erik319 said:

That reminds me. I'll be back in about two minutes.

squirrelgrease said:

I would unconstipate Whitney bobby Brown-style and eat the undigested peanuts out of her poo before i'd give up my Box O' Chocolates!

erik319 said:

Took longer than expected. My porn tastes are very specific and the cave that my favorite site is broadcast from was experiencing a mortar attack.

Marrk said:

squirrelgrease said:

Hahahaha....

It appears that some b00t will have these tracks.

udo said:

I'm not surprised, labels have been ripping fanreleases for years now, all for the love of $. Sad but true.

As much as I like this release & appreciate it & enjoy the superb sound quality of these gems, let's face it... this is really truly only for the die-hards out there. Your casual Prince fan isn't going to be all about these songs. Just my opinion. Otherwise, I'm really enjoying it Thanks to the folks that made it possible, we're all very grateful.

nosajd said:

At this point, all that's left are die-hards.

It's nice to have some of these songs in improved sound quality. "Wonderful Ass" sounds quite different now that there is a better version available. I just wish they hadn't butchered up the songs with the digital post-processing. It doesn't sound like they were using proper monitoring for these.

I might have to dump them to analog tape in order to get rid of some of it. So far, I've been listening to many of these tracks in mono, because they just sound a bit too unnatural on my speakers.

I would rather give Prince my credit card details than give up my copy of Box O Chocolates.

erik319 said:

donnyenglish said:

You need to use , it's in your finder, already preloaded in your applications folder.
The easiest way to listen to it then is to convert it back to MP3
Fluke for me is a little restrictive in use,like you can't put artwork to it in your iTunes, and anyway MP3 is good enough for most peeps.

Flac to 320 kbps mp3’s

WINDOWS PC: http://downloads.cnet.co....83s,00.htm

DOWNLOAD THIS..MAC OS X: http://www.techzilo.com/c...-mac-os-x/ , this converter is a simple drag and drop and takes seconds.
Drop the then MP3 file in your iTunes....enjoy

erik319 said:

the songs sound clipped and harsh, and brickwalled.

cosmicday2010 said:

Yeah they are. Just sounds kinda eq'd and smashed a little with compression to me. Still, sounds way better than any versions I currently have of these songs.

I just wanna thank whoever is responsible for setting this album free. Folks, can you imagine if this collection of songs had came out in 1987? All Day All Night most likely wouldn't have been on it tho.

Sound quality is fine, and probably the best we'll ever hear of these tracks. I prefer the copies of Starfish E Coffee / Dorothy Parker here, over the ones on the SOTT cds. The drums on Starfish are SO clear!

erik319 said:

All I'm saying is that if you're going to put out outtakes, don't attempt this type of "mastering" on them. If you do not have sufficient monitoring at your disposal, you cannot predict what the end result is going to sound like on other sound systems. The response will vary from one system to the next. A lot of people do not understand this, yet they think they are "improving" the mixes. Tape degration coupled with added digital gimmickry like this doesn't really work. Compression will also entirely change the feel of the track if it's using e.g. reverberated 80s snares like "All Day, All Night" has on it. Another thing, please do not add reverb or enhance the stereo image.

By cutting down some of the excessive digital sheen, it became apparent to me that the sound quality of the source material isn't really as good as they've tried to make it come off as. Many of the tracks seem to still come out from the same line of tapes that the previously circulating versions originate from. They have the same type of artefacts present there. I might be wrong about this one though.

novabrkr said:

Are you offering to master this shit professionally yourself? Or are you just bitching about a *FREE* bootleg which, while not stunningly pro, is a VAST improvement over other currently available versions? All I can tell for sure is that you're saying "don't attempt this type of 'mastering', " which seems to mean you think this person who did something with their own time and resources, and fueled only by the desire to share better sounding digital versions of these songs with their fellow fans has done something wrong, or bad? Have you been reading this thread? People love it! And again, it was fucking FREEEE!!!

Yes, dear. I am bitching about the "mastering". It's no different to those people taking whatever old tracks from the 80s, adding harmonic distortion, multiband compression etc. on them and then spreading them through p2p networks and torrents. It is completely unnecessary and in most other playback systems won't work as well as on their own.

Half of the tracks on it are hardly "vast improvements" compared to what has been circulating already. They just seem to have more bass, treble and other shit added to them. On a decent set of speakers they don't sound good at all. Seriously, what on Earth is happening there on that version of "We Can Funk"?

Their "freeness" is a moot point, the songs themselves are no one else's property than Prince's.
[Edited 3/29/10 0:27am]

Marrk said:

Nice!

If I were the person behind this release, after reading some comments from nerdies here you can bet your life I wouldn't put out a second volume.

It may not be perfect, but the vast majority of you had never heard something so perfect.

Yeah, cause the bootleggers get really emotional when you criticize them for their use of mastering tools.

"How dare they!!! Now they're not getting anything anymore!!! Fuckers".

[edited an expletive out]
[Edited 3/29/10 3:22am]

Well, instead of just adding your never asked for visions on the stuff that's out, why don't you try to search for, enhance according to your undoubted skills and share for free the stuff.

It's very easy to sit back and just say 'how lame' when it's others who did the effort.

Instead of doing what?

The point is very clear: if you acquire tapes of some of the outtakes with an improved sound quality compared to the currently circulating ones, don't attempt mastering if you don't know what you are doing. Because you are not improving the sound quality, you are making it worse.You are taking detail out and it cannot be restored afterwards. Boosted treble and bass does not mean the sound quality is better. It might sound better to you on the first couple of listens on your walmart stereos.

novabrkr said:

How do you know that the person that had these did't get them in the quality that they have been released in?

What do we know about them other than they are from a source a lot further down the line than the stuff that has been heavily bootlegged in the past?

Did I imply that the people putting these on the net were necessarily the same as the original source? It's obvious that the material has gone through all kinds of changes along the lines of tape duplication procedure already. When this type of material was going for one person to the next during the tape trading days, a lot of the time people just kept the "bass boost" buttons or whatever pressed down during the duplication. However, what we have here is a rather typical plugin-based sound. That added amount of treble and bass does not come from equipment of past decades.

One more time: bass and treble boosting is not necessary. It will not sound the same on other people's sound systems as it does on your own - that's something people usually refuse to understand. The results will vary considerably from one system to the next if you're not doing it properly. It might sound like the shit to you while you're doing it at home, it won't sound the same on the next system it gets played at. That's the main problem in these cases.
[Edited 3/29/10 2:57am]

novabrkr said:

wow. ok. I have recorded several albums in my time and sat in for mastering sessions in several different PRO mastering labs. I know what the difference between someone's home or car or whatever crappy speakers they use and a good pair of monitor speakers in a balanced room. None of this has any bearing on this thread though. Your missing the whole point. Most people have access only to CD bootlegs from dubious often crappy sources or, more likely, a download of an mp3 that someone ripped with itunes or whatever piece of crap software they had lying around. So despite the fact that it doesn't sound like an expensive professional mastering job, it does sound better than ANY other copies of these songs that I or apparently many other fans can find. It sounds better on my computer, it sounds better on my nice analog component stereo system, sounds better on my girlfriends iphone piped into her car stereo, etc, etc, etc. So to me that makes it better period. Seems to be true for the majority of people here as well. I for one can say nothing but a sincere thank you to the people who made these versions available. They have enriched the experience for me. So thank you whoever made this available, and may you not be badgered long by those who would pick apart your mastering job while offering none better.