Rolling Stones Beggars Banquet deluxe

Thanks. To be honest, some of these tracks to me sound fast to the point of laughing out loud. I'm certain of that.

 

Can you quantifiably verify that?

 

That's not true in every case. It depends on what the artist and/or label wants. His recent Frank Zappa remasters are superb, with no compression at all and very minimal limiting. Same with Jack White’s “Lazaretto” CD, which is very dynamic.

 

Fortunately in most cases pitch is absolute, especially when dealing with recordings which utilize professional studio’s instruments like pianos, which would be tuned to concert pitch. Same with harmonicas, or organs, which generally aren’t tuneable.

 

For what it's worth...

The March issue of The Absolute Sound ends their review stating the new Beggars Banquet is the best stereo version to date, and the March Stereophile gives the sound on the reissue 5/5 stars...

 

I haven’t even opened my Japanese SACD package yet.

 

You must be behind by a few hundred packages by now.

 

I can't count the number of pre-digital synthesizer albums where the pitch changes slightly (or not so slightly) from concert pitch and/or song to song. I was playing along with Clapton's Slowhand the other night and there were a number of songs which drift from concert pitch.

 

I would brush up on your reading comprehension. They raised a completely valid question which I would like to know the answer to as well and you act like you don't understand a word they're saying

 

OK, here is the deal. To me half of the Beggars Banquet 2003 SOUNDS TOO FAST TO ME. Just to be 100 percent clear, I'm not saying IT IS TOO FAST, I'm saying to TO ME IT SOUNDS TOO FAST. So all the English majors who want to parse each word I say, I hope this statement ends the controversy and we can all get on with our lives.

 

Which cuts do you recall?

 

There is no parsing, this is your direct quote "It is too bad that unlike the London CD version that ran too slow, on the new version half the songs run too fast." which sounds like a definitive factual statement on the speed of the disc. And then instead of just clarifying these were your personal tastes you wrote long and convoluted responses to simple questions and then called out the guy trying to get info as if he were a troll. If there is an officially documented speed issue on the CD you mentioned, it would be helpful to know that info because it's a significant part of the mastering. If it just doesn't sound right to you personally then that's a completely different matter and you should treat it like what it is, subjective taste

 

There was documentation that BB on original LP was mastered at an incorrect speed on all but a very few cut sides (in US?), if this was intentional or not is open to debate. Lukpac has gone over this in detail in another thread.

Perhaps Freezerburn read those comments - or some quotes of the comments, and then decided that yeah, it sounds like (later issue, corrected) is incorrect speed, something I can run with as if I descovered it myself...... and try and appear very sensitive to any variations on original releases. Why else would he come across so adamant, and self-assured?

Were originals slower running than 2003 corrected - or was it the other way around?

 

Whatever

 

The original London CD is well documented as to running slow. The new one SOUNDS to me as though half the tracks run too FAST. I'm not sure if this in fact the case, BUT the vocals SOUND completely unnatural to me on at least half the tracks. If you like I can PM you which ones.
So...we know the original London is too slow. What reference did they use to speed correct the new one?
I don't know.

Can I conclusively prove the new one was mastered too fast? No.

Does half of it sound ridiculously fast to me as a listener? Yes.

To me was a mistake possibly made to the new one? Maybe, but I can't prove it in a court of law.

Have I tuned my guitar to standard tuning, and matched a chord to whatever key the song is in to verify that the pitch is correct on the new one as well as the speed? No.

Do I know if all if any of the songs are in standard tuning? No.

Is it possible this fine recording was botched a second time?

My OPINION is that for the 2003 ABCKO it's highly likely,
and that it is in half the songs are in fact, mastered too FAST.

So I hope this clarifies anything said on the earlier posting. I made a declaritive statement " This was mastered too fast"or something to that effect on the earlier post. Does that make me an arrogant, offensive personality? You decide.

I hope this clarifies my original statement, it's intent, and what I believe to be the case with the new version. Hopefully now there is no question whatsoever as to my thoughts on Beggars Banquet.

Feel free to pick apart or dissect me anytime. I have thick skin, I can take it.

 

Believe what you want. But Bob Ludwig is known for being a bit obsessive getting the tape speed right now when he masters from analogue. He is an advocate for using very hi-res digital spectrum analysis to make fine adjustments in varispeed to cancel out instances of wow/flutter, however minute, on the source tape. I may be disappointed and turned off this release because of his use of limiting/dynamics reduction, but I at least know that he did his darndest to align the tape properly and get the pitch correct

 

Have you actually heard it?

 

Bob Ludwig only did the EQ and compression, not the tape transfers themselves. Teri Landi at ABKCO did the transfers I believe.

 

Not right off hand. I think I remember having to retune for The Core, but that may have been to go back to concert pitch.

 

Yes, on Tidal

And Matt Cavaluzzo at Battery in NYC. Ludwig himself doesn't need to do the tape transfer, the speed adjustment using Plangent Processes happens in the digital domain

 

So what was your overall impression? Did it sound the right speed to you?

 

Yes but too compressed

 

Fair enough. I have a vinyl rip.

 

Out of interest, how did you 'reverse engineer' those values?

Simply changing a plus value into a negative value won't give the correct results.

 

Very true. After ripping the old "too slow" London CD, I pulled each track into Audacity and using the speed correction feature which also changes the pitch, I entered the values the forum member calculated into Audacity, and made each track faster.
Then I burned a CD-R, pulled the tracks from the CD-R into Audacity,
and wrote down what the times were out 4 decimal places.
After that was done, I took my vinyl rip wav ABCKO files, pulled each one into Audacity, and again using the same feature, only this time I changed the time of the ABKCO files to match the speed corrected London. This will give you the new percentage change value when you do the time change automatically.
So now the ABKCO file times matched the speed corrected London file times, thus generating a new percentage to slow down the ABKCO by. For half of the songs, the times of the ABKCO were already so close to the London speed corrected times, I left those alone. Then I burned the speed corrected ABCKO files to a CD with each companion speed corrected track from the London CD. The speeds for both are the same after listening to the new disc.
This is how I came to the conclusion that half of the new ABCKO was most likely mastered too fast. I realize it's not an exact science, but to me the ABKCO tracks now SOUND CORRECT to me. I capped that last statement so all the English majors and other semantical nitpickers don't jump all over my case for making "factual statements". So here again, it sounds more natural, particularly in the vocals, to me.