I just have dl's. Wonder if they acknowledged the lossy sources of the 2 tracks in the liner notes? 2 lousy demos out of 8 discs doesn't really bother me; as well as the main album & concert albums were done.
Oh wow. i finally got my notice from Amazon. Delivery is Oct 20 to Nov 20. That's pretty ****ty considering I bought way back in August.
Thank you much for checking that. I really appreciate it. I know they don't tell the whole story, but, with DR numbers like this, I'll courageously find a way to soldier on in light of a couple of lossy tracks...Can't wait to dive into this!
The one strange thing, and I have compared with different sources, is that the live show included (Utrecht) seems to run a tad slow speed wise. Right off the bat I could tell it wasn't exactly A=440, and jamming along with every song with my guitar that is in tune, confirmed that. I had to put everything in Audacity and increase the speed by 2 percent which corrected this and it sounds more "right" (and the tempos are naturally more in line with the live concert videos both the one included in this set and the movie) However I definitely would like someone else to confirm this as well You can easily test this pitch thing by playing along with the three power chords Prince plays right before the drum groove to SOTT kicks in (Ab-Bb-C) - and this issue is the case throughout the entire show if you try and play along with it with an in-tune instrument (I even compared it to an oscillator pitch perfectly in tune in Logic Pro as well)
oh wow, that’s weird. And definitely not how the show went down, given that the horns and keyboards were obviously tuned to 440.
Different story mate! Love to spend $$$ on lousy sounding tracks I dislike BTW, it's not "one, maybe two" or "a couple" of tracks; spectral analysis of the download reveals all: on disc 4, "Can I Play with U?" is 100% for sure lossy, "Strange Relationship" shows signs of lossy artifacts particularly the top and tail, "Visions" either from a rough-sounding cassette transfer or lossy file, "Colors" definitely looks to be lossy. Moving to disc 5, "Train" has definite lossy artifacts, ditto "It Be's Like That Sometimes". On disc 6 "Rebirth of the Flesh (original outro)" and "A Place in Heaven (Lisa vocal)" do too That is a significant portion of the archival material... that I will be streaming only
Yeah that was my thought too, the keyboards would all be in 440 and the fact that everything is uniformly a tad on the flat side to me is strange. From what I can tell all the Vault disks and everything else don't have any speed issues however, just this concert Any musicians in this thread, definitely try this out too and let me know! To my ears and tests this concert is definitely running at a little tiny bit of a slower speed
Can confirm, you could probably swap out your old copy for this - it's really good. re - Lossy sourcing for vault tracks - can't see this being a problem if two tracks across 3 discs of unreleased songs don't happen to be sourced from master, given the chance they were either already lossy or the only copies left is not unlikely
Hmm, the Utrecht live show runs too slow, all three of the archives discs have MP3s on them... that $15 deal on Amazon for the 3CD version is looking even better, all of a sudden
I think these videos finally started working here in the U.S.. Yeah, this thing is just a hair flat. Maybe there was a tape machine slightly out of wack somewhere along the way; the whole band wouldn't be tuned just slightly down. I don't want to be accused of making light of it, but it's not enough to bother me, and this live show is kind of the last thing on the set I'm interested in. My ears adjusted pretty quick, just sounded off at first to me. I don't think this is something any average listener would ever notice, but I know that's not the point - it should be correct. It would be nice if fixed and replacement CDs sent out. But would they do another vinyl run to fix? Seems doubtful. Would be fantastic if the vinyl was somehow perfectly in tune and only the digital tracks off...but I don't see why the vinyl would've been spared. Well, I guess I'll know for sure Saturday night when I have them. Note: the video links that were posted but unavailable a few pages back should also be working now.
Gotta be honest, if the fact that a small handful of tracks are lossy masters is enough make you do a 180 on buying the set, then the truth is you probably weren't gonna buy it anyway and were just looking for an excuse. I see why it's a problem and why it's irritating, but honestly I know I will never hear the difference and I'm just enjoying the rest of the set too damn much to complain.
Ultimately it isn't a huge speed difference you are right, and I think that it is so subtle that like you said it isn't a make it or break it thing. My ears are pitch sensitive in general so to me I noticed it right away and had to tinker around in Audacity to make it right haha But for anyone else who does want an easy way to correct this, you can import all the tracks into Audacity from the two disks of the concert, increase the speed by 2 percent, and export them all and it should be all good and in tune
I don't think this one was posted yet. Maybe these are already up on some services, but I don't have those so, posting for the benefit of anyone who hasn't heard yet. Edit: Actually I think all tracks are up on YouTube now if you search.
I just threw this on and it immediately sounds a little draggy. It's very noticeable. Not unlistenable, it's common to hear analog-sourced bootleg recordings with similar pitch issues, but they really should have fixed this.
I had a pre-order in at Amazon for the Super Deluxe, but now switching horses to another edition of the set seemingly free of problems, and much cheaper too (the 3CD version) Lossy masters are a Big Problem for me, doesn't matter the quality of material. Tape speed difference big enough to throw an entire concert noticeably out of pitch is another significant problem. But MP3 in the lineage is a definite deal breaker
