mikek1 said:

Prince is the one who wants the CD's pushed that high. His engineers have said he likes everything to be up to 10.

ufoclub said:

Right.... Wasn't it Femi Jiya that said that?

NouveauDance said:

Yep, he said that with Rainbow Children, but that was about the actual mixdown of the song, I'm thinking that Prince asks the mastering company to peg it as well. Oddly, I noticed that the remix RaveUn2 album is NOT mastered hot at all. So you have tracks on Rave N2 and Rave Un2 to compare.... I wonder why this is? I'd love to find out the process and who did what to get two different sounding cd's of the same tracks.

ufoclub said:

what cd sounds better?

ufoclub said:

yeah, i thought it was just me but imo RaveIn2 sounds really bad compared
to RaveUn2.

i always found that to be a great shame since it ruins 'Beautiful Strange'
which is on the remix album.

there's just something about it that sounds flat and dull.

so is that to do with mastering then? i mean, i don't know however those
files might have been mastered or not but the npg music club files from
year 1 -and later Chocolate Invasion/Slaughterhouse, sound terribly dull
and lifeless. as if there is no depth to the music at all. it all sounds
flat and one dimensional.

i know that some of his 80's albums do too, but still in a different way.
these songs like Magnificent, Vavoom, Supercute, S&M Groove, they are all
so disappointing when you think of how they could sound on a well masterd
cd.

ufoclub said:

Interesting.... I might just have to endure a playthrough of those albums to compare.

If you're shittin' me, and you made me listen to those albums, oh boy!

See, with these fancy hi-fi's with all their 5 to 1 and 7 to 1 sounds... what they really need is a setting to 'replicate crappy hi-fi' and everything would be fine!

ufoclub said:

I meant to say that Femi was able to mix Rainbow Children the way he wanted. Prince let him,but he didn't take part in the mastering....

IstenSzek said:

woah! The complaints are usually that the cd's are mastered to high and brittle like the first rave. The second rave isn't pushed, and should (Beautiful Strange as well) sound more natural and full range (unless we are hearing a vinyl master that was hastily put on cd. [makes sense for a remix album originally intended only for vinyl]).... But you're saying you liked the pushed/maxxed out one! Interesting.

Oh no, not this again.

Listen mikek1, we already explained this to you a while ago yet you still continue to post these things - which proves that you're more than just a bit hard-headed. The surround emulation of Pro Logic is not meant for listening music. It's outdated technology meant for surround sound applications, but if you take The Gold Experience CD in your hands you will see one interesting thing that you just seem to be not willing to accept: yes, it's just a CD. Not a surround sound multimedia experience, not a movie, just a stereo recording. It has two channels, namely left and right. No wonder you are hearing things in your "high fidelity system" that people with "crappy" setups aren't hearing.

Pro Logic was nothing but a failed experiment that experienced a stillborn death due to its quite idiotic approach of actually splitting up the frequency spectrum in bands and dividing those in different speakers. Phase-shifting was never a good idea anyway, as in music production it's something that is always attempted to be eliminated should something like it occur. This is technology that predates 5.1 surround sound, and given that 5.1 has been around for quite some time you really are in no position to post comments such as "you obviously know nothing about the making of music" to orgers.

mikek1 said:

Please do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w..._Pro_Logic

novabrkr said:

I already know. I don't listen to any cds using pro logic.
My sytem has that option but i don't use it for the reasons you mentioned.

I know alot about music; i have done extensive reasearch of late and study it.

We AS A COLLECTIVE should DEMAND high quality product, don't you agree?

BTW for eveyone else. The mixing on TRC is great but the mastering is bad. Prince has never been involved in this process and like MANY artists is probably ignorant about it.

So is it okay to think that cd's sound pretty good again?

NDRU said:

Funny, I take a tylenol when I read this thread.

NDRU said:

what cds sound good in your opinion?

In 2000, Dolby introduced Dolby Pro Logic II (DPL II), an improved implementation of Dolby Pro Logic. DPL II processes any high quality stereo signal source into "5.1"—five separate full frequency channels (left, center, right, left surround and right surround) plus one low-frequency-effects (deep bass) channel. Dolby Pro Logic II also decodes 5.1 channels from stereo signals encoded in traditional four-channel Dolby Surround. DPL II implements greatly enhanced steering compared to DPL, and as a result, offers an exceptionally stable sound field that simulates 5.1 channel surround sound to a much more accurate degree than the original Pro Logic.

Because of the limited nature of the original DPL, many consumer electronics manufactures introduced their own processing circuitry, such as the "Jazz", "Hall", and "Stadium" modes found on most common home audio receivers. DPL II forgoes this type of processing and replaces it with simple servo (negative feedback) circuits used to derive five channels. In addition to five full range playback channels, Pro Logic II introduced a Music mode which would not add any processing to the left and right channels, but will still extract a centre channel and two surround channels.

mikek1 said:

A lot sound good to me (some that we've discussed here), but I ask because it seemed like your opinion that they sucked was based on their performance on your surround system.

So in regular stereo do you think they sound okay?

NDRU said:

no they don't. I have posted an excellent link in another thread which talks about the loudness problem with todays cds.

Californication is the worse sounding cd I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE and i have had over 1000 cds!

TOO much Compression its true Lifeless

I listened to it again (with good headphones), and I hear what you're saying. But I think it's because the album is supposed to have a super high-energy live feel to it. So even at low volumes, the album sounds like it's blasting.

That (to me) is a sound technique similar to distortion on a guitar. If you listen too critically I guess distortion & feedback might sound like shit, too. But generally, I think Gold sounds great.

One song that sounds wrong to me, however, is Shy. I hear a high pitched hissing sound on the vocals.

NDRU said:

yes your right; that's the worse sounding song of the 90's. That's becuase of the mastering.

Recording an album loud is o.k as long as when it's mastered the frequencies aren't too high. You should be able to turn up the volume without distortion but you can't on this album, rave, 3121, TRC and musicology. His 80's albums sound far better becuase you can just turn them up.

wow

i begininng to spot a trend here.

mikek1 said:

what's odd is that I never noticed that about Shy when it came out. I listened to it very loudly on good stereos bad stereos, and I never heard the hissing.

Sometimes I think my ears are getting more sensitive, and if I was 15 I'd like the synth on Black Sweat also.

I always thought Lovesexy wasn't mastered very well, either. The guitars were buried too much in the background.

24chas said:

That's NOTHING to do with the mastering. Prince CONSTANTLY puts the guitars in the background of the MIX!

Although i do agree it sounds poor BUT you can turn it up and it's better than TGE, TRC, RAVE, 3121 AND MUSICOLOGY!