Just playing my copy... Yeah, 'Pop Life' sounds slightly slow...

VaultCurator said:

kremlinshadow said:

Link please, facebook is a big place.

Hi Kremlin.

Unfortunately this is being discussed in multiple closed groups so unfortunately I’m unable to provide links.

Basically a copy of this album has began circulating with the claim that it is an authentic rip of the new Japanese CD. However, a couple of different users who downloaded it complained that there are faint pops on a couple of the tracks, believing those tracks to be vinyl sourced.

So at the moment we are unsure as to whether the circulating rip is genuine, and if it is whether or not the faint pops are because these tracks are vinyl sourced or result of an audio glitch.

I have no way of authenticating this for myself as I don’t own the original CD and haven’t listened to the circulating copy, however given that ‘The Versace Experience’ was sourced from a cassette tape I’m willing to believe that it’s possible that some or all of the tracks on this album were vinyl sourced.

If I can authenticate anything for myself or provide some concrete evidence as to whether or not this release is from vinyl then I’ll be in touch.

Hopefully somebody could verify whether it's sourced from vinyl or not in a matter of hours, as according to this thread people are receiving it (mine hasn't shipped yet, apparently). Didn't the RSD release from last year had some issues sound-wise already? ... Perhaps the original promo release from 1985 was a botched job already, not much better than a fan mix tape from back in the day.

VaultCurator said:

kremlinshadow said:

Link please, facebook is a big place.

Hi Kremlin.

Unfortunately this is being discussed in multiple closed groups so unfortunately I’m unable to provide links.

Basically a copy of this album has began circulating with the claim that it is an authentic rip of the new Japanese CD. However, a couple of different users who downloaded it complained that there are faint pops on a couple of the tracks, believing those tracks to be vinyl sourced.

So at the moment we are unsure as to whether the circulating rip is genuine, and if it is whether or not the faint pops are because these tracks are vinyl sourced or result of an audio glitch.

I have no way of authenticating this for myself as I don’t own the original CD and haven’t listened to the circulating copy, however given that ‘The Versace Experience’ was sourced from a cassette tape I’m willing to believe that it’s possible that some or all of the tracks on this album were vinyl sourced.

If I can authenticate anything for myself or provide some concrete evidence as to whether or not this release is from vinyl then I’ll be in touch.

I received my copy from Japan this morning and it sounds fine to me, whereas the versace experience you could tell from the get-go. This is Ltd. so it would be silly to pass up on it especially with the nice packaging and exclusive 2 tracks - first time on CD anywhere.

VaultCurator said:

kremlinshadow said:

Link please, facebook is a big place.

Hi Kremlin.

Unfortunately this is being discussed in multiple closed groups so unfortunately I’m unable to provide links.

Basically a copy of this album has began circulating with the claim that it is an authentic rip of the new Japanese CD. However, a couple of different users who downloaded it complained that there are faint pops on a couple of the tracks, believing those tracks to be vinyl sourced.

So at the moment we are unsure as to whether the circulating rip is genuine, and if it is whether or not the faint pops are because these tracks are vinyl sourced or result of an audio glitch.

I have no way of authenticating this for myself as I don’t own the original CD and haven’t listened to the circulating copy, however given that ‘The Versace Experience’ was sourced from a cassette tape I’m willing to believe that it’s possible that some or all of the tracks on this album were vinyl sourced.

If I can authenticate anything for myself or provide some concrete evidence as to whether or not this release is from vinyl then I’ll be in touch.

Orgnoted you.

I've ordered the Japanese cd but it hasn't arrived yet. I did pick up the vinyl last year and one of the records was badly warped--as in wouldn't play properly. I can't remember if it was the 33 or 45 one right now.

kremlinshadow said:

My copy just arrived. Listening as I type. Does not sound like it's vinyl sourced or slowed at all to my ears. Somebody else will need to give the definitive take on this. I'm satisfied.

Have got my copy of the regular sleeve size one, it's not a digipak but rather a gatefold double sleeve (sorry to be pendantic!) - the large sleeve version arriving any day now, so can't comment on that yet.

Listening to Pop Life: In my amateur opinion Pop Life probably is a vinyl rip (see caveat below).

I don't have any professional sound analysis software / equipment to judge, and even then if it was a vinyl rip there would be no reference version with which to test it against as I'm guessing no-one has a CD version mastered from the original extended version master tape.

I do however have some exceptionally good quality HiFi kit. And just to be sure I tried it with two different sources and two different speaker / headphone set ups.

This is what I have noticed:

The main issue / flag for me is the intro is messed up and to a lesser extent, the outro too. The main body of the song itself doesnt sound too bad.

However in the intro there is a repetitive wobble to the sound. It's often the kind of sound that happens with cheap turnables that are not heavy or stable; arms that are not balanced and weighted properly or even in extreme cases sometimes the vinyl itself has been very warped.

There are so many steps along the sound profile chain, it could be a multitude of things though.

And I'm just trying to provide a description of what the anomaly sounds like rather than provide a technical breakdown / reason.

All that said if it's not a vinyl rip there is still definitely something wrong with intro - the wobble to the sound is there and clearly audible, and it seems to dip / drop / muffle slightly in the right channel too. Again sound dropouts like that can happen when particles hit a stylus.

I listened to it 40 times plus. (And so I've had my Pop Life intro fill for the year.)

The whole sound signature of Pop Life is very reminiscent of a vinyl signature too, so that can perhaps mess with peoples analysis.

There are bits where sounds are akin to pops or large bits of dust hitting the stylus but I'm less convinced about that as there is a lot of dirty noise on the track anyway.

For the rest of the track - it sounds ok... for Pop Life (audiophile wise).

As a double check reference I went back to the vinyl and as a triple check I listened to two old rips I had pulled from the internet 15 years ago. All three cases the intro sounded fine.

100% sound issue on Pop Life, even though it is a very minor one.

I struggle with Paisley Park extended version at the best of times, so I dont know it nearly as well as the album version. I couldn't notice anything that struck me as a giveaway for it being mastered from a vinyl.

I listed to America, 1999 and Erotic City quite a few times too - but they sound ok. America has pops and cracks all over the intro but so does the version on the original CD album version.

However we have those on CD already so someone should be able to a side by side on those.

In the end it boils down to just Pop Life and Paisley Park. Pop Life unquestionably has a messed up intro and outro, however 100% identifying it as a vinyl source is open to analysis - but whats not open to debate is that its another mess-up similar to PR:SDE Erotic City, albeit not as glaring.

Apologies for typos, it's late.

Let's hope there are no mess-ups on SOTT:SDE - September can't come quick enough.

First of all, the RSD release was NEVER touted as being Remastered. Simply a reissue. So the source material we are dealing with is whatever masters from way back.

Side to side comparison of the Fun With Vinyl rip:

The CD has far less Surface noise. The CD is much, much louder, and whatever the "surface noise" is in my opinion is really just exposing existing hiss that is present on the old mastering. The CD has absolutely no cracks or pops that DO exist on the FWV rip.

And for those saying pop life is slow, I took the Right Channel from the Vinyl Rip, and the Left channel from the CD and synced. They stay perfectly in sync throughout the track. Happy to share.

For sh*ts and giggles, I took a rip of the 1990 CD Single version of Erotic City (B/W IWD4U) and did the same comparison. SAME EXACT TRACK! The Japanese CD version from this is again just much louder.

So, my evaluation is that this is not a vinyl rip, but is just the old mastering for these tracks with Volume boosted waaaaay up.

[Edited 7/10/20 23:15pm]

- the large sleeve version arriving any day now, so can't comment on that yet.

I think you may be disappointed with the "large sleeve".

I know I was. What you get is a roughly a 10" printed piece of paper (one sided print) of the cover.

bfunk said:

tonyspr said:

- the large sleeve version arriving any day now, so can't comment on that yet.

I think you may be disappointed with the "large sleeve".

I know I was. What you get is a roughly a 10" printed piece of paper (one sided print) of the cover.

As I saw it on picture, is the large sleeve, only a kind of large squared card (as we received with the Japanese Up All Nite With Prince")?

xemplify08 said:

bfunk said:

First of all, the RSD release was NEVER touted as being Remastered. Simply a reissue. So the source material we are dealing with is whatever masters from way back.

Side to side comparison of the Fun With Vinyl rip:

The CD has far less Surface noise. The CD is much, much louder, and whatever the "surface noise" is in my opinion is really just exposing existing hiss that is present on the old mastering. The CD has absolutely no cracks or pops that DO exist on the FWV rip.

And for those saying pop life is slow, I took the Right Channel from the Vinyl Rip, and the Left channel from the CD and synced. They stay perfectly in sync throughout the track. Happy to share.

For sh*ts and giggles, I took a rip of the 1990 CD Single version of Erotic City (B/W IWD4U) and did the same comparison. SAME EXACT TRACK! The Japanese CD version from this is again just much louder.

So, my evaluation is that this is not a vinyl rip, but is just the old mastering for these tracks with Volume boosted waaaaay up.

[Edited 7/10/20 23:15pm]

I was going to do some playing today like you’ve done, thanks I can watch tv instead now! I find it hard to believe they’d simply rip the vinyl to do this release and make a big thing of it being on cd? Doesn’t make sense, and typically Japanese releases have been known for being far superior in the past. These tracks are 35+ years old! Tape hiss/ hum were present and recording procedures were completely different and you had a hell of a lot of background interference to deal with, especially when you’re dealing with a large amount of tracks and bounce downs as we know Prince did. So when you make these recording louder and re-eq them you will also enhance these impurities too. They have been clever with the fades to eliminate a lot of this background noise, which is great and could be perceived as covering up but I don’t hear any evidence either of it being recorded from vinyl. [Edited 7/11/20 1:33am] [Edited 7/11/20 1:34am] [Edited 7/11/20 1:34am] [Edited 7/11/20 1:35am]

Agreed. i'm bored of those exchanges about a potential vinyl rip. Are some people sound engineers, working at Bernie Grundman? Come on, sound is good for me.

Ramzoo said:

Well, I'm not art all bored with this discussion. I wanted to know if I should spend $40+ on a CD for 2 songs. If they are no better than a vinyl rip than that answers the question for me. Always fascinated by the source and quality. Informed buyer.

There is a Cd rip circulating and it sounded pretty good on my headphones.

bwaaatch said:

Thanks to everyone for their research in the speed issues. For the sake of complete clarity, can anyone confirm the comparative speeds of the following, compared to the known speeds of the original (non-remixed) album versions. 1) Original 80s HMPL Japanese vinyl 2) Last years’s HMPL TSD vinyl 3) this new CD version In other words, is the speed slow on all of the above, and are they all essentially identical? Furthermore 1) do ‘correct speed’ versions exist? 2) are the speed issues limited to some tracks, rather than all of them? 3) if we wanted to digitally alter the speed of some of these files, what target times should we be aiming for? 4) Do the songs play for their states times or not? thanks! Dee like I’m being greedy with these questions!

Does it really matter? It's quite obviously not a vinyl rip, sound is great and so is the packaging. What's not to like?

kremlinshadow said:

Ramzoo said:

tonyspr said:

- the large sleeve version arriving any day now, so can't comment on that yet.

I think you may be disappointed with the "large sleeve".

I know I was. What you get is a roughly a 10" printed piece of paper (one sided print) of the cover.

As I saw it on picture, is the large sleeve, only a kind of large squared card (as we received with the Japanese Up All Nite With Prince")?

so, are U saying, one only gets a printed card with the 'normal' mini-lp sized CD?

cinnamonboy said:

Ramzoo said:

As I saw it on picture, is the large sleeve, only a kind of large squared card (as we received with the Japanese Up All Nite With Prince")?

so, are U saying, one only gets a printed card with the 'normal' mini-lp sized CD?

For sure, with the "normal" version I got nothing else.

cinnamonboy said:

I listend today and there a zero vinyl artifacts to be found indicating it is NOT a transfer from the painful fragile and pointless media known as vinyl.

[Edited 7/13/20 9:14am]

steakfinger said:

I listend today and there a zero vinyl artifacts to be found indicating it is NOT a transfer from the painful fragile and pointless media known as vinyl.

[Edited 7/13/20 9:14am]

Thank U.

xemplify08 said:

cinnamonboy said:

so, are U saying, one only gets a printed card with the 'normal' mini-lp sized CD?

It’s not even card, it’s paper! I was completely underwhelmed with it. But, other than that the packaging is really nice and an exact copy of the vinyl packaging like the smh releases.

The packaging was so pathetic that I actually laughed when I opened the envelope it came in. It's a piece of paper with the cover printed on it. If I didn't know better I would have suspected it was a practical joke, it's that ridiculous.

[Edited 7/13/20 12:43pm]

BalladofPeterParker said:

Speaking of mega jacket, this is amazon Japan's exclusive and nothing to do with Warner/Estate.
There was a mega jacket for Up All Nite With Prince if you ordered one from amazon Japan.

Up All Nite With Prince with mega jacket was sold out quickly.

There will be a mega jacket for Sign Deluxe if you order one from amazon Japan.

Of course mega jackets are for other artists as well.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/b?ie=UTF8&language=en_US&node=8004683051

Mine arrived yesterday. I gave it a quick listen last night but will not discuss sound quality. The "paper sleeve" vinyl replica was bent. Substandard packaing. It was sent in a bubble package. There is no way it was going to make it here without getting damaged. On the bright side, there's two new songs on cd I didn't have before.

Just got mine today!

Very cool cd replica with great sound!

i really don't mind that it cost over 30 bucks

If you squint your eyes and could just imagine that this was a debut album

PS.

What CD compilation has the full length "America" on it?

Anyone?

[Edited 7/15/20 10:34am]