djThunderfunk said:

databank said:

This is really fucked up

Then again, no one noticed so this is again proof that it really makes no difference for most listeners. But it's still ridiculously unprofessional from P's (or, most likely, his staff) part. Of course, this shouldn't have happened.

It's been awhile, but I'm pretty sure some of us complained about lossy tracks on official CDs not long after the releases.

I've read that in blindtests situations some people could hear the difference in most cases. I remember that a music magazine tested their reviewers like this, and IIRC the only person who succeeded was the classical music reviewer, which may mean he hadn't fucked up his hearing with loud rock or dance music like the others, at least that's what they theorized. So yeah, it's very possible that a few fans noticed something fishy, but clearly most didn't. The thing is I have nothing against lossless, of course, it's just that sometimes I've been lectured by people both online and IRL about not using it when I can NOT hear the difference, and I'm pretty sure most of them couldn't hear it either, that it's just a form of snobism, and I find it irritating. Now anyone who does a blindtest (ideally, but not necessarily, where the person playing them the files doesn't know what they're playing either) and tells me they succeeded, I will of course take their word for it, but that's the only way to be sure and I think anyone who considers this issue important should submit themselves to such a test (which is pretty easy to organize, you just need a @320 and a flac of 10 songs and a friend to play them. This thread is very interesting anyway, that's the kind of thing I like to read

the point isn't always about what sounds best, but rather about keeping as pristine and untouched versions circulating as possible. on a commercial release, you should have the album and the songs in the highest possible quality a CD can deliver, not files that have been re-encoded god only knows how many times and then falsely upscaled to a lossless format and passed off as original. it's just bad practice and if you don't keep it in check, especially on non-commercial material such as studio outtakes or live recordings, you're gonna be left with the best copy circulating being a 128kb/s mp3 all because someone "can't hear the difference". and believe me, on scratchy bootleg copies or audience recordings, the difference between lossless and even 256 becomes very, very apparent.

[Edited 5/27/20 16:24pm]

I got a good one: who's the most lossless singer of all times?

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Roberta Flack!!

Most of the time, you can tell the difference between lossy and lossless just by listening to the FX applied.

For instance, listen to the first lossy version available of "If it'll Make You Happy" then listen to the wav version. The difference is obvious and most of us can hear it.

Generally speaking, you can hear the difference by listening to the reverb applied on the drums.
[Edited 5/28/20 5:20am]

databank said:

I got a good one: who's the most lossless singer of all times?

I heard The Monkeys were pretty good, too.

fredmagnus said:

Most of the time, you can tell the difference between lossy and lossless just by listening to the FX applied. For instance, listen to the first lossy version available of "If it'll Make You Happy" then listen to the wav version. The difference is obvious and most of us can hear it. Generally speaking, you can hear the difference by listening to the reverb applied on the drums. [Edited 5/28/20 5:20am]

I often notice with cymbals.

I also notice the difference more with say hair band metal from the 80s. I can't tell the difference at all with a lot of synth, dance music.

How well something was recorded and mastered also can have an affect on whether the differences are noticable.

olb99 said:

Yours was less obvious than mine. I gotta admit I didn't get it.

databank said:

I got a good one: who's the most lossless singer of all times?

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Roberta Flack!!

Fiona Apple Lossless

PurpleMusic7689 said:

fredmagnus said:

"Velvet Kitty Cat" from PR Deluxe & "WYL2LM" from Originals are also sourced from lossy files. Sometimes, these kinds of things can also happen during the mastering process.

"Velvet Kitty Cat" was sourced from the 2016 tape leak. That was only 320kbps, so they couldn't really do much for that (though the EQ is quite "messy").

"Wouldn't U Love To Love Me?" was one that was a bit surprising that no one in charge noticed and had it fixed before mass pressings and the Tidal (of all places for a MP3) release. However, that one sounds like some really bad attempt on behalf of Michael Howe and Niko Bolas to mask some of the possibly inferior source sound quality (brickwalling only made it worse).

I read an interview about Originals and Michael Howe specifically addressed the WYL2LM quality. That's the only "known" version of THAT version that they could find and thought it was worthy to release.

I never much cared for the slower version of the song, but I dug the Originals version (at least the musicality of it; not so much the quality of the recording).

Still, I think that one should've been shelved in favor of something else until a better version surfaced.

databank said:

I got a good one: who's the most lossless singer of all times?

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Roberta Flack!!

Wavves?

Se7en said:

databank said:

I got a good one: who's the most lossless singer of all times?

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Roberta Flack!!

Fiona Apple Lossless

Fiona iTunes?

dustoff said:

databank said:

I got a good one: who's the most lossless singer of all times?

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Roberta Flack!!

Wavves?

databank said:

olb99 said:

I heard The Monkeys were pretty good, too.

Yours was less obvious than mine. I gotta admit I didn't get it.

Yeah, it was pretty lame...

https://en.wikipedia.org/...%27s_Audio

olb99 said:

databank said:

olb99 said: Yours was less obvious than mine. I gotta admit I didn't get it.

Yeah, it was pretty lame...

https://en.wikipedia.org/...%27s_Audio

I didn't know the format is why ^^

Se7en said:

PurpleMusic7689 said:

"Velvet Kitty Cat" was sourced from the 2016 tape leak. That was only 320kbps, so they couldn't really do much for that (though the EQ is quite "messy").

"Wouldn't U Love To Love Me?" was one that was a bit surprising that no one in charge noticed and had it fixed before mass pressings and the Tidal (of all places for a MP3) release. However, that one sounds like some really bad attempt on behalf of Michael Howe and Niko Bolas to mask some of the possibly inferior source sound quality (brickwalling only made it worse).

I read an interview about Originals and Michael Howe specifically addressed the WYL2LM quality. That's the only "known" version of THAT version that they could find and thought it was worthy to release.

I never much cared for the slower version of the song, but I dug the Originals version (at least the musicality of it; not so much the quality of the recording).

Still, I think that one should've been shelved in favor of something else until a better version surfaced.

My understanding is just that they found only a mixdown on some 1/2 inch tape or something, which cannot possibly mean it was lossy, can it? (can an analogue tape be lossy in the digital sense of the term?)

databank said:

olb99 said:

Yeah, it was pretty lame...

https://en.wikipedia.org/...%27s_Audio

I didn't know the format is why ^^

It was widely used to share concert recordings online at some point. I've never used it outside of that context. The extension is .ape.

Se7en said:

Katrina and the Wavs

Seriously in 2000 I had no idea of lossy from lossless. If I had something on CD then I had it period. I downloaded the two songs from npgonlineltd.com and burned a CD. The website even encouraged us to download the music and artwork and burn CDs. And copy for others who didn’t have access to the website. When I saw the CD single for sale in shops I actually passed on I figuring I don’t have to buy that I already have the CD! And I’m a huge fan, collector, completist etc. Call it temporary madness but that was my thinking at that point (I later bought both versions - card sleeve and jewel box for the collection
My point is that perhaps that same mentality was around at Prince’s organization. You know, easier and cheaper to use this audio file available to burn and print CDs for commercial sale than pressing them from masters.
Audio is audio you know? In 2000 it was very common to burn CDs from mp3 files and I imagine a good number of folks didn’t know or care about lossless.
Not justifying it, just offering a possible explanation of how it could be.
[Edited 5/30/20 8:58am]

VaultCurator said:

EnDoRpHn said:

Not to totally change the subject, but could you do this to compare the Lovesexy and Black Album CD versions of "When 2 R In Love"?

I've long been under the impression that TBE official release is deliberately compromised, either out of spite or to give it a "bootleg" feel.

[Edited 5/22/20 14:51pm]

Hi EnDoRpHn



I’ve done a few tests comparing ‘When 2 R In Love’ between The Black Album & Lovesexy. There are subtle differences, but they are incredibly minor. As you can see the spectral analysis is virtually identical. On really close inspection there is slightly more data in the quieter sections with The Black Album version maxing out around 20.2KHz and Lovesexy reaching around 20.6KHz. This variation is so subtle it’s barely worth mentioning.

I mixed both tracks to mono and played them through separate speaker channels to see if there was any difference in volume. The average volume was pretty much a consistent match throughout the track, however the peak volume was around 1db – 1.5db louder on the Black Album. This gives ‘The Black Album’ version a slightly higher dynamic range.

It could be that the lower dynamic range on ‘Lovesexy’ gave the track a fuller sound to your ears, but like I say, the differences are tiny.

Also across the length of the track, the ‘Lovesexy’ version is marginally faster. I played both tracks simultaneously from the first beat and by the end of the song the Lovesexy version had inched ahead, but this is quite common when dealing with analogue tape.

Overall I can’t see any evidence that either version was treated with any sort of neglect. To me, any differences appear to be the result of the two LPs being mastered separately on analogue equipment.

Thanks for doing this, sorry about the lag in reply but I didn't see your reply until today.

A couple of points about my reasons for asking if someone could do this: first, obviously this track is our only point of reference between the officially-released Black Album and another commercial release. Second, to my ears, WB's official 1994 TBA CD is barely a couple of notches above the best LP-sourced bootleg recordings from several years earlier. The dynamic range is flat, the channel separation is sort of okay, but there is very little spatial distribution of the instruments, and the metering among the different voices/instruments is muddy. The result is a cacophanous sound, even in comparison to Parade and Lovesexy. This has always struck me as odd, given how much thought Prince obviously put into his recordings, and the fact that, despite their issues, both the Parade and Lovesexy CDs are sonically brighter and have better spatial resolution.

I still have yet to see any direct evidence of an original 1987 pressing of TBA CD being used to source any of the bootlegs that circulated so widely back then. I would find it surprising, since it's well-known that WB destroyed all but the copies that were swiped or had been handed out as promos, and all evidence indicates those recordings were all on LP.

The final point is this: TBA needs to be re-mastered from the original 24-track recordings, assuming that they still exist. I worry that after Prince disowned it, he may have destroyed or erased those, ergo we get the muddled 1994 CD from the mix-downs.

asideorderofham said:

VaultCurator said:

It's not just Groovy Potential. I've just checked. 4 tracks on Hit N Run II are lossy compressed...

2.Y.2.D
Groovy Potential
When She Comes
Screwdriver

Screwdriver is lossy on the HNR2 CD, but the original single download is not!

I have just (by ear) compared the two versions I own. One is a file from 2013 (wav) which I believe was bought from the shortlived download site (was it 3rdeyegirl.com?) Prince was using at that time, the other is a FLAC from the Hit & Run album (2015).

The one from 2015 is much louder and sounds horribly clipped, the 2013 version sounds WAY cleaner/better! The drums and the guitar in the 2015 version sound much louder, not sure if this was a different mix or if they have just compressed/limited the shit out of the older version? This is really weird folks, WTF!

VaultCurator said:

Hi everyone. I don’t know if anyone’s ever brought this up before (I couldn’t find any old threads) but I’ve just discovered my CD single of ‘U Make My Sunshine’ is in lossy quality.

I was just sorting through my FLAC files and run a spectral analysis on ‘When Will We B Paid?’ to make sure it was definitely the version I ripped from my own CD, and to my surprise it was clearly a lossy version. So I re-ripped my CD, checked both ‘U Make My Sunshine’ and ‘When Will We B Paid’ and I was shocked to discover it was the same again, for both tracks.

So I checked ‘U Make My Sunshine’ from The Chocolate Invasion (Tidal FLACs) and that version was fine. No data loss at all.

At this point I was thinking to myself ‘Is my CD a fake?’ I bought it from a proper retail store when it was first released and the quality of the disc is great with a metallic finish on the artwork.

I set it aside and purchased ‘When Will We B Paid?’ from Tidal as a stand-alone FLAC… and again, it was lossy!

Was Prince selling the NPGMC WMA files on CD? And was the lossy CD ripped and uploaded to Tidal?

Has anyone else checked this? Also, has anyone here got the other 2001 singles like ‘Supercute’ and ‘The Daisy Chain’? Are they lossy as well?

If my CD is genuine then this is lazy as hell! Why weren't the proper masters used when pressing these CDs, or used for the modern download stores?

I’ve attached an image to illustrate...

I've just got The Work Part 1 CD single. Track 2 is the single edit of U Make My Sun Shine.

On TWP1 CD, UMMSS is lossless and sounds clearer than on the UMMSS CD. It also has a slightly different end. It doesn't cut off abruptly and there's one more note. It's a much more natural sounding end.