as is the norm with my posts...dont bother replying if you dont know

it annoys me.

ahem...anyway

one of my fave boots is a lil ol toon called HEAVEN

now i have been listening this since i was 17..im 38 now

why the fuck is it still fairly shit quality?

i mean when it was originally leaked why did the sneaky thief take a terrible copy and how do terrible copies exist?

i mean i imagine prince records

the engineer steals it

copies it

not puts it next to a ghetto blaster under a bath and then records it??

oh and when will the pro filmed dvd be out of the 84 birthday gig??

amd whilst im on the bootleg dvd...have the glam slam 1st birthday gigs been cleaned up or remastered or whatever that process is called

as well the parade 1st avene gig??

experts......take the floor

Unfortunately, it was not unusual for bootleggers to degrade the quality of recordings intentionally, release them, then later release them again in better quality... Double dip in full effect!!

I have no idea if this was the case with Heaven, or not. If so, I would presume an upgrade would be available by now. It's also possible that the source of the original boot used inadequate equipment or improper settings when duplicating their copy.

If memory serves, Heaven is very demoish and not a fully polished mix. It's also possible that the original recording was of a low quality.

djThunderfunk said:

Unfortunately, it was not unusual for bootleggers to degrade the quality of recordings intentionally, release them, then later release them again in better quality... Double dip in full effect!!

I have no idea if this was the case with Heaven, or not. If so, I would presume an upgrade would be available by now. It's also possible that the source of the original boot used inadequate equipment or improper settings when duplicating their copy.

If memory serves, Heaven is very demoish and not a fully polished mix. It's also possible that the original recording was of a low quality.

nomi simply dont believe that

having collected them since 86

please refer to my "if you dont know dont reply"disclaimer

jonylawson said:

djThunderfunk said:

Unfortunately, it was not unusual for bootleggers to degrade the quality of recordings intentionally, release them, then later release them again in better quality... Double dip in full effect!!

I have no idea if this was the case with Heaven, or not. If so, I would presume an upgrade would be available by now. It's also possible that the source of the original boot used inadequate equipment or improper settings when duplicating their copy.

If memory serves, Heaven is very demoish and not a fully polished mix. It's also possible that the original recording was of a low quality.

nomi simply dont believe that

having collected them since 86

please refer to my "if you dont know dont reply"disclaimer

If I'm not positive of the exact lineage of the boot, I shouldn't discuss what I do know or what possiblities I'm aware of?!?

Maybe with an attitude like that it's no surprise I'm the only one who replied...

By your standards, only the person that has the source tape "Knows" the answer, doubt you'll hear from them.

And by the way, who is nomi and what did I say that he/she simply doesn't believe?

[Edited 12/19/11 7:18am]

jonylawson said:

as is the norm with my posts...dont bother replying if you dont know

it annoys me.

ahem...anyway

one of my fave boots is a lil ol toon called HEAVEN

now i have been listening this since i was 17..im 38 now

why the fuck is it still fairly shit quality?

i mean when it was originally leaked why did the sneaky thief take a terrible copy and how do terrible copies exist?

i mean i imagine prince records

the engineer steals it

copies it

not puts it next to a ghetto blaster under a bath and then records it??

According to a friend back in the early 90's, there was this French dude who was behind a lot of new studio boots (possibly the "colors" series?) and somehow got all the new tracks directly from the US and made the boots, and he told my friend that he intentionally trashed the tracks before releasing them, for 2 reasons:

1- He could brag about having the only crystal-sounding copies of them (and probably fuck girls thanks to this).

2- He could rerelease them later with crystal-clear quality and make money again.

At first I thought "how can a dude be so fucked-up", but then when after 1996 all our old boots started emerging again with a great quality, I realized that the guys who'd sold the old fucked-up copies to bootlegers had 2 be the same guys who were now selling them the better versions.

This was 20 years ago, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from these internet days when devoted fans actually "remaster" and share rare stuff for free, back when u'd pay 3 times the price of a regular CD for a poor-sounding boot...

[Edited 12/19/11 7:47am]

databank said:

jonylawson said:

as is the norm with my posts...dont bother replying if you dont know

it annoys me.

ahem...anyway

one of my fave boots is a lil ol toon called HEAVEN

now i have been listening this since i was 17..im 38 now

why the fuck is it still fairly shit quality?

i mean when it was originally leaked why did the sneaky thief take a terrible copy and how do terrible copies exist?

i mean i imagine prince records

the engineer steals it

copies it

not puts it next to a ghetto blaster under a bath and then records it??

According to a friend back in the early 90's, there was this French dude who was behind a lot of new studio boots (possibly the "colors" series?) and somehow got all the new tracks directly from the US and made the boots, and he told my friend that he intentionally trashed the tracks before releasing them, for 2 reasons:

1- He could brag about having the only crystal-sounding copies of them (and probably fuck girls thanks to this).

2- He could rerelease them later with crystal-clear quality and make money again.

At first I thought "how can a dude be so fucked-up", but then when after 1996 all our old boots started emerging again with a great quality, I realized that the guys who'd sold the old fucked-up copies to bootlegers had 2 be the same guys who were now selling them the better versions.

This was 20 years ago, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from these internet days when devoted fans actually "remaster" and share rare stuff for free, back when u'd pay 3 times the price of a regular CD for a poor-sounding boot...

[Edited 12/19/11 7:47am]

That's the kind of stuff I was talking about. It was a not-so-well-known, sad fact. Bootleggers were not known for ethics.

djThunderfunk said:

databank said:

According to a friend back in the early 90's, there was this French dude who was behind a lot of new studio boots (possibly the "colors" series?) and somehow got all the new tracks directly from the US and made the boots, and he told my friend that he intentionally trashed the tracks before releasing them, for 2 reasons:

1- He could brag about having the only crystal-sounding copies of them (and probably fuck girls thanks to this).

2- He could rerelease them later with crystal-clear quality and make money again.

At first I thought "how can a dude be so fucked-up", but then when after 1996 all our old boots started emerging again with a great quality, I realized that the guys who'd sold the old fucked-up copies to bootlegers had 2 be the same guys who were now selling them the better versions.

This was 20 years ago, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from these internet days when devoted fans actually "remaster" and share rare stuff for free, back when u'd pay 3 times the price of a regular CD for a poor-sounding boot...

[Edited 12/19/11 7:47am]

That's the kind of stuff I was talking about. It was a not-so-well-known, sad fact. Bootleggers were not known for ethics.

Some of them still aren't.

i am apragmatist

i work on examples

some french guy??

most of my boots on cassette and early cd havent changed in sound in twenty years

camillle etc

sounboard is and was still soundboard

so what are the examples that the french guy did???

jonylawson said:

i am apragmatist

i work on examples

some french guy??

most of my boots on cassette and early cd havent changed in sound in twenty years

camillle etc

sounboard is and was still soundboard

so what are the examples that the french guy did???

I don't KNOW about the french guy, so, maybe I'm not allowed to reply...

but, whatever

I do know some of the tricks, though:

-Intentionally bad EQ'ing

-Making a copy of a copy of a copy, etc... degrading the fidelity while adding tape noise

-cutting seconds from the beginning, end, or somewhere in the middle

-mastering the source tape too loudly (causing clipping) or too quietly (increasing tape noise)

-copying the source tape slightly sped up or slightly slowed down, which alters the pitch

These are just a few tricks that I KNOW some bootleggers were guilty of back in the day.

The modern day equivalent would be to transcode a lossless file to a lo-bitrate mp3, then re-encode the mp3 to a FLAC. That new FLAC file may be lossless, but, since it is sourced from a lossy file it's still just a lossless copy of a lossy file...

This is why some traders seem snobbish about lineage, nobody worth a damn wants to share poor quality files.

Soundboard may be soundboard, but, it's not hard take a high quality soundboard and make it sound bad. In fact, it's super easy.

djThunderfunk said:

jonylawson said:

i am apragmatist

i work on examples

some french guy??

most of my boots on cassette and early cd havent changed in sound in twenty years

camillle etc

sounboard is and was still soundboard

so what are the examples that the french guy did???

I don't KNOW about the french guy, so, maybe I'm not allowed to reply...

but, whatever

I do know some of the tricks, though:

-Intentionally bad EQ'ing

-Making a copy of a copy of a copy, etc... degrading the fidelity while adding tape noise

-cutting seconds from the beginning, end, or somewhere in the middle

-mastering the source tape too loudly (causing clipping) or too quietly (increasing tape noise)

-copying the source tape slightly sped up or slightly slowed down, which alters the pitch

These are just a few tricks that I KNOW some bootleggers were guilty of back in the day.

The modern day equivalent would be to transcode a lossless file to a lo-bitrate mp3, then re-encode the mp3 to a FLAC. That new FLAC file may be lossless, but, since it is sourced from a lossy file it's still just a lossless copy of a lossy file...

This is why some traders seem snobbish about lineage, nobody worth a damn wants to share poor quality files.

Soundboard may be soundboard, but, it's not hard take a high quality soundboard and make it sound bad. In fact, it's super easy.

just give me an example of a boot

i mean to my untrained ear the small club sounds identical i bought 20 yrs ago to the one i got "remastered"

jonylawson said:

just give me an example of a boot

i mean to my untrained ear the small club sounds identical i bought 20 yrs ago to the one i got "remastered"

Small Club wouldn't be a good example as every release had excellent sound.

Early outtake boots would illustrate this better. For example, the original Chocolate Box bootleg LP of outtakes. Compare that to the Box Of Chocolates boot that came out last year...

Night. And. Day.

Most of the outtakes that were on boots from the mid 80's to the early 90's are now available in far greater sounding quality than what could be found on those early boots. Compare the tracks on Charade, Crystal Ball (single disc boot), Yellow, Blue, A Better Place To Die, Camille's Crystal Ball, Crucial, etc... with the tracks on The Work or Work It. Most of them are available in better quality today.

Perhaps the Black Album is a better example. I myself have owned 7 or 8 different bootlegs of the album before it came out officially. The sound quality of the different boots varied greatly. The first one I bought was mastered too fast resulting in a high pitch vocal that was more chipmunk than camille. On one CD version I had you could clearly hear the tape noise from the CASSETTE the boot was mastered from. On one of the CD copies you could clearly hear vinyl pops.

It all comes down to the quality of the source and the care taken to master that source.

databank said:

1- He could brag about having the only crystal-sounding copies of them (and probably fuck girls thanks to this).

2- He could rerelease them later with crystal-clear quality and make money again.

HA - are we really to believe that there are girls who would sleep with a guy just to hear some extended Gangster Glam remixes??

prince would often hand out demos he was working on in clubs and to friends on cassette .. its fair to say these songs got copied and leaked and perhaps by the time it got to someone who could distribute the boot on a large scale, it was degraded .. i imagine if the degradation were intentional they would do far worse .. like drop outs and stuff like that to mess it up .. and there is a lot that really was great quality to begin with .. usually the degradation seems appropriate to the song on the actual bootleg .. like an acoustic demo is going to sound far more degraded than a song he has redone 7 times with numerous overdubs or band contributions .. or something in a rare club after show compared to a main gig that more people attended .. the rare gig is less likely to get a great recording .. prince enjoyed the mystery he created with the uncredited contributions to his other projects and having so much extra material that he would play for people that was not on the record .. remember "the war" .. that was originally distributed intentionally and with directions that you should only get the song from someone who shared it and copied it for you .. prince was much happier to let songs get out back then .. and likely had a hand in it .. i still think he had a hand in some of the recent upgrades as well .. ya never know with a guy that gives his music away with a newspaper ... he is always up to something

billymeade said:

databank said:

1- He could brag about having the only crystal-sounding copies of them (and probably fuck girls thanks to this).

2- He could rerelease them later with crystal-clear quality and make money again.

HA - are we really to believe that there are girls who would sleep with a guy just to hear some extended Gangster Glam remixes??

hahahaha oh shit i never read that!!

there are many reasons a girl will fuck....a soundboard copy of charade aint one of them

your arguemnt doesnt really work...yes chocolae box is great now but your saying frenchy has been getting pussy for twenty years holding back on that quality

hahahaha

I don't know

jonylawson said:

i am apragmatist

i work on examples

some french guy??

most of my boots on cassette and early cd havent changed in sound in twenty years

camillle etc

sounboard is and was still soundboard

so what are the examples that the french guy did???

Most of my current outtakes are in much better quality now than 20 years ago, as stated before. I know the name of the French guy but I ain't sure I should name him, though I remember I did once in another thread but that ain't really fair to the guy so I won't do it again. What I can tell is that my friend who knew him was by no means a mythomaniac so if he told me that I'm 100% sure it's true. Now I'm just telling you about the little info I have, if that's not what u want i'm cool

As for girls sleeping with a guy to hear a bootleg... no. But naive girls being easily impressed by a dude being so cool that he has something rare... yes! There was this other french guy back in the early 90's, whose g/f had slept with a bodyguard just to meet Prince for 5 minutes. The story is well-known and the poor guy was the laughing-stock of the whole community back then (because the girlfriend wrote an article about it ). Another friend of mine, a really pretty girl, was offered by a Prince musician to meet Prince for 5 minutes if she slept with said musician (that was in the 80's but obviously I won't say who the musician was). She declined and the musician respected that and tried nothing else but if he offered this to her it's very likely that others before her had said yes.

a good quality copy of heaven came out a while back. miles better than what you had before. there's pretty decent quality versions of most of the outtakes knocking around these days, at least compared to some of the shit before the mid 90s

I have a few questions regarding bootlegs, but I'm not allowed to ask any of them!

billymeade said:

databank said:

1- He could brag about having the only crystal-sounding copies of them (and probably fuck girls thanks to this).

2- He could rerelease them later with crystal-clear quality and make money again.

HA - are we really to believe that there are girls who would sleep with a guy just to hear some extended Gangster Glam remixes??

:cough: mani :cough: :cough:

RicoN said:

I have a few questions regarding bootlegs, but I'm not allowed to ask any of them!

Ask google.