novabrkr said:

bluegangsta said:

That would be because those transfers were done in the late 80's, more than anything. And no copy of Free that I has has as much . density in the his as Love & Sex.

The hiss present on the older recordings isn't necessarily just the result of tape transfers. Every amplification stage on an analog signal chain will introduce hiss (preamps on the console, compressors, pedals and so on). As the case was with Prince often working alone and very quickly in the studio, he didn't have an engineer ensuring that the least amount of hiss ended up on the recordings. I have used a lot of gear from that time period myself and it's just silly how much, say, those older analog chorus, flanger and phaser effects add hiss (don't even get me started on the synths...).

The unappealing characteristics of hiss get easily intensified when tinkering on the source material with modern digital equipment. I think I might be hearing the noise reduction done on "Love and Sex" and "We Can Funk" though. On the latter, it's evident on the treblish effect tail on the snare, right?

Btw, I'm not trying to "debunk" your views on these issues, just thought I'd bring up some additional factors that might have influenced the way things sound on the recordings.

You raise a lot of excellent points; my response was a simplifacation, admittedly.

well, that took all of 30 minutes, or maybe not even. Computer blue fixed (taken from one bar onwards, since it's the same. Our Destiny has got the fadeout from the boot we had before, Roadhouse Garden always had a somewhat difficult start, added a little reverse reverb to not have it come in so harshly and, of course, fixed the opening note of Erotic City.

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Anything else that needs attention? I haven't been able to properly mix the Dance Electric versions because of different amounts of drift from the rhythm. (they don't speed up and slow down the same, because of different tape players and the edit being different)

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I do miss the Clinton additions to We Can Fuck... I keep singing "we been funkin' over here, and over there ain't shit!" during the song. And of course the Testing Positive in the opening. Maybe I'll try and see what happens with that.

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And then I'll throw an Eye Records logo on it and push it to usenet or something as "alternate versions".

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Would be a lot better than that other "Purple Rain Deluxe" out there with that horribe fanmade 17 Days extended.

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Others have been doing the same exercise, fixing their files?

I've fixed Erotic City. What's the issue with Computer Blue?

small dropout on the right channel, around 3:34 I think it was.

embmmusic said:

I've fixed Erotic City. What's the issue with Computer Blue?

Fixed Erotic City in Adobe Premiere, just cutting in the start of the 7" version!

mediumdry said:

mediumdry said:

well, that took all of 30 minutes, or maybe not even. Computer blue fixed (taken from one bar onwards, since it's the same. Our Destiny has got the fadeout from the boot we had before, Roadhouse Garden always had a somewhat difficult start, added a little reverse reverb to not have it come in so harshly and, of course, fixed the opening note of Erotic City.

.

Anything else that needs attention? I haven't been able to properly mix the Dance Electric versions because of different amounts of drift from the rhythm. (they don't speed up and slow down the same, because of different tape players and the edit being different)

.

I do miss the Clinton additions to We Can Fuck... I keep singing "we been funkin' over here, and over there ain't shit!" during the song. And of course the Testing Positive in the opening. Maybe I'll try and see what happens with that.

.

And then I'll throw an Eye Records logo on it and push it to usenet or something as "alternate versions".

.

Would be a lot better than that other "Purple Rain Deluxe" out there with that horribe fanmade 17 Days extended.

.

Others have been doing the same exercise, fixing their files?

I'll probably use the Jill Jones version of "Our Destiny" instead of the Lisa one on my playlist.

I've also thought about doubling every kick and snare drum hit on "Dance Electric" with Linn samples that have higher resolutions ("better sound quality"), EQ them appropriately, compress the whole thing and add some reverb. I've tried doing that on some outtakes in the past and it creates an illusion that the entire track would be in better sound quality.

Not sure what a limited CD run costs these days. I hate those CD-R things for sale. Shitty artwork I'm capable off, at least! (and adding some random low quality tracks from other releases is no problem at all either!)

[Edited 6/25/17 9:13am]

novabrkr said:

I'll probably use the Jill Jones version of "Our Destiny" instead of the Lisa one on my playlist.

I've also thought about doubling every kick and snare drum hit on "Dance Electric" with Linn samples that have higher resolutions ("better sound quality"), EQ them appropriately, compress the whole thing and add some reverb. I've tried doing that on some outtakes in the past and it creates an illusion that the entire track would be in better sound quality.

.

Thought of doing Jill's version, but I prefer Lisa's. After some subtle noise reduction, Jill's version sounds great though.

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As to adding a Linn to Dance Electric.. you'd think a computer drum would be somewhat steady, but I think it was done by hand. It's a bit all over the place. Slows down, speeds up. Not enough to be a problem for listening or editing, but for mixing, it's a different thing entirely. You're out of phase before you know it. I haven't found any software that will properly quantize songs without completely destroying their sound yet. (would be great to have an "undrunkify" function for my style of drumming) (yes, I can't drum for shit)

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Great idea though!

mediumdry said:

KingSausage said:

I did a lot of hissing when I heard how shitty this remaster was.

KingSausage said:

Oh, we'll definitely need some officially released but not widely known tracks. How do you feel about Splash? Taken right from the old NPG site. Perfect!

Great idea, loving it! Let's add something like the version of Da Bourgeoisie without horns to have different eras and add a fixed version of the Erotic City 12" and call it an alternate mix.

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Do you have some nice pics from the Rave period to put some ugly font on top of? We might not get it as bad as Parke, but I'm sure we can get close.

Aside from the noticable audio glitches on disc 2, and the fact that disc 1 is mastered at a much higher volume than any of the other discs, My biggest issue is the cheapness of the whole package in general. Everything just seems kinda flimsy and thrown together really half ass, even compared to other Warner Bros. deluxe releases of other artists.

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The poster inside with the vinyl was stuck to the inner sleeve, so when I tried to pull it apart from the sleeve it took some of the black side of the black and white face on the inner sleeve off. Also the Expanded CD packaging sucks, the DVD fell out right when I opened it. It should have it's own sleeve and not be packed with the booklet.

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Over all I did like the audio and video content of the whole package, I really just wish they had put more effort and care into it all instead of trying to make a quick buck.

[Edited 6/25/17 16:27pm]

Joshua Welton brickwalled to fuck Disc 1 the same way laurarichardson brickwalls threads

I wish they would have pulled his vocals forward. The valut contents is as it was left, but it still needs to be run threw some machine to get it to the listening public. Could someone just put the vocal tracks upfront so we can hear HIM. This wouldn't minimize or change what's be left. The quality is wrong for so many reasons.

fortuneandserendipity said:

Joshua Welton brickwalled to fuck Disc 1 the same way laurarichardson brickwalls threads

All of you are makin me feel sad with all your complaints, i wondering if this being the most important Prince album was met with so little care, what could we expect from future releases?

214 said:

fortuneandserendipity said:

Joshua Welton brickwalled to fuck Disc 1 the same way laurarichardson brickwalls threads

people complaining about hiss don't understand what a good remaster is.

ufoclub said:

people complaining about hiss don't understand what a good remaster is.

No one is complaining about hiss?

feeluupp said:

fortuneandserendipity said:

Joshua Welton brickwalled to fuck Disc 1 the same way laurarichardson brickwalls threads

fortuneandserendipity said:

Joshua Welton brickwalled to fuck Disc 1 the same way laurarichardson brickwalls threads

Lol!!! True! She's THE LOUDNESS WAR!

[Edited 6/26/17 4:12am]

KingSausage said:

Her posts are full of distortion and hisses. It's true.

And annoying glitches for which there is no excuse!

Guys....

I have to say; I've posted this thread in a couple of Facebook groups and have recieved a shit-ton of personal attacks for it. Really nasty stuff, actually. It's unbelievable the amount of people who've not understood (and refused to be educated) the purpose of highlighting these imperfections or take it as a critisism of Prince's work. I've even gone to the effort of explaining it to them in the comments - which has resulted in more incredibly mean attacks.

I get that hearing Prince music in any capacity is great (Hello?! Bootleg collector here?!), but fuck - why support stuff like this when you'll continue to get products that aren't what they could be? Why give a dog a treat for rolling over, when all they've done is sit there and lick their balls?

And here I thought Prince fans were a lot more sane than MJ fans.

[Edited 6/26/17 8:40am]

bluegangsta said:

I have to say; I've posted this thread in a couple of Facebook groups and have recieved a shit-ton of personal attacks for it. Really nasty stuff, actually. It's unbelievable the amount of people who've not understood (and refused to be educated) the purpose of highlighting these imperfections or take it as a critisism of Prince's work. I've even gone to the effort of explaining it to them in the comments - which has resulted in more incredibly mean attacks.

I get that hearing Prince music in any capacity is great (Hello?! Bootleg collector here?!), but fuck - why support stuff like this when you'll continue to get products that aren't what they could be? Why give a dog a treat for rolling over, when all they've done is sit there and lick their balls?

And here I thought Prince fans were a lot more sane than MJ fans.

[Edited 6/26/17 8:40am]

No, Prince fans are definitely insane. Huge amount of sycophants on this forum and the various FB pages that see him as some kind of infallible God (these people have clearly never listened to Jughead....)

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They will accept any scraps that people throw at them and will never accept that any of it is less than perfect. And for some reason they will defend it to the death despite having no personal stake in it whatsoever.

bluegangsta said:

I have to say; I've posted this thread in a couple of Facebook groups and have recieved a shit-ton of personal attacks for it. Really nasty stuff, actually. It's unbelievable the amount of people who've not understood (and refused to be educated) the purpose of highlighting these imperfections or take it as a critisism of Prince's work. I've even gone to the effort of explaining it to them in the comments - which has resulted in more incredibly mean attacks.

I get that hearing Prince music in any capacity is great (Hello?! Bootleg collector here?!), but fuck - why support stuff like this when you'll continue to get products that aren't what they could be? Why give a dog a treat for rolling over, when all they've done is sit there and lick their balls?

And here I thought Prince fans were a lot more sane than MJ fans.

[Edited 6/26/17 8:40am]

I've tried to understand the negative reactions myself too. It's frustrating, I know.

I think what many of them are hearing is just "you're being led on, even if you don't realize it yourself" when pointing out technical stuff like this. They don't understand the technical terms, do not have the ears for spotting what's wrong with the audio and, well, simply get insulted as a result. You've made them feel bad about themselves.