it the first time I heard the Festival DSB CD. I’m not especially pleased it’s turned up again on the new GH release!
What colinu mentioned above is making a lot more sense now. I had no idea that these new deluxe editions could be mastered from U.K. masters. So my 3 Festival CD’s all have stickers made in Australia. So all the 98’ Festival CD’s were taken from U.K. masters but discs pressed in Australia?
