whitesockedfunk 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.

Possibly but you can tell the difference, for example, when you listen to samples of the same track on different compilations let's say. A track on an original album from the 70s or 80s will potentially sound quiter than the same track on a 00s greatest hits because it's probably been remastered. Happens all the time and to be honest it's how I decide sometimes which track I am going to buy.

LoveGalore said:

Milty2 said:

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.

Sister, no insults were lobbed your way. But I stand by the peanut butter statement. The PR remaster and the SOTT remaster are not the "same" in any way.

Well girl, I beg to differ on both of your points. I was just writing about my experience but that's not what you wish to hear. So maybe peanut butter ears is more apt for your situation.

[Edited 9/28/20 4:52am]

to be perfectly honest, while its great to get old bootlegs in better quality, it does seem like they have not spent much time making it sound good. the live concert sounds as good as a bootleg. its poorly mixed. some of the vault tracks are a bit iffy sounding sonically too. rebirth of the flesh has that outro which is great, but its poorly matched, and connected. just weird, and disappointing for a set of this magnitude and importance in princes music, and FOR THIS PRICE! THIS IS NOT CHEAP! get someone to spend time and care on this next time please, estate.

[Edited 9/29/20 4:00am]

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

to be perfectly honest, while its great to get old bootlegs in better quality, it does seem like they have not spent much time making it sound good. the live concert sounds as good as a bootleg. its poorly mixed. some of the vault tracks are a bit iffy sounding sonically too. rebirth of the flesh has that outro which is great, but its poorly matched, and connected. just weird, and disappointing for a set of this magnitude and importance in princes music, and FOR THIS PRICE! THIS IS NOT CHEAP! get someone to spend time and care on this next time please, estate.

[Edited 9/29/20 4:00am]

I had another listen to Originals yesterday and it's also the same. I dont want to relitigate that release, which I love, but the quality of sound and volume levels from track to track varies a lot. I think we need to accept that these tapes, or however they exist, probably were not very well looked after. Same goes for the Verssace Experience. The sound levels and quality are not up to standard.

I don't know how it's sourced but it sounds good but not ideal. This remaster is lacking the quality of the vinyl original. I mean when I first got the Double LP back in 1987, the shit was awesome, in terms of the instrument fullness and clarity of the sound. This remaster is lacking the fullness of a detailed mix.

whitesockedfunk 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.

Just to clarify - iTunes is not lossy. iTunes is software (now simply "Music") that plays both lossy and lossless files.

williamb610 said:

LoveGalore said:

"Lacking the fullness of a detailed mix", may I ask for elaboration on that as well? They are all the same mix of the album, just a different EQ/processing job and different tape transfers, personally the remaster completely blows away any previous analog or digital version I have previously heard and that is even just listening to the digital version of this release! I think it is wonderfully done

For example, the sound of Play in the Sunshine, for example, and the bass guitar and some of the instrumentation on Housequake doesn't sound as full as the vinyl version(original LP). All of the sound is louder but the dynamics of each instrument isn't coming through on the track.

Listen to the original vinyl and then listen to it on the remaster. It's a better master from a CD point of view, but it isn't the gritty sound that I'm used to on vinyl.

The drum on 'It' is not as clear as it was on the original vinyl album. The cymbal at the end of 'It' is muffled. The piano on 'Starfish & Coffee' is not as clear as the original vinyl album. The sound is louder on some stuff, but there's no warmth of the instruments; Everything is cold, if you can understand what I'm saying. The horns seem turned down on Slow Love. The first verse on Slow Love was not as loud as it could have been.

I can keep going...but I won't cause I ain't gonna be on this website all day.

I just got it. Just listened to If I Was Your Girlfriend. I am having a hard time with the mix. The kick hits so hard, and everything is clear, but it's like the body has been taken out of it. IIWYG is all kick... this is difficult. Crystalline, without warmth.

Doozer said:

Not that I don't trust PurpleMusic7689 and others, but I wanted to check the files myself. I ran auCDtect on all the WAV files. The full result is available here: https://pastebin.com/raw/fJZYLQ9n

.

The problematic files are the following:

- 04-04-Prince-Can_I_Play_With_U_feat_Miles_Davis-SMR.flac.wav ("This track looks like MPEG with probability 95%")

- 04-07-Prince-Visions-SMR.flac.wav ("This track looks like CDDA with probability 94%" -> why only 94%?)

- 04-14-Prince-Colors-SMR.flac.wav ("This track looks like CDDA with probability 92%" -> why only 92%?)

- 05-14-Prince-It_Be_s_Like_That_Sometimes-SMR.flac.wav ("This track looks like CDDA with probability 92%" -> why only 92%?)

olb99 said:

olb99 said:

Not that I don't trust PurpleMusic7689 and others, but I wanted to check the files myself. I ran auCDtect on all the WAV files. The full result is available here: https://pastebin.com/raw/fJZYLQ9n

.

The problematic files are the following:

- 04-04-Prince-Can_I_Play_With_U_feat_Miles_Davis-SMR.flac.wav ("This track looks like MPEG with probability 95%")

- 04-07-Prince-Visions-SMR.flac.wav ("This track looks like CDDA with probability 94%" -> why only 94%?)

- 04-14-Prince-Colors-SMR.flac.wav ("This track looks like CDDA with probability 92%" -> why only 92%?)

- 05-14-Prince-It_Be_s_Like_That_Sometimes-SMR.flac.wav ("This track looks like CDDA with probability 92%" -> why only 92%?)

After a quick check i did last week, i also had some doubts on Visions & Colors so i pulled out my old Thunderball Dream Factory bootleg released in 2000 to see how these songs compared to the files on SOTT SDE.

Whereas all the other songs of this boot ended up being lossless files, i was suprised to see the same results as on the SOTT SDE for Visions & Colors. I don't know how to explain this but whatever is up with those songs was there from the start and the time they were recorded.

Apart from that, most of the songs (if not all) reported as being lossy on SOTT are in fact genuine lossless files. I can't remember for CIPWU so i'll check this one out again though.

[Edited 10/8/20 6:32am]

LoveGalore said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

to be perfectly honest, while its great to get old bootlegs in better quality, it does seem like they have not spent much time making it sound good. the live concert sounds as good as a bootleg. its poorly mixed.

Please stop this nonsense. That's just not true. It is very clear this set had a lot of love put into it by many people. The fact is that they've had the impossible job of living up to a legacy with sometimes inadequate levels of existing curation. Had prince cared about his own legacy, the issues would be very different.

FINALLY...somebody with some sense. Fuck it's annoying people can't just enjoyed shit anymore. Everything...and I mean EVERYTHING onn this set sounds FUCKING AMAZING!! This is why I don't like people very much...

ThirdStrike said:

Doozer said:

whitesockedfunk said:

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

Just to clarify - iTunes is not lossy. iTunes is software (now simply "Music") that plays both lossy and lossless files.

You are mistaken. You're connfusing two different things:

Apple Music is the streaming service that provides a lossless options.

iTunes (which still exists and is different than Apple Music) is both: a.) a store where you can purchase files to download and permenently own; and b.) the software you can use to download and play those purchased files.

Files purchased through iTunes are defintely lossy.

Genesia said:

Doozer said:

Just to clarify - iTunes is not lossy. iTunes is software (now simply "Music") that plays both lossy and lossless files.

Exactly.

Exactly not. As I explained above, he confused Apple Music (Apple's streaming service) with iTunes (Apple's store/software that allows you to purchase files for permanent ownership).

iTunes files are definitely lossy. They are AAC files (.m4a) with a sample rate of 44.1kHz and are encoded with a variable bit rate of 256 kbps.

lurker316 said:

LoveGalore said:

lurker316 said:

You can still play lossless files in the iTunes player though. So...

But you cannot get lossless files from the iTunes *store*.

In the original post that started this discussion, @Milty2 said he: "compared the remastered album with the original on the iTunes store." [emphasis mine]

If he is talking about files downloaded from the iTunes *store* (not files streamed through Apple Music, not files simply played through iTunes software, but files gotten from the actual store) they had to be lossy.

[Edited 10/8/20 14:43pm]

LoveGalore said:

lurker316 said:

You can still play lossless files in the iTunes player though. So...

Let me put that another way...

Yes, you are correct that you can play lossless files through the iTunes player. But we're not talking about playing files through the iTunes player. We're talking about playing files gotten from the iTunes store.

Specifically, Milty2 said he compared the remaster to files from "the iTunes store". And that store only sells lossy files.

lurker316 said:

LoveGalore said:

lurker316 said:

Let me put that another way...

Yes, you are correct that you can play lossless files through the iTunes player. But we're not talking about playing files through the iTunes player. We're talking about playing files gotten from the iTunes store.

Specifically, Milty2 said he compared the remaster to files from "the iTunes store". And that store only sells lossy files.

Oh, sorry no no, I know. Milty has PB&J ear canals. I'm just being unsuccessful in my sarcasm that Doozer and Genesis are trying to nitpick over contextually irrelevant semantics. [Edited 10/8/20 15:01pm]

What's your problem?

[Edited 10/8/20 16:32pm]

Milty2 said:

LoveGalore said:

lurker316 said: Oh, sorry no no, I know. Milty has PB&J ear canals. I'm just being unsuccessful in my sarcasm that Doozer and Genesis are trying to nitpick over contextually irrelevant semantics. [Edited 10/8/20 15:01pm]

What's your problem?

[Edited 10/8/20 16:32pm]

It's not that deep.

lurker316 said:

LoveGalore said:

lurker316 said: You can still play lossless files in the iTunes player though. So...

Let me put that another way...

Yes, you are correct that you can play lossless files through the iTunes player. But we're not talking about playing files through the iTunes player. We're talking about playing files gotten from the iTunes store.

Specifically, Milty2 said he compared the remaster to files from "the iTunes store". And that store only sells lossy files.

I wasn't saying that playing files via the iTunes store is the best way to listen to anything. What I said was that you can notice a difference on tracks between the original album and the remastered album. I really don't think you need the highest standard of file or equipment to tell that there is a difference. The box set is on its way to me and so I'll have the oppurtunity to compare once it arrives.

LoveGalore said:

Milty2 said:

What's your problem?

[Edited 10/8/20 16:32pm]

It's not that deep.

Well then do me a favour and piss off.

[Edited 10/8/20 16:37pm]

Milty2 said: