So I've been revisiting the 2015 Remaster of Purple Rain and the end of 'Let's Go Crazy' with the guitar sounds distorted to me. The rest of the album seems like it has a volume increase but not a true cleanup of the music itself. In 'Take Me With U' it sounds like the hissing sound is also so loud it's somewhat unlistenable. I'm sure this is a topic that was discussed 5 years ago when it came out, but I wanted to revist the sound quality again for anyone who missed the original discussion which includes me. I'm curious if it's just me that feels this way and is hearing these issues or if others might agree.

If it's not too much trouble can I get some thoughts from the Purple Family here on which version of the CD do you prefer and why?

Remaster sucks, most remasters suck but this crowd suddenly become wide-eyed hopeful idealists when the subject of them comes up (when in actuality, all of you look to your own collections, are even, say, 15% of remasters ever even an improvement?).

The real twist is most Prince fans are really talking about "volume louder" when they prostelytize the wonderous majesty and necessity of Prince "remasters," but Purple Rain already had the loudest volume of all the 80s discs anyway. And I mean, you all have a volume control. Stop with the shuffle and playlists and use the volume toggles, those first wave of discs sound fine... A little manual EQ correction and you're good to go.

I mean remasters have the potential to be good, sure, but a lot of things seem great on paper, I'm talking in practice, in reality, on a day-to-day basis and not your Barry Diament, Bernie Grunberg anomalies.

[edit] But Bernie Grunberg did remaster a 2013 Rhino Records vinyl remaster of Purple Rain, which is good, just FYI.

[Edited 2/26/20 12:26pm]

AvocadosMax said:

I want to clarify that I wasn’t dissing Josh Welton. He’s a good dude and good musician. HitNRun Phase One was great.

I mean, based on the kind of mastering Prince favored in the latter-end of his career he was likely doing exactly what Prince "wanted" for that particular PR remaster.

AvocadosMax said:

Yeah we were discussing it 3 years ago. Warner Bros advertised heavily that it was “over-seen by Prince” when really he probably just heard it for one second and nodded his head to Joshua (the young dude who didn’t know what he was doing when it came to proper mastering because he was inexperienced) and then handed it over to Warners in 2015, but Warners didn’t release it probably because they wanted vault tracks and Prince probably just sent them an email simply saying “no.” Prince didn’t care for remasters/rereleases... so he shouldn’t have been on top of that anyways What Warner Bros should have done was simply get Bernie (no, not Sanders lolz) to remaster the album. Then it would have sounded amazing like the recent 1999. But nah, they HAD to justify advertising that Prince had something to do with it before he passed away Oh and I obviously prefer the original. [Edited 2/26/20 12:18pm]

This definitely helps clarify that I'm not the only one that seems to think this remaster is almost unlistenable. Right now I'm playing the original CD after I finished the remaster and it just sounds much cleaner and spacious. I wish Bernie Grundman did remaster Purple Rain. Hopefully they give him other Prince albums before the guy passes away or just retires. I'd love to see what Bernie would do to Sign O' The Times which in my opinion is the most desperate of all his albums needing a remaster. The rest of the albums I don't feel "need it" but I'd be cool if Bernie did them. 1999 truly does sound great as a remaster! That's now my definitive version of the album.

AvocadosMax said:

Honestly I’m happy Prince focused on only new music and not remasters. If he did do reissues or whatever, we probably wouldn’t have got as much material out of him [Edited 2/26/20 12:23pm]

I agree with this too. He didn't live in the past and that really helped him and all of us grow with him and have new experiences. Nostalgia is great and fun when the time is right but overall I like when an Artist that I love continues giving us new music instead of Greatest Hits 10 different times like poor MJ did in the last 10 years of his life.

AvocadosMax said:

I want to clarify that I wasn’t dissing Josh Welton. He’s a good dude and good musician. HitNRun Phase One was great.

Right I understand that. I don't think Joshua spent an enormous amount of time remastering it to be honest and I feel like Prince just said do what you like and we'll give it to WB. I'm sure Prince kept Joshua busy enough working on new stuff so Purple Rain prob was more of an afterthought. Of course I'm only speculating here on that. HITnRun did sound sonically great!

WhisperingDandelions said:

The real twist is most Prince fans are really talking about "volume louder" when they prostelytize the wonderous majesty and necessity of Prince "remasters," but Purple Rain already had the loudest volume of all the 80s discs anyway. And I mean, you all have a volume control.

I think that has to do with how you came to first hear it.

The compact disc release made it sound shockingly thin. The drum machine almost sounded muted, and you couldn't give it life with volume or EQ. I remember inheriting a copy on disc so excited to hear it clean after years of just hearing it off the radio, and it lacked all the life of the vinyl or even the VHS movie copy. It was very minimal forward, and you could hear the punch ins really prominantly.

My problem with Remasters that I always bring up is they just feel the need to scream "Hey listen to this weird sound you didn't know was there unless you were an audiophile!".

Baby I'm A Star is totally transformed in a way I don't like. Maybe everyone else heard all that stuff (intro, crowd noise, etc.) that's so forward now, but to me it was buried in the original mix for a reason. Beautiful Ones is improved but it's still not supposed to sound like Lisa's playing lead.

Either that or the mastering was screwed on his biggest record, and hearing it unscrewed doesn't make for better songs. It might be that's why it was remastered the way it was. There was a conflict of "Careful, don't do too much or people will hate it, we have to replicate and modernize how compressed it was".

I find the remaster fine for streaming, good even. It's loud and it's clear and works well in mixes with other artists.

If i'm playing the album on a decent set up and not playing vinyl for whatever reason i'm gonna reach for the original cd. It has dynamics and all sorts of subtleties that are lost on the remaster. I've never personally had any issues with the mastering of the original cd but perhaps a sympathetically done modern remaster could perhaps work wonders, who knows...

[Edited 2/26/20 14:43pm]

I hardly ever listen to PR.

I beat that bitch to death in summer of 84 and wore it out a long time ago so I'm gonna go with remaster just for the bonus disc, which I like a lot.

PR is utterly brilliant and arguably Prince's best and most consistent album but it's Dark Side of the Moon/Led Zeppelin 4 levels of being totally overplayed. It deserves its status but hell if I ever play it and I HATE that, for some, it's the only thing he's remembered for.

herb4 said:

I hardly ever listen to PR.

I beat that bitch to death in summer of 84 and wore it out a long time ago so I'm gonna go with remaster just for the bonus disc, which I like a lot.

PR is utterly brilliant and arguably Prince's best and most consistent album but it's Dark Side of the Moon/Led Zeppelin 4 levels of being totally overplayed. It deserves its status but hell if I ever play it and I HATE that, for some, it's the only thing he's remembered for.

I listen more to my playlist that adds all the other songs from the film: Sex Shooter, Modernaire, Jungle Love (Live at First Avenue), Possessed (Instrumental), etc.

I've had mixed results with remasters. For the Genesis ones I picked up about 10 years ago, they are amazing. Most Hendrix remasters I have from the 90s are very good too. I picked up the first three Pearl Jam albums remastered when they came out, and they don't sound good to me at all (had some buyer's remorse on those).

For the Purple Rain Deluxe, I was buying it more for the Vault tracks and 12" versions than anything (and the Syracuse show DVD) but the album disc is pretty unlistenable. The PRD package is pretty much full of things-gone-wrong, like the remastered Disc 01, Vault tracks being sourced from cassette, errors in some songs, and certain songs (e.g. 17 Days extended, Wednesday) being left off.

Also lost opportunities with associated artists from the movie being on there as well as the 1983 benefit concert.

They "rushed" that thing out after Prince's death, even though it was in the works for years. Access to the Vault was limited, saving the benefit show for a standalone release, etc. etc. I would imagine the next Super Deluxe version would address most of these complaints.

WhisperingDandelions said:

lavendardrummachine said:

LoveGalore said:

WhisperingDandelions said:

Remaster sucks, most remasters suck but this crowd suddenly become wide-eyed hopeful idealists when the subject of them comes up (when in actuality, all of you look to your own collections, are even, say, 15% of remasters ever even an improvement?).

The real twist is most Prince fans are really talking about "volume louder" when they prostelytize the wonderous majesty and necessity of Prince "remasters," but Purple Rain already had the loudest volume of all the 80s discs anyway. And I mean, you all have a volume control. Stop with the shuffle and playlists and use the volume toggles, those first wave of discs sound fine... A little manual EQ correction and you're good to go.

I mean remasters have the potential to be good, sure, but a lot of things seem great on paper, I'm talking in practice, in reality, on a day-to-day basis and not your Barry Diament, Bernie Grunberg anomalies.

[edit] But Bernie Grunberg did remaster a 2013 Rhino Records vinyl remaster of Purple Rain, which is good, just FYI.

[Edited 2/26/20 12:26pm]

It's always funny to me when folks speak from on high and then get someone's name wrong.

Of course, everyone knows something as arbitrary as one's name is of tacit importance to a discussion of sonics and 80s vs. 20s disc pressings.

WhisperingDandelions said:

LoveGalore said:

WhisperingDandelions said:

Of course, everyone knows something as arbitrary as one's name is of tacit importance to a discussion of sonics and 80s vs. 20s disc pressings.

Well, I suppose it matters if you bother to bring the person up. Could you take someone seriously in a discussion of politics if you refer to, say, Barack Obama as Barook Osama or some other random misspelling.

Lavendardrummachine said something interesting...Purple Rains CD release sounds thin. Well, i've only ever heard this cd version and have NEVER played it much on my system b/c of this. I actually believe the recent 1999 remaster was good and added a bottom end dimension previously missing. It has totally enhanced the pleasure of listening to that album. Plus, the vault tracks from this period sound absolutely great....'Rearrange', 'Baby You're A Trip', 'How Come U Don't' 'Internantinal Lover'...wow! So, the Purple Rain tracks SHOULD sound great...at least, should not sound as bad as they do.

I really hope to hear a Superdeluxe version come out with a proper remaster.

JoeyCococo said:

JoeyCococo said:

LoveGalore said:

WhisperingDandelions said: Well, I suppose it matters if you bother to bring the person up. Could you take someone seriously in a discussion of politics if you refer to, say, Barack Obama as Barook Osama or some other random misspelling.

Lavendardrummachine said something interesting...Purple Rains CD release sounds thin. Well, i've only ever heard this cd version and have NEVER played it much on my system b/c of this. I actually believe the recent 1999 remaster was good and added a bottom end dimension previously missing. It has totally enhanced the pleasure of listening to that album. Plus, the vault tracks from this period sound absolutely great....'Rearrange', 'Baby You're A Trip', 'How Come U Don't' 'Internantinal Lover'...wow! So, the Purple Rain tracks SHOULD sound great...at least, should not sound as bad as they do.

I really hope to hear a Superdeluxe version come out with a proper remaster.

I'll have to acknowledge that some of PR was recorded in less than ideal scenarios..the warehouse etc. However, the vault tracks sound like they are from tape. Love and Sex def sounds like Bold Generation does on the 1999 Super Deluxe. The latter is known to be from tape. Computer BLue is just a muddle....yet, that's one that sort of sounds good on the original cd...

LoveGalore said:

JoeyCococo said:

Lavendardrummachine said something interesting...Purple Rains CD release sounds thin. Well, i've only ever heard this cd version and have NEVER played it much on my system b/c of this. I actually believe the recent 1999 remaster was good and added a bottom end dimension previously missing. It has totally enhanced the pleasure of listening to that album. Plus, the vault tracks from this period sound absolutely great....'Rearrange', 'Baby You're A Trip', 'How Come U Don't' 'Internantinal Lover'...wow! So, the Purple Rain tracks SHOULD sound great...at least, should not sound as bad as they do.

I really hope to hear a Superdeluxe version come out with a proper remaster.

Michael Howe has stated that there is a better version of a PR SDE that could come out but it obviously won't be for some time since it was just released. They're certainly not done milking the purple tiddies.

Makes sense...I think they have better handle on identfying what is in the vault and are in better position to find more suitable vault tracks. Plus, I love the the idea of releasing an audio cd of a live show. The Live album from detroit sounds SUPER.

JoeyCococo said:

JoeyCococo said:

Lavendardrummachine said something interesting...Purple Rains CD release sounds thin. Well, i've only ever heard this cd version and have NEVER played it much on my system b/c of this. I actually believe the recent 1999 remaster was good and added a bottom end dimension previously missing. It has totally enhanced the pleasure of listening to that album. Plus, the vault tracks from this period sound absolutely great....'Rearrange', 'Baby You're A Trip', 'How Come U Don't' 'Internantinal Lover'...wow! So, the Purple Rain tracks SHOULD sound great...at least, should not sound as bad as they do.

I really hope to hear a Superdeluxe version come out with a proper remaster.

I'll have to acknowledge that some of PR was recorded in less than ideal scenarios..the warehouse etc. However, the vault tracks sound like they are from tape. Love and Sex def sounds like Bold Generation does on the 1999 Super Deluxe. The latter is known to be from tape. Computer BLue is just a muddle....yet, that's one that sort of sounds good on the original cd...

If it were ever announced that certain songs ONLY exist on cassette tape (like Bold Generation), I think that would be fine. Hell, the songs on the Vault disc of PRD sound pretty good to me already.

Love And Sex, Velvet Kitty Kat, and Katrina's Paper Dolls were all unknown to me at the time. And I think the studio version of Electric Intercourse was unknown to almost everyone!

The only thing released so far that seemed outside the realm of "suitable for release" was Wouldn't U Love 2 Love Me from Originals. That one was a bit too far gone.

no disrespect ..but how come this doesnt get a ..google it ...response

LoveGalore said:

WhisperingDandelions said:

Remaster sucks, most remasters suck but this crowd suddenly become wide-eyed hopeful idealists when the subject of them comes up (when in actuality, all of you look to your own collections, are even, say, 15% of remasters ever even an improvement?).

The real twist is most Prince fans are really talking about "volume louder" when they prostelytize the wonderous majesty and necessity of Prince "remasters," but Purple Rain already had the loudest volume of all the 80s discs anyway. And I mean, you all have a volume control. Stop with the shuffle and playlists and use the volume toggles, those first wave of discs sound fine... A little manual EQ correction and you're good to go.

I mean remasters have the potential to be good, sure, but a lot of things seem great on paper, I'm talking in practice, in reality, on a day-to-day basis and not your Barry Diament, Bernie Grunberg anomalies.

[edit] But Bernie Grunberg did remaster a 2013 Rhino Records vinyl remaster of Purple Rain, which is good, just FYI.

[Edited 2/26/20 12:26pm]

It's always funny to me when folks speak from on high and then get someone's name wrong.

Some of these types of subjects attract a lot of audiophiles. They often speak a different language and talk past people. They listen to music in a different way than most. Very hardcore.

Probably many of them are muscians themselves (I am not).

jfenster said:

no disrespect ..but how come this doesnt get a ..google it ...response

Bart must be on vacation or something.

herb4 said:

LoveGalore said:

WhisperingDandelions said: It's always funny to me when folks speak from on high and then get someone's name wrong.

Some of these types of subjects attract a lot of audiophiles. They often speak a different language and talk past people. They listen to music in a different way than most. Very hardcore.

Probably many of them are muscians themselves (I am not).

Yeah, I have ot admit, this stuff matters to me greatly but I ack it's not a conocern for all. However, if they are going to the trouble of remastering, why not do it well? Prince def did not care much. I have spoken to engineers who describe his eyes glazing over when they talked to him about 24 bit vs this or anything to do with great sound quality. He did not care. I laugh when I think of the Steely Dan or Pink Floyd guys who labour over how the final product will sound while a guy like Prince, was all about capturning whatever idea came next in his mind. Artist..through and through.

I really hope they do PR properly. WDC lacks a bottom end..way to tinny.

Always wonderful when someone's knowledge on Prince seems so vast to themeselves they feel nobody should ever be allowed to post in a Forum here or ask questions. They want to just be jerks and scare people off who just want fans opinions and thoughts directly rather than just going on Google looking for what everyone on the internet is saying. Completely ridiculous and infuriating to me when someone on a site dedicated to love 4 one another and a place that should feel safe to share your knowledge and ask questions people want to be jerks with stupid comments like "google it". To even take the time to come on a post at all to say that just to hurt someone's feelings shows a horrible arrogance. 99% of all posts you can be a jerk and say "google it". You don't because people want direct opinions and discussions on an awesome site like this!

herb4 said:

jfenster said:

no disrespect ..but how come this doesnt get a ..google it ...response

Bart must be on vacation or something.

Omey said:

Always wonderful when someone's knowledge on Prince seems so vast to themeselves they feel nobody should ever be allowed to post in a Forum here or ask questions. They want to just be jerks and scare people off who just want fans opinions and thoughts directly rather than just going on Google looking for what everyone on the internet is saying. Completely ridiculous and infuriating to me when someone on a site dedicated to love 4 one another and a place that should feel safe to share your knowledge and ask questions people want to be jerks with stupid comments like "google it". To even take the time to come on a post at all to say that just to hurt someone's feelings shows a horrible arrogance. 99% of all posts you can be a jerk and say "google it". You don't because people want direct opinions and discussions on an awesome site like this!

herb4 said:

Bart must be on vacation or something.

Google it as well as using the search box on the upper right. Folks appreciate those that do their homework.

luv4u said:

Omey said:

Always wonderful when someone's knowledge on Prince seems so vast to themeselves they feel nobody should ever be allowed to post in a Forum here or ask questions. They want to just be jerks and scare people off who just want fans opinions and thoughts directly rather than just going on Google looking for what everyone on the internet is saying. Completely ridiculous and infuriating to me when someone on a site dedicated to love 4 one another and a place that should feel safe to share your knowledge and ask questions people want to be jerks with stupid comments like "google it". To even take the time to come on a post at all to say that just to hurt someone's feelings shows a horrible arrogance. 99% of all posts you can be a jerk and say "google it". You don't because people want direct opinions and discussions on an awesome site like this!

Google it as well as using the search box on the upper right. Folks appreciate those that do their homework.

I think most all of us do that. To assume someone didn't google something first is a bit silly. I definitely did and I read thru what random internet people said. I just like hearing what many Fans specifically have to say about it on this site as well. Not everyone on the Org posts on all the posts that are scattered throughout google. There's some folks that I really would value opinions on topics that may only post in here once in a while.