PurpleMusic7689 said:

A few of the vault tracks were seemingly sent to Bernie Grundman as lossy files, not lossless, then were mastered/remastered from those files. I've checked out 3 or 4 sources of the set, "Train", "Can I Play With U?", "Visions", "Colors", "A Place In Heaven (Lisa Vocal Version)" and "Strange Relationship (so-called Original Version...)" were lossy files with light mastering over the compressed area (about 16kHz and up)... Might be forgetting a track or 2.

Source for this?

PurpleMusic7689 said:

A few of the vault tracks were seemingly sent to Bernie Grundman as lossy files, not lossless, then were mastered/remastered from those files. I've checked out 3 or 4 sources of the set, "Train", "Can I Play With U?", "Visions", "Colors", "A Place In Heaven (Lisa Vocal Version)" and "Strange Relationship (so-called Original Version...)" were lossy files with light mastering over the compressed area (about 16kHz and up)... Might be forgetting a track or 2.

How does that happen? They come from tapes don't they?

TrivialPursuit said:

PurpleMusic7689 said:

A few of the vault tracks were seemingly sent to Bernie Grundman as lossy files, not lossless, then were mastered/remastered from those files. I've checked out 3 or 4 sources of the set, "Train", "Can I Play With U?", "Visions", "Colors", "A Place In Heaven (Lisa Vocal Version)" and "Strange Relationship (so-called Original Version...)" were lossy files with light mastering over the compressed area (about 16kHz and up)... Might be forgetting a track or 2.

Source for this?

https://prince.org/msg/7/464438?pg=2 #43@bluegangsta

[Edited 9/26/20 0:09am]

databank said:

PurpleMusic7689 said:

A few of the vault tracks were seemingly sent to Bernie Grundman as lossy files, not lossless, then were mastered/remastered from those files. I've checked out 3 or 4 sources of the set, "Train", "Can I Play With U?", "Visions", "Colors", "A Place In Heaven (Lisa Vocal Version)" and "Strange Relationship (so-called Original Version...)" were lossy files with light mastering over the compressed area (about 16kHz and up)... Might be forgetting a track or 2.

How does that happen? They come from tapes don't they?

My spectral familiarity ain't what it used to be, but it seems at other forums there's no concrete consensus on whether these are just cassettes or actually MP3s.., would that be the case?

I mean is it possible when dropping off tapes of the master mixes our boy Mikey wrote like a Facebook group mediashare link URL on a cocktail napkin? Is he linking Bernie to bootleg download links?

I’ve just checked for myself and I think I’m about to have an aneurysm.

‘Visions’ contains more data on Wendy and Lisa’s Eroica album than the SOTT:SD version?

i have it on good authority that michael howe typed in "youtube to mp3 converter" on google and that's where they sourced these tracks from

VaultCurator said:

I’ve just checked for myself and I think I’m about to have an aneurysm.

‘Visions’ contains more data on Wendy and Lisa’s Eroica album than the SOTT:SD version?

thats prob more to do with the database being used than anything else.

lustmealways said:

i have it on good authority that michael howe typed in "youtube to mp3 converter" on google and that's where they sourced these tracks from

how do we know that its not a case of the original masters being in bad shape?

or that they were taken from audio cassettes?

am i really to trust random dudes on steve hoffmans message boards?

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

how do we know that its not a case of the original masters being in bad shape?

or that they were taken from audio cassettes?

am i really to trust random dudes on steve hoffmans message boards?

gotta be honest, i have no clue how this would've happened in the first place. some of these tracks certainly are lossy, anyone could check it looking at the spectrals. it's my understanding that a degraded master wouldn't result in the whole thing lacking frequencies across the board. as far as i'm aware, this could only be the result of sourcing it from something that had some sort of compression applied or accidentally applying said compression somewhere along the production chain and not realizing it? honestly at a loss here.

Especially strange in the case of "Visions," since this track was officially released. It's not like it would have been hard for them to use a lossless source. This is something they could have easily corrected.

"It Be's Like That Sometimes" appears to be lossy as well.

Lossy source:
Can I Play With U
Strange Relationship
Train
It Be Like That Sometimes
Rebirth Of The Flesh
A Place In Heaven (Lisa vocal)

Possible lossy source / possibly noise reduction filter:
Visions
Colors

I can't tell for certain but 'All My Dreams' & 'Cosmic Day' also look a bit suspect, but it may just be me reading too much into the spectrals.

Is it possible that private collectors have done a better job preserving Prince’s vault than Prince himself did? I’m genuinely worried this may be the case. Either that or some of the master tapes have been pinched!

[Edited 9/26/20 14:07pm]

lustmealways said:

i have it on good authority that michael howe typed in "youtube to mp3 converter" on google and that's where they sourced these tracks from

LOL No you don't.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

databank said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

how do we know that its not a case of the original masters being in bad shape?

or that they were taken from audio cassettes?

am i really to trust random dudes on steve hoffmans message boards?

Cassettes are not lossy. The only way to get lossy is digital compression, which is not something they could have gotten from the vault at least not with old tracks like this. This is why I'm puzzled.

So would they have to have been mp3s pressed to disc? It's not possible bad cassettes led to those spectrals?

The thing is... collector's mainly deal in FLAC/lossless.., so why couldn't Howe&Co. just... download FLACs instead?

I know that the original album is brackwalled and all that and that it has been a bug bear for years but I compared the remastered album with the original on the iTunes store and to be honest, I hear better results in the original despite it just being lower in volume - U Got The Look is the best example. That track is lower in volume than the others on the original album. There is a gloss added to the remaster overall that I'm not sure I like. Same with the Purple Rain remaster. Can't speak for the vault tracks since I only have bootlegs to compare them to.

Milty2 said:

LoveGalore said:

Milty2 said:

I know that the original album is brackwalled and all that and that it has been a bug bear for years but I compared the remastered album with the original on the iTunes store and to be honest, I hear better results in the original despite it just being lower in volume - U Got The Look is the best example. That track is lower in volume than the others on the original album. There is a gloss added to the remaster overall that I'm not sure I like. Same with the Purple Rain remaster. Can't speak for the vault tracks since I only have bootlegs to compare them to.

Factual information: if you compare the PR remaster to the SOTT remaster, you got peanut butter in your ears.

I didn't compare the PR remaster to the SOTT remaster. If you had correctly read what I said you will have seen that I said that there is a gloss to the PR remaster that I also don't like. Just becasue it's "louder" dosen't make it better. As for having peanut butter in my ears, you must too if you can't hear the difference but if you wish to just accept that the remaster is a better job, that's your thing. Maybe if you spent a little bit of time actually listening (doesn't seem like you care to), you might learn something instead of just lobbing insults.

WhisperingDandelions said:

databank said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said: Cassettes are not lossy. The only way to get lossy is digital compression, which is not something they could have gotten from the vault at least not with old tracks like this. This is why I'm puzzled.

So would they have to have been mp3s pressed to disc? It's not possible bad cassettes led to those spectrals?

This IDK. But it really isn't the same tech.

The thing is... collector's mainly deal in FLAC/lossless.., so why couldn't Howe&Co. just... download FLACs instead?

Thing is they had tapes in the vault, either multitrracks or mixdowns, besides Howe didn't say anything about any of these being from cassette while he admitted it for BG last year, so most likely everything comes from proper studio tapes. If it becomes lossless it means someone fucked-up along the way. But how?

[Edited 9/27/20 8:32am]

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

The sde was constructed from 128kbps rips obtained in the file sharing glory years of the early 00s

Doubtful. Nothing on the set sounds THAT low quality.

lustmealways said:

i have it on good authority that michael howe typed in "youtube to mp3 converter" on google and that's where they sourced these tracks from

GTFOOHWTBS!! People might believe you.

djThunderfunk said:

lustmealways said:

i have it on good authority that michael howe typed in "youtube to mp3 converter" on google and that's where they sourced these tracks from

GTFOOHWTBS!! People might believe you.

Milty2 said:

Milty2 said:

I know that the original album is brackwalled and all that and that it has been a bug bear for years but I compared the remastered album with the original on the iTunes store and to be honest, I hear better results in the original despite it just being lower in volume -

Using iTunes (which is lossy!) to compare sound quality is not really representative of the actual sound quality.