breakdown2k14 said:

scratch said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Why not cassette? Or 8-track? 45 rpm vinyl or 33rpm? Etc. Or to be clear: nonsense.

because of the unique mastering required for vinyl-- come on, you know this. i usually agree with you on this, but this Paisley stuff was much more engineered (or at least more well engineered) for vinyl.

.

But that's nonsense. Prince used tapes to sample his recordings while driving around, and in the studio I'm sure he used the high end speakers. They weren't printing vinyl acetates and using those to check the music. Sure, they didn't so much care for technical perfection, but I cannot even fathom how they'd "record for vinyl".

.

Prince's 1980s CDs sound bad/mediocre because CD mastering technology and skills simply weren't that good, because it was a young technology.

Yeah I agree with Bart. Those CDs were all created during the 80s when simple analog-to-digital converters weren't that good yet. A modern remaster is needed on virtually every one of his WB discs.

There's plenty of artists who get criticized for reissuing the back catalog too many times to cash in; Prince refuses to do it even when it is needed... go figure.

BartVanHemelen said:

scratch said:

because of the unique mastering required for vinyl-- come on, you know this. i usually agree with you on this, but this Paisley stuff was much more engineered (or at least more well engineered) for vinyl.

.

But that's nonsense. Prince used tapes to sample his recordings while driving around, and in the studio I'm sure he used the high end speakers. They weren't printing vinyl acetates and using those to check the music. Sure, they didn't so much care for technical perfection, but I cannot even fathom how they'd "record for vinyl".

.

Prince's 1980s CDs sound bad/mediocre because CD mastering technology and skills simply weren't that good, because it was a young technology.

it's weird that you put "record for vinyl" in quotes because no one used that term.

it really sounds like you don't know what you're talking about here when you say "they weren't printing vinyl acetates and using those to check the music"-- of course they were! if prince doesn't doing this himself, his techs and engineers were.

you actually have to do this, sometimes multiple times every time you engineer a record for vinyl (which is a separte mastering process) to make sure the frequencies don't cause the needle to jump from the groove-- a friend of mine just had this problem when printing their record on vinyl: the intense bassline caused the needle to bounce. this, along with the RIAA dimensional specs, are why records must be separately engineered for vinyl. of course he would sample on tape when you're driving around, but that's for a completely different master-- you're mistaken on this one.

the point is that the vinyl master, which is always separate master, sounds much better than the CD and the inherent harmonic distortion of the format also suits prince music in a special way that you can't replicate on CD.

[Edited 3/30/15 14:50pm]

scratch said:

SanDiegoFunkDaddy said:

All of the 80's Paisley stuff was meant to be listened to on vinyl. I don't own any Prince music from the 80's on CD, it all sounds bad. Prince could have went into any studio but he wanted that raw sound. The mics on Little Red Corvette and If I Was Your Girlfriend are distorted on purpose. The latter being a recording mistake that he happened to like.

Vinyl or CD has nothing to do with it, its badly mastered no matter what format you listen to it on.

scratch said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

But that's nonsense. Prince used tapes to sample his recordings while driving around, and in the studio I'm sure he used the high end speakers. They weren't printing vinyl acetates and using those to check the music. Sure, they didn't so much care for technical perfection, but I cannot even fathom how they'd "record for vinyl".

.

Prince's 1980s CDs sound bad/mediocre because CD mastering technology and skills simply weren't that good, because it was a young technology.

it's weird that you put "record for vinyl" in quotes because no one used that term.

it really sounds like you don't know what you're talking about here when you say "they weren't printing vinyl acetates and using those to check the music"-- of course they were! if prince doesn't doing this himself, his techs and engineers were.

.

There are NO stories about Prince jamming to acetates or leaving acetates in his car etc. Yes, they're part of the normal process when going to a release, but it wasn't like they had a vinyl press in PP and were printing records every day.

BartVanHemelen said:

scratch said:

it's weird that you put "record for vinyl" in quotes because no one used that term.

it really sounds like you don't know what you're talking about here when you say "they weren't printing vinyl acetates and using those to check the music"-- of course they were! if prince doesn't doing this himself, his techs and engineers were.

.

There are NO stories about Prince jamming to acetates or leaving acetates in his car etc. Yes, they're part of the normal process when going to a release, but it wasn't like they had a vinyl press in PP and were printing records every day.

There are no stories about Prince leaving acetates in his car because who has a fucking record deck in a vehicle??! FFS. Furthermore, it is well documented that Prince enjoyed driving around listening back to songs on tape, but this was most definitely not to check sound quality, this would purely have been for the groove and structure of the music. No-one in their right mind would use a car stereo system, no matter how posh, with all the background noise a car produces to check the quality of the sound.

You can never admit when you're wrong, can you?

Were y'all happy with how the songs sounded on the Hits/B-Sides compilation?

V10LETBLUES said:

KlyphIsBackAgain said:

V10LETBLUES said:

JoeyCococo said:

I am an audiophile. That is a relative term. The guy who spent $25000 on his system laughs at me. However the one who spent $5000 on his, well, I laugh at him. The point is I love amazing music and the recording itself. daft Pubks RAM- amazing. Prince - ONA , very good. All of his back catalogue- terrible. As I am not in the industry, I often wander if the source material or age of the original trac is the issue or not . However tonight I listen to my amps let loose on OffThe Wall and am sitting here laughing at Prince or WB at their seemingly total disregard for Prince's albums and back catalogue. Come on...idiots. We don't have forever....I wants to hear my man I my ass kicking system. I wants to heathen BLAST like Mike.

The HDTRACKS 24/96 of Arounfd the World in a Day sounds really lovely. It's remastered or unmastered, or something. It just sounds less 'stressy' and more open and easy. I highly reccommend

.

Mindflux said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

There are NO stories about Prince jamming to acetates or leaving acetates in his car etc. Yes, they're part of the normal process when going to a release, but it wasn't like they had a vinyl press in PP and were printing records every day.

There are no stories about Prince leaving acetates in his car because who has a fucking record deck in a vehicle??!

.

Yes, people never transported records from one place to another. How could I be so idiotic.

.

No-one in their right mind would use a car stereo system, no matter how posh, with all the background noise a car produces to check the quality of the sound.

.

I know several musicians who do just that: take a recording they've made and play it on a "crappy" system. Why? Because on expensive studio equipment most things sound great. But most people don't listen to music on $100,000 speakers, they use mediocre equipment. And thus it is crucial to check that a mixdown "works" on such equipment.

funksterr said:

just because Prince's masters had a comparitively weak sound and didn't use the full range of decibels to begin with.

.

Using all the headroom is not all there is.

The headroom has to be used in a sensible range so that the dynamic range of a piece is at a certain level (not utterly compressed and limited agains -0.02 dBFS).