eyewishuheaven said:

Bishop31 said:

Here is what he did to "Darling Nikki". Again he crushed the dynamics. A fun comparison you can do is start from 2:14 on the Original and the New Remaster. It's the part where he says 'Whenever you wanna grind...". Listen to how the drums have no impact on the New Remaster. That's because the dynamic range is already clipping. Look at all of that dark area on the Waveform. It's supposed to be peaks and valleys on the waveform. Instead it's just solid black.

Thank you for this! Yep, it looks just like it sounds - no impact at all when the band comes in between the verses, because it's already blasting. And the backward choir thing at the end is so loud it might as well have a song title!

You got it! Your ears were not deceiving you. This is why I do not like when people act as if only "audiophiles" know what sounds good or not. Most of us have the ability to decipher a horrible sounding recording. This on going "Loudness War" has unfortunately trained this new generation that LOUD is better. That is a harmful lie. I personally read comments on Joshua's Twitter page with people stating how "Amazing" and "Better" the album sounds. I won't call them liars. I will say they are misinformed. An album lacking Dynamic Range is not in any capacity "Amazing" or "Better". I've posted the screenshots of Waveforms to prove that this is not an opinion. This is a fact. That Waveform is evidence that the album was not Mastered professionally. If it was, the Waveform would have it's natural Peaks and Valley's. That's science. Not an opinion of mine or "Audiophiles". Thank you for being open minded!

laurarichardson said:

Bishop31 said:

eyewishuheaven said:

Hey Bishop, could you do one of these for Darling Nikki? That's the track (including the outro) that sounded flattened the most, to my ears...

Here is what he did to "Darling Nikki". Again he crushed the dynamics. A fun comparison you can do is start from 2:14 on the Original and the New Remaster. It's the part where he says 'Whenever you wanna grind...". Listen to how the drums have no impact on the New Remaster. That's because the dynamic range is already clipping. Look at all of that dark area on the Waveform. It's supposed to be peaks and valleys on the waveform. Instead it's just solid black.

Hi Bishop,

Appreciate your explanation of the Loudness War, together with the graphs. It make perfect sense why not to do it as it has happened.

Just 1 thing; how would a good remastered (how would you define that in words) song look like when displayed like this? Just curious.

TweetyV6 said:

Bishop31 said:

Here is what he did to "Darling Nikki". Again he crushed the dynamics. A fun comparison you can do is start from 2:14 on the Original and the New Remaster. It's the part where he says 'Whenever you wanna grind...". Listen to how the drums have no impact on the New Remaster. That's because the dynamic range is already clipping. Look at all of that dark area on the Waveform. It's supposed to be peaks and valleys on the waveform. Instead it's just solid black.

Hi Bishop,

Just 1 thing; how would a good remastered (how would you define that in words) song look like when displayed like this? Just curious.

Good question..

I would like to know as well..

Could you post a graph of disc two to see how Bernies remastering differs from Josh's shocker?

Thanks.

It's sad because it's cleaned up really well, much better than my original CD. Then it's just brick walled to buggery. If we could get this master with the original dynamics it would be wonderful.

lastdecember said:

The sad thing about this remaster is that it's not all bad. There actually are musical elements that I can hear that weren't as apparent before (in Let's Go Crazy there are underlying guitar parts that I never noticed)..... but then the compression squashes the dynamics. The vinyl version is definitely the better one, as it is not as harsh as the digital versions (I can only assume Kevin Gray tweaked the EQ further for the vinyl cut).

I was really hard on this remaster on first listen. After listening to the the vinyl cut I'm not as critical as I was originally was. It's still compressed too much. It still has too much treble/distortion. Yet at the same time it has clarity and energy in places that the original doesn't (and vice versa).

thedance said:

TweetyV6 said:

Hi Bishop,

Just 1 thing; how would a good remastered (how would you define that in words) song look like when displayed like this? Just curious.

Good question..

I would like to know as well..

Ditto

TweetyV6 said:

Bishop31 said:

Here is what he did to "Darling Nikki". Again he crushed the dynamics. A fun comparison you can do is start from 2:14 on the Original and the New Remaster. It's the part where he says 'Whenever you wanna grind...". Listen to how the drums have no impact on the New Remaster. That's because the dynamic range is already clipping. Look at all of that dark area on the Waveform. It's supposed to be peaks and valleys on the waveform. Instead it's just solid black.

Hi Bishop,

Appreciate your explanation of the Loudness War, together with the graphs. It make perfect sense why not to do it as it has happened.

Just 1 thing; how would a good remastered (how would you define that in words) song look like when displayed like this? Just curious.

It's my pleasure to explain to you these Mastering examples. To answer your question, here is a Good and Bad example of a Remastered song. The Good is from the 2009 Remastered "Abbey Road" album by The Beatles. It was Remastered by Guy Massey and Steve Rooke. The Bad is "When Doves Cry", Joshua Welton's Remaster. I chose these two songs because both songs have minimal parts, and parts where all of the instruments comes in. Both songs are very "Dynamic". Dynamic Range is the ratio between the largest and smallest values. The difference between the softest and loudest points in a song. If you take a look at the screenshot I took of both song's Waveforms, you will notice how you can easily see the Loud and Soft points in "Come Together". You can see the Peaks and Valleys of the Waveforms. If you know the song well enough, you could probably point out where they are in the song by looking at the Waveform. By contrast, take a look at the Wavform below that. "When Doves Cry" has almost no recognizable Dynamic Range. Joshua squashed the Dynamic Range so hard that the Loudest and Softest parts in the song are barely noticeable. By looking at this Waveform it would be hard to point out the Chorus from the Verse. What gives the song power is the contrast of the verse and chorus, and into the guitar solo. But, because he squashed the Dynamic Range so hard, it has no impact when the parts change.

Josh is why we can't have nice things.

klick2me said:

thedance said:

Good question..

I would like to know as well..

Ditto

There's no reason for it to not look just the same as the first one with big differences between the peaks and troughs instead of being a nearly flat looking beast. I've grabbed a section to make it easier to look at. Top one is original and bottom one is new. Basically the taller the dark areas, the louder that section is. So looking at the top one it's got a loud beat then a quieter couple of seconds and then it ramps up a little more into a louder passage of time. With the bottom one the volume is maxed out for nearly the whole of it so there's little difference in volume as the track plays.

A way to explain it would be to think about playing a piano. You can play and gently press the keys, making a quiter sound and then you press the keys harder to make a louder sound. By using different pressures as you play a piece you can convey different emotions throught the music or emphasise certain parts. With current mastering techniques you're hitting the piano keys as hard as you can all the time and losing the emotion from the piece of music.

TheEnglishGent said:

It's sad because it's cleaned up really well, much better than my original CD. Then it's just brick walled to buggery. If we could get this master with the original dynamics it would be wonderful.

Too true. I listened to the old cd again last night to compare and it sounds, for lack of a better word, 'dusty'.

Here's to a proper 35th Anniversary Edition in 2019!

eyewishuheaven said:

TheEnglishGent said:

It's sad because it's cleaned up really well, much better than my original CD. Then it's just brick walled to buggery. If we could get this master with the original dynamics it would be wonderful.

Too true. I listened to the old cd again last night to compare and it sounds, for lack of a better word, 'dusty'.

Here's to a proper 35th Anniversary Edition in 2019!

Just have Bernie Grundman do it. It can be sold individually as a new remaster before 2019

TheEnglishGent said:

Bishop31 said:

Sadly, Josh added to the Loudness War in a bad way. He absolutely crushed the dynamics in "Let's Go Crazy". See picture above. Top is New. Bottom is Original. All that black is the dynamics in the song being crushed. So, you can't even tell the guitar solo from the verse. Very poor job. But, he's not a Professional Mastering Engineer. So, I blame Prince for sending a kid to do grown up job.

I'm trying to find the article (unless someone posted it on this thread) where P actually stated something to the effect of how "all you need to remaster is press a few buttons nowadays" - referring to a digital remaster using plugins and audio software in regard to "Purple Rain". I remember reading that and thinking "oh, fuck - he's not going to do an actual analog remix and remaster".

The fact that Bernie Grundman had nothing to do with the 1st disc remaster is disheartening. If all that was done was a digital remaster, that would be OK if it wasn't so half-assed and brick-walled. At least do a proper remix if you have access to the actual tracks. That's my main problem. However, there are ways to do a digital remaster correctly, even if you don't want to mix the original audio tracks. I did my own using uncompressed audio rips from my own discs. Looks nothing like the pic above.

[Edited 6/26/17 10:58am]

[Edited 6/26/17 11:09am]

TrcikyChristopher said:.

I'm trying to find the article (unless someone posted it on this thread) where P actually stated something to the effect of how "all you need to remaster were press a few buttons nowadays" - referring to a digital remaster using plugins and audio software in regard to "Purple Rain". I remember reading that and thinking "oh, fuck - he's not going to do an actual analog remix and remaster".

I remember the interview too. He talked about have an option and it just puts some bottom end on there.

TheVaultKeeper said:

Here's a little chart I made.

I agree this new remaster is not the best, some songs sound pretty good, but others are very hard to listen to. The ending of Let's Go Crazy is horribly distorted and overall there is a lack of dynamics and too much added treble. The 24/192 HDtracks version that I have is still the best, glad to have it.

KlyphIsBackAgain said:

The sad thing about this remaster is that it's not all bad. There actually are musical elements that I can hear that weren't as apparent before (in Let's Go Crazy there are underlying guitar parts that I never noticed)..... but then the compression squashes the dynamics. The vinyl version is definitely the better one, as it is not as harsh as the digital versions (I can only assume Kevin Gray tweaked the EQ further for the vinyl cut).

I was really hard on this remaster on first listen. After listening to the the vinyl cut I'm not as critical as I was originally was. It's still compressed too much. It still has too much treble/distortion. Yet at the same time it has clarity and energy in places that the original doesn't (and vice versa).

Hearing buried musical elements is an interesting byproduct of multi band brickwalling.

Genesia said:

I lowered my expectations when they confirmed it was remastered back in 2015 at PP. I'm just glad those vault tracks were included...even though Jill Jones' leaked version of Our Destiny sounds so much better.

rogifan said:

Genesia said:

Josh is why we can't have nice things.

Josh didn't do shit without Prince's approval. But y'all don't have to worry about that now as I'm sure Josh won't be involved in any vault stuff.

True. I'm sure all WB albums will be remastered and reissued in time, with some added songs here and there and someone like Bernie Grundmann will take care of that. And for outtakes I think / I hope they will just to massive recording sessions box sets for the hardore fans (if the legal BS will ever be sorted out). I guess the casual fans only care about the albums anyway and look at the problems at choosing which outtakes belong on which album remaster... Some stuff just doesn't belong to any specific album project, so just do chronological box sets.

Bishop31 said:

TweetyV6 said:

Hi Bishop,

Appreciate your explanation of the Loudness War, together with the graphs. It make perfect sense why not to do it as it has happened.

Just 1 thing; how would a good remastered (how would you define that in words) song look like when displayed like this? Just curious.

It's my pleasure to explain to you these Mastering examples. To answer your question, here is a Good and Bad example of a Remastered song. The Good is from the 2009 Remastered "Abbey Road" album by The Beatles. It was Remastered by Guy Massey and Steve Rooke. The Bad is "When Doves Cry", Joshua Welton's Remaster. I chose these two songs because both songs have minimal parts, and parts where all of the instruments comes in. Both songs are very "Dynamic". Dynamic Range is the ratio between the largest and smallest values. The difference between the softest and loudest points in a song. If you take a look at the screenshot I took of both song's Waveforms, you will notice how you can easily see the Loud and Soft points in "Come Together". You can see the Peaks and Valleys of the Waveforms. If you know the song well enough, you could probably point out where they are in the song by looking at the Waveform. By contrast, take a look at the Wavform below that. "When Doves Cry" has almost no recognizable Dynamic Range. Joshua squashed the Dynamic Range so hard that the Loudest and Softest parts in the song are barely noticeable. By looking at this Waveform it would be hard to point out the Chorus from the Verse. What gives the song power is the contrast of the verse and chorus, and into the guitar solo. But, because he squashed the Dynamic Range so hard, it has no impact when the parts change.

Clear (haha) Thanx!

sad sad

[Edited 6/26/17 22:38pm]