This world is upside down:
Since when do old farts have a better ear than young people?

bonatoc said:

This world is upside down:
Since when do old farts have a better ear than young people?

Why do you say that?

214 said:

bonatoc said:

This world is upside down:
Since when do old farts have a better ear than young people?

Why do you say that?

I'm giving Josh some millenial-bashing o'mine.
Ah, les millenials. They were born during the Loudness Wars.
God forbid how it trains the ear.

I mentioned this on another thread. It's almost criminal what Josh did with this PR Remaster.

I wanted to see exactly what Joshua did with the "Remaster". So, I uploaded this into my Ableton Software that I use to Mix/Master my own music. If you look at my screenshot above, you will see the difference in the dynamics on the New (Top) and Original (Bottom). You will notice how the New Master is on some parts totally dark, which means it literally has no dynamics. He CRANKED TF out of this album. All he did was RAISE THE VOLUME. So, don't confuse louder with better. The AES Standard, which suggests the Loudness Level Standards for music, their standard is -16. "Lets Go Crazy" was -6.6. That's -10db higher than the AES Standard. That's absolute garbage, and frankly unprofessional.

Apple Music standard is -16 and Spotify is -14. Both streaming sites will have to lower the levels of this album. Which means it will sound like a Squashed Turd.

A/B testing with Rhino's 2008. I find the transients to be a little pungent compared to the memories I have of my 1984 vinyl, but with a nudge of a soft U curve on the EQ, foggetaboutit Dave: It's fantastic. I listened to my Prince records from 1984 to 1988 on an early 70's japanese monster of a Pioneer amp that weighs a ton, and we're very close. I have to give the usual 16kHz boost because we ain't getting any younger.
But the full AAA audio chain can't be beaten.

It goes without saying, When Doves Cry, I Would Die 4 U and Purple Rain are the probably the songs who Josh or whoever is doing the more harm (I didn't even made to the full A/B, I got strucked by Rhino 2008 flacs, and froze): they're the ones with the most drastic nuances, you have lots of sottovoce, it's the full spectrum of contrasts, and the kick drum on WDC is doubled by a gated voice, "hm, hm", all over it, softly in the mediums, I don't how Prince did his trick, and I don't want to know. I mean it's not just a reverb tail on the kick drum, there's something else.
The moans and the slap delays coming in from the second verse. And you're hooked to the end.

Oh well, maybe I do. But there are too many on PR, it's mind-numbing, might as well just enjoy it.
What else can you do when it goes straight to your cortex, your heart and your soul this way?
WDC is all use of silence. How can you just compress it?
The trembling voices in the middle, when he goes "doo-wap", I don't know.
And near the end, here goes the voice on the right again.
It's a human "hm". I can hear it.

Kudos to Bernie Grundman for 17 Days - 7'' Single Edit, a flat EQ and a 16k boost for the ones in their forties, and we're back in the end of summer of '84, the relentless pulse of the drops on the roof, unrequited feelings, no sleep and just two cigarettes left.

Rhino 2008 vinyl for me it is. Prince compressed his master tapes to perfection, it's probable the mastering didn't involve that much work. I hurt everytime I hear Purple Rain in a public place, coming from a brickwalled FM. The cellos are to be heard in harmony with the Cloud, and you can litteraly see Prince twisting the fucking knobs with Susan: no automation, my friend!

Gosh, what a miracle Purple Rain is when it's uncompressed...
Ath the end, just before the first guitar larsen, there's a soft synth doing the descending melody that I've never heard before, until today. Go Rhino.

Next time use the same source. The tamborine in the strings coda shakes from behind your head.
What a stereo.

Oh My God.
The 2015 PP TBO is a nightmare.
It's a non-brainer for all CDs EXCEPT this massacre of an album remaster.
Boooo! All twenty ten seven and we will watch them fall, hopefully on the next DELUXE release.
If you can't wait, well now you know.

[Edited 6/23/17 21:52pm]

Susan Rogers was right years ago. she said release the vault material as it is and don't f*ck with the sound. even though Prince's music was never engineered and mixed pristinely it was still the sound he wanted to hear

SanDiegoFunkDaddy said:

Susan Rogers was right years ago. she said release the vault material as it is and don't f*ck with the sound. even though Prince's music was never engineered and mixed pristinely it was still the sound he wanted to hear

And when you listen to it on your system of choice, it's mind-blowing.
I can understand the chutzpah of the overcompressed, but it's just noise:
Josh is deaf, the ride's treble are a torture, way to ruin an historic album.

Would please Lenny Waronker step up and kick some ass.
I don't man, make a phone call or somethin'.
Kick some ass!

rogifan said:

Josh Welton didn't do shit without Prince's approval. Disc 1 is what Prince chose to deliver to WB. Now maybe he was just filling a contractual obligation and didn't really care one way or the other.

I get the feeling that Prince told Josh, "Do whatever, so we can work on this new music, and I can get my music back from WB". The fact that he didn't hire a Professional Mastering Engineer speaks volumes of his interest in the PR Deluxe project.

Bishop31 said:

much like cell phones ruining eyesight .. the loudness wars and mp3s have ruined peoples ears

when you stare at a phone instead of ... like anything else .. your eyes learn to only focus on something at a set distance away .. in the natural world your eyes would learn to focus on lots of stuff at different distances .. this is also the reason it is suggested that you dont sit too close to the tv or watch tv with lights off ... the muscles that focus your eyes at different distances become lazy and non functioning except for focussing on your iphone .. you become blind very fast .. its like if you never stand or walk your legs atrophe ..

similarlym compressing all frequencies to be equal causes your ears to only be strong at listening to certain frequencies and lazy or non functional at picking up more subtle and varying frequencies .. this is a result of the leveling of frequencies involved in the shit mastering that currently occurs, and the compression involved in removing frequencies to reduce file size and turn into a shitty mp3

in other words ... those of you that listen to this kind of music in these mastered or mp3 formats are literally causing yourselves to go deaf ...

mp3 has always been the mcdonalds of music .. ur all unhealthy and deaf for consuming junk music, all self imposed and igonorant of those of us that share ways to enjoy music without ruining your hearing ..

age has absolutely nothing to do with hearing .. as I get older my hearing improves .. period .. it is only those who partake in the junk food of music whose bodies deteriorate on schedule as your programming has taught you to do .. I can hear every stupid thing they did in mastering these disks .. and someone sure loves their super high end cymbal noises .. nothing "remastered" has ever improved the sound .. i have live bootlegs with better tones than some of these big studio productions ... pearls before the swine has never been truer .. give those pigs the remasters cuz they wont know the difference

TrevorAyer said:

in other words ... those of you that listen to this kind of music in these mastered or mp3 formats are literally causing yourselves to go deaf ...

mp3 has always been the mcdonalds of music .. ur all unhealthy and deaf for consuming junk music, all self imposed and igonorant of those of us that share ways to enjoy music without ruining your hearing ..

age has absolutely nothing to do with hearing .. as I get older my hearing improves .. period .. it is only those who partake in the junk food of music whose bodies deteriorate on schedule as your programming has taught you to do .. I can hear every stupid thing they did in mastering these disks .. and someone sure loves their super high end cymbal noises .. nothing "remastered" has ever improved the sound .. i have live bootlegs with better tones than some of these big studio productions ... pearls before the swine has never been truer .. give those pigs the remasters cuz they wont know the difference

Mp3 files don't ruin people's hearing or health because they're mp3 files

It's way more complicated than that my man

age has absolutely nothing to do with hearing .. as I get older my hearing improves .. period ..

that's not how that works

Hating these 2015 remasters for being brickwalled is fine (I get it, it's incredibly amateur) , but calling people "pigs" and "ignorant" and having a sense of entitlement because you don't listen to mp3 music files is ludicrous

[Edited 6/25/17 10:06am]

I dont get this this thread. ITs a friggin' REMASTER!....the whole point of the release is SOUND QUALITY.

[Edited 6/25/17 12:38pm]

OrangeClock said:

TrevorAyer said:

in other words ... those of you that listen to this kind of music in these mastered or mp3 formats are literally causing yourselves to go deaf ...

ur all unhealthy and deaf for consuming junk music, all self imposed and igonorant of those of us that share ways to enjoy music without ruining your hearing ..

pearls before the swine has never been truer .. give those pigs the remasters cuz they wont know the difference

Mp3 files don't ruin people's hearing or health because they're mp3 files

It's way more complicated than that my man

age has absolutely nothing to do with hearing .. as I get older my hearing improves .. period ..

I'll give ol' boy the benefit of the doubt on something, and try to rephrase it.

First off, I agree with OrangeClock on the mp3 thing. But if I could restate it - mp3s don't make people go deaf or ruin people's hearing. That's an absurd notion, and unfounded. Because the mp3 technology was flawed and literally had a coding error in it from the beginning in 1997 or so, it's made people relearn how they hear music, and what to expect. It's like in school in math, when you kept dividing wrong or doing an equation wrong, and getting the same wrong answer. My algebra teacher, Mrs. Overstreet, used to say "you're learning the mistake - don't learn the mistake". People, by thinking mp3s are okay and saying "I don't hear any difference" have learned the mistake.

Also eminds me of that adage of putting a goldfish in a bowl, then slowly heating the water. The fish never knows it is in danger of being cooked. It's a bit like that with digital music. Until the mp3 format came along, not much of anyone was trying to put music on their home computers. So few had home computers, there were not any player apps, or clunky ones, and weren't trying to put a Prince album on their Windows 1.0 or 3.1 computers. When mp3s came along, people were more enamored with a 5-minute song only being 5MB, instead of 50MB (as it would have been in the uncompressed WAV format). They bought into the kitsch and fad of it. It was a slow burn with people suddenly thinking "Oh, this is what it sounds like digitally." Well, no it shouldn't sound like an mp3. We know that now, but the vast majority didn't back then.

So no, it's not making people deaf. It's an ill-conceived and uneducated statement. Has mp3s taught people to hear music differently (even if it's a worse way)? Totally, it has done just that, unfortunately.

By the way, TrevorAyer, you get more flies with honey than vinegar. Here, let me show you:

ad hominem: adjective

I'm feeling depressed with this thread, i guess i'm one of those who listen mp3 files and don't hear any difference. Actually some months ago i bought Innvervisions 2000 remaster when i pleyed it on my stereo didn't like the sound quality i rather mp3 files audio.