udo said:

databank said:

coldasice said: Vault tapes are not "masters".

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We would require at least a non-cassette source (on wider, thicker studio tape) at certain tape speeds.

What I meant is people need to stop using the word "master" when they mean "original studio tapes" (as opposed to regular cassette tapes). A master is what Bernie Grundman does, it's for release. Most of the stuff in the vault hasn't reached that stage yet.

databank said:

udo said:

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We would require at least a non-cassette source (on wider, thicker studio tape) at certain tape speeds.

What I meant is people need to stop using the word "master" when they mean "original studio tapes" (as opposed to regular cassette tapes). A master is what Bernie Grundman does, it's for release. Most of the stuff in the vault hasn't reached that stage yet.

Hate to admit this but this is the crux of the matter. And poses many questions. Such as "are they going to master the original vault material etc etc before they release it in the future? "

rdhull said:

databank said:

What I meant is people need to stop using the word "master" when they mean "original studio tapes" (as opposed to regular cassette tapes). A master is what Bernie Grundman does, it's for release. Most of the stuff in the vault hasn't reached that stage yet.

Hate to admit this but this is the crux of the matter. And poses many questions. Such as "are they going to master the original vault material etc etc before they release it in the future? "

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The bigger question is: how much are they going to release in say the next ten years.

My prediction: It will be very little.

My proposal: just give me a nice price for a disc a month all year long.

rdhull said:

databank said:

What I meant is people need to stop using the word "master" when they mean "original studio tapes" (as opposed to regular cassette tapes). A master is what Bernie Grundman does, it's for release. Most of the stuff in the vault hasn't reached that stage yet.

Hate to admit this but this is the crux of the matter. And poses many questions. Such as "are they going to master the original vault material etc etc before they release it in the future? "

They have to. All professional records go thru the mastering process. Even P&AM83 was mastered (by Bernie) despite its dubious source.

udo said:

rdhull said:

Hate to admit this but this is the crux of the matter. And poses many questions. Such as "are they going to master the original vault material etc etc before they release it in the future? "

.

The bigger question is: how much are they going to release in say the next ten years.

My prediction: It will be very little.

My proposal: just give me a nice price for a disc a month all year long.

There isnt going to be yearly releases. Even if all the material was ready to go. They weren't going to flood the market if he was here and they damn sho aint gonna do it in death either. Three releases of prime good grade a beef within ten years would be ample imho. Better concede to those numbers to save you any further frustrations. I think (just my opinion) the estate realizes that they are not going to make much profits off of releasing music Yeah I said it. They probably realize they can make ore mpney with other avenues rather than middling record/cd sales. Us die hards are not enough to make ANY releases relevant enough fo adequate profitablity. Having said that, I hope they do release tings in the manner of the respect for the artists such as they do for Miles, Dylan, etc etc. Not rushed bs material, crappily sourced, etc etc.

databank said:

rdhull said:

Hate to admit this but this is the crux of the matter. And poses many questions. Such as "are they going to master the original vault material etc etc before they release it in the future? "

They have to. All professional records go thru the mastering process. Even P&AM83 was mastered (by Bernie) despite its dubious source.

I was just gonna ask of the Piano relese had to have that mastering but didnt anna get clowned. Now I remember that even Bernie did it which was a big selling point or at least a nice past glory days return. 'a lottt of work to do (duh RD).

TrevorAyer said:

Surely u can tell the difference between noise reduction and un altered copies ... yes some people have burnt their ears from loud conerts and otherwise ... as someone who has tried to embrace mp3s ... i just can’t.. they sound hallow .. too much missing from the dynamic range music normally exists in .. modern mastering is also hard to listen to as it pushes all the dynamics of frequency flat .. very unnatural and causes deafness the same way staring at a phone causes blindness ... u need to look at things at various distances to keep your eyes strong ... and listen to dynamic frequencies to keep your ears working right .. comparing a modern mastered song won’t help because they are so compressed they will likely sound about the same mp3 or flac ... put on an old record with beautiful acoustic tones and the difference will be more noticeable between flac and mp3 ... online tests are rubbish because playback is compressed when streaming so u are not getting full dynamic range for comparison... nc2u didn’t “sound” good ... something was off ... not sure what ... prdeluxe was mastered poorly and made a lot of outakes hard to enjoy with dog whistle high end and tubby eq .. there are bootlegs of many of those songs that “sound” much much better ... pnm was done well for what it was .. yes there is tape hiss but no noise reduction or bad eq

Ok then what u are saying is that we are fucked because even MODERN MASTERING is very subpar. TBH though I dont care, I want to hear songs from the 80's vault I don't know about, the mastering idiosyncracies don't really bother me as some of you.

well yes and no .. i thought PnM sounded pretty good as far as not tampering with the sound too much in a bad way .. they actually did not fuck with disk 2 of pr deluxe much .. the one with all the extended b sides and stuff .. that is 2 examples of recent releases they didn't screw up too bad so that is something

i for one would love to hear an UNMASTERED version of the hit n run and aoa .. songs like funk n roll and breakdown and screwdriver are so brickwalled by the mastering that it really distorts the sound in a bad way ... they could pull those levels back and we could hear how it really sounded

i like raw music .. dirty mind is very raw .. even parade is very raw in ways .. the acoustic guitar and piano on snows in april are just perfect .. if they remaster that album they will really mess up some georgeous tones .. if they try to make it "louder" to compete with computer driven corporate spam like cardi b or whatever .. to do that they compress all the tones so they will sound big on tiny earbuds and mix well on playlists with other very loudly compressed music

there is a mejesty in the early prince recordings that goes beyond how catchy the songs were .. a purity of musical tone as well as some amazing experiments in production that are unrivaled by modern computer tricks

my hope would be some final mixes with around 1986 mastering ethos that were done by prince released untouched .. i dont think the estate was much involved with prdeluxe so maybe with PNM we are seeing them trying to present the material untouched .. that would be a good thing in my book

TrevorAyer said:

well yes and no .. i thought PnM sounded pretty good as far as not tampering with the sound too much in a bad way .. they actually did not fuck with disk 2 of pr deluxe much .. the one with all the extended b sides and stuff .. that is 2 examples of recent releases they didn't screw up too bad so that is something

i for one would love to hear an UNMASTERED version of the hit n run and aoa .. songs like funk n roll and breakdown and screwdriver are so brickwalled by the mastering that it really distorts the sound in a bad way ... they could pull those levels back and we could hear how it really sounded

i like raw music .. dirty mind is very raw .. even parade is very raw in ways .. the acoustic guitar and piano on snows in april are just perfect .. if they remaster that album they will really mess up some georgeous tones .. if they try to make it "louder" to compete with computer driven corporate spam like cardi b or whatever .. to do that they compress all the tones so they will sound big on tiny earbuds and mix well on playlists with other very loudly compressed music

there is a mejesty in the early prince recordings that goes beyond how catchy the songs were .. a purity of musical tone as well as some amazing experiments in production that are unrivaled by modern computer tricks

my hope would be some final mixes with around 1986 mastering ethos that were done by prince released untouched .. i dont think the estate was much involved with prdeluxe so maybe with PNM we are seeing them trying to present the material untouched .. that would be a good thing in my book

I wonder if the powers that be take these things into account now..there has to be SOMEONE who understands this remastering issue with regards to the Prince sound aesthetic.

rdhull said:

TrevorAyer said:

Surely u can tell the difference between noise reduction and un altered copies ... yes some people have burnt their ears from loud conerts and otherwise ... as someone who has tried to embrace mp3s ... i just can’t.. they sound hallow .. too much missing from the dynamic range music normally exists in .. modern mastering is also hard to listen to as it pushes all the dynamics of frequency flat .. very unnatural and causes deafness the same way staring at a phone causes blindness ... u need to look at things at various distances to keep your eyes strong ... and listen to dynamic frequencies to keep your ears working right .. comparing a modern mastered song won’t help because they are so compressed they will likely sound about the same mp3 or flac ... put on an old record with beautiful acoustic tones and the difference will be more noticeable between flac and mp3 ... online tests are rubbish because playback is compressed when streaming so u are not getting full dynamic range for comparison... nc2u didn’t “sound” good ... something was off ... not sure what ... prdeluxe was mastered poorly and made a lot of outakes hard to enjoy with dog whistle high end and tubby eq .. there are bootlegs of many of those songs that “sound” much much better ... pnm was done well for what it was .. yes there is tape hiss but no noise reduction or bad eq

Ok then what u are saying is that we are fucked because even MODERN MASTERING is very subpar. TBH though I dont care, I want to hear songs from the 80's vault I don't know about, the mastering idiosyncracies don't really bother me as some of you.

Since I'm being replied indirectly for things I've said in other threads, I'll reply indirectly through rdhull (thanks rdhull for passing the message).

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People who don't trust online tests can have friends make a test for them at home using their own gear, and it's even better to do it that way because then you have witnesses. There are also softwares that allow you to do it without an internet connection.

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However if online tests are rubbish because of compression so is Tidal. That's a serious accusation against a famous company and I would like to see this debate settled in court. Audiophile communities do not seem to have a problem with this when submitting themselves to online blindtests, but to be honest I personally do not know, so OK, maybe lossless is impossible to achieve through the internet.

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But let's put that aside, regardless of the method, thoughout the years I've read several articles where people, either professional or passionate audiophiles, either on their own or in groups, took various kinds of blindtests (not all online). All those experiences without exception showed disappointing results overall, with most participants choosing lower quality files as being the best, often even choosing the worst file as being the best (i.e., given the choice between two mp3 bitrates and Flac, not only will they pick a mp3 but they'll pick the mp3 with more compression!!). I have yet to find an experiment showing the opposite. It might be there online, but if so I've not found it. Some of those experiments were made very seriously with a detailed report of the protocol. They're not published, professional scientific research, though, so they cannot claim to have the validity of a published paper. I'd like to see such professional research because it'd settle the debate once and for all, but if it exists I haven't found it either. Admitedly I haven't researched the subject for hours so there's a real possibility that I've missed many articles addressing this, I do not claim to be the voice of science, but only articles based on blindtests can be considered valid (opinion is not fact).

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Now as I said before there is most certainly a certain percentage of the population who can hear the difference on decent gear, so no one can be accused of lying because it can be anyone. The problem is that most music afficionados claim they're part of this small percentage, including some who don't even have great gear at all. I believe most are sincere, it's probably a mix of confirmation bias (because of course they want to hear the difference) and Dunning-Kruger effect (people with poor skills usually overestimate themselves). Either that or the only people vocal about it are those who can hear the difference because that's something they can brag about, while those who don't just don't bother saying it because it's nothing to be proud of. There could also be a bias of representativity of this sort, I'll admit it. But all those who say you can, by all means blindtest yourselves, with witnesses. That's the only way you can be sure.

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On a sidenote, I'm pretty convinced than people who believe Prince needed drumming lessons are not eligible for audiophilia anyway, but that's only my opinion...

databank said:

ChocolateBox3121 said:

NorthC said:

If you're upset because an album you like didn't chart as high as you thought it would, then you might need help (psychologically.)

So your calling Prince(r.i.p.) PSYCHO?!

Not just Prince - but Will Smith, too!

rdhull said:

databank said:

Since I'm being replied indirectly for things I've said in other threads, I'll reply indirectly through rdhull (thanks rdhull for passing the message).

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Are you ok?

Sorry you got caught in the middle

most people listen to music on ear buds and phone speakers or television speakers .. so already they have never heard the full spectrum of sound for comparison .. its like when u stop eating junk and your body starts rejecting it because it knows what real food is again .. ur ears have to learn to hear the difference if u are raised on modern music technology and only listen to pop computer generated tones .. if that is who is taking these "tests" than it will likely show most cant tell the difference .. ears can heal .. as can eyes .. to an extent .. they are muscles to be trained and excercised regularly .. prince never needed lessons .. drumming well takes practice otherwise u get clunky .. a non practicing drummer can fall in a great pocket sometimes but that same person practicing will sound a million times more fluid and in the pocket without effort .. p was always a hobby drummer so its no surprise his flow ebbed at times .. his early years drumming was always a joy .. sheila was the best at representing his style in a band .. bobby was best at representing his drum machine work live .. at his peak prince had some great drumming chops for sure

Here's the thing: I love vinyl (and own a lot of it), but I'm not going to buy it just because it's there - or because it happens to be purple. I already own all of these albums in physical form – I got them when they were released the first time. Unless there is an improvement of some sort – new tracks, a good remastering - I'm just not that interested.

rdhull said:

Three releases of prime good grade a beef within ten years would be ample imho.

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I.e.: `I do not care about the rest of the vault (97%+ or more)`.

I'd think that people would be more interested and thinking that the Estate would aim for profit maximization.