"The Beautiful Ones" has been fixed! HDTracks reposted the whole album for download in my account; I downloaded it and can confirm that the song is fixed (and sounding better than ever).

BlackbeltJones said:

"The Beautiful Ones" has been fixed! HDTracks reposted the whole album for download in my account; I downloaded it and can confirm that the song is fixed (and sounding better than ever).

Same here. Now, maybe they will fix the error in Raspberry Beret at the 1:48 mark in the left channel.

^^^Yeah, I clock it starting at 1:47 and lasting until 1:49 on the left channel of RB. It is also on "The Hits / B-Sides" version as well, so I am starting to think no new master was done for this specific release (you can see in my mini review that I thought sonic improvement to be slight, to which I attribute to a higher bit depth and sample rate but not a new or improved master). It is not on my Japanese SHM CD or US original release CD.

.

Time to start e-mailing HD tracks about it. I am going to send in my e-mail today and I encourage everyone to do so.

.

Prince Army: Let HDTracks know about this issue directly here: https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=contact. Then post about it on their FB page here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/HDtracks/141061499268029

[Edited 7/18/13 11:19am]

my brother went and bought himself a copy of this and so he said "let's do a little experiment"

he's got top of the line equipment to play this stuff on so he kept playing tracks intermittently

from either the HD tracks cd, or 320 mp3 files of the original album.

and you know what, i picked the mp3 files as my favorites or "this sounds WAY better"

in most cases.

so i guess i'll just stick to my original cd's as ripped onto my computer since i obviously have

tin ears and no understanding of the infinitely small detail differences.

IstenSzek said:

my brother went and bought himself a copy of this and so he said "let's do a little experiment"

he's got top of the line equipment to play this stuff on so he kept playing tracks intermittently

from either the HD tracks cd, or 320 mp3 files of the original album.

and you know what, i picked the mp3 files as my favorites or "this sounds WAY better"

in most cases.

so i guess i'll just stick to my original cd's as ripped onto my computer since i obviously have

tin ears and no understanding of the infinitely small detail differences.

LOL... yeah, these releases are not for everyone, that is for sure, though I think most would appreciate 1999 due in large part to what I think (but can in no way prove) may be a new mastering job. When you wrote "HD tracks cd"... did you mean the HD Tracks download? (The HD Tracks version is only available online as it is higher quality than a CD). I wonder if he played them back on a sound card that can support 192KHz and 24bit? It's an easy thing to overlook - a lot of people buy these HD tracks but don't realize that their sound card is actually resampling the audio back out at 44/16 unless they configure it properly, so they get next to no benifit from the HD audio. IMO HD Tracks does a crappy job of being really clear about what folks need and how they need to set it up in order to play these tracks back correctly. Regardless, the only true must-have upgrade of the HD bunch is 1999 so far - PR would be a distant 2nd; the rest is really only for audio nerds (like me!). And in my experience what you say is true: some people prefer the sound of a compressed file (or more to the point can't tell the difference), and of course there is no shame in that. For some, a compressed file that is a tad louder will sound better to people than an uncompressed file @ a lower volume. At the end of the day, the songs are still awesome no matter the format, so we are really splitting hairs with this stuff...

[Edited 7/18/13 12:33pm]

UPDATE: I just e-mailed HDTracks about the distortion in Raspberry Beret. See their contact information a few posts up if you want to do the same.

[Edited 7/18/13 12:34pm]

BlackbeltJones said:

IstenSzek said:

my brother went and bought himself a copy of this and so he said "let's do a little experiment"

he's got top of the line equipment to play this stuff on so he kept playing tracks intermittently

from either the HD tracks cd, or 320 mp3 files of the original album.

and you know what, i picked the mp3 files as my favorites or "this sounds WAY better"

in most cases.

so i guess i'll just stick to my original cd's as ripped onto my computer since i obviously have

tin ears and no understanding of the infinitely small detail differences.

LOL... yeah, these releases are not for everyone, that is for sure, though I think most would appreciate 1999 due in large part to what I think (but can in no way prove) may be a new mastering job. When you wrote "HD tracks cd"... did you mean the HD Tracks download? (The HD Tracks version is only available online as it is higher quality than a CD). I wonder if he played them back on a sound card that can support 192KHz and 24bit? It's an easy thing to overlook - a lot of people buy these HD tracks but don't realize that their sound card is actually resampling the audio back out at 44/16 unless they configure it properly, so they get next to no benifit from the HD audio. IMO HD Tracks does a crappy job of being really clear about what folks need and how they need to set it up in order to play these tracks back correctly. Regardless, the only true must-have upgrade of the HD bunch is 1999 so far - PR would be a distant 2nd; the rest is really only for audio nerds (like me!). And in my experience what you say is true: some people prefer the sound of a compressed file (or more to the point can't tell the difference), and of course there is no shame in that. For some, a compressed file that is a tad louder will sound better to people than an uncompressed file @ a lower volume. At the end of the day, the songs are still awesome no matter the format, so we are really splitting hairs with this stuff...

[Edited 7/18/13 12:33pm]

you're absolutely right, i meant the download, not an actual cd. and the rest of the stuff you

just wrote is WAY over my head i'm sure if i show this to my brother he'll be all "hmm,

hmmhmm, yeah, ok, hmmm, no i know that" he's the techie in our family, obviously

and your last statement: so true

on a side note: did you happen to catch the live stream of the first dance party a few weeks

ago? not the dj dudley one but the one before that. it lasted about an hour and it has all sort

of prince songs in it. i haven't been able to locate a download of it anywhere yet.

however, what i was so surprised about is how incredibly and i do mean incredibly good the

songs sounded, even on that shitty stream (even i can hear that's not so good audio). you

could hear every instrument separately, the vocals were amazingly crisp etc. which led me

to thinking that prince probably already has remasters of his own stuff (would be logical).

BlackbeltJones said:

^^^Yeah, I clock it starting at 1:47 and lasting until 1:49 on the left channel of RB. It is also on "The Hits / B-Sides" version as well, so I am starting to think no new master was done for this specific release

[Edited 7/18/13 11:19am]

Damn, that's disappointing. There go my hopes for a decent SOTT master...

Thanks tot he HD version of Pop Life I now realize all these years later that there are two bass guitars on the track. The main one that I always tho-ught was the only bassline and then another doing little licks at the end of the chord cycle. Pretty subtle but cool as hell.