The CDs: orginals & remasters

Dillinger · April 07, 2007, 12:56:04

Quote from: japanesebaby on April 07, 2007, 11:15:06
it's completely silly that robert likes to claim they are 'demos' since they are clearly very recent

yeah the whole demo claim has amused me. just 3 more studio albums to complete my cure collection now (faith, wish, the cure) and the boxset and a couple live albums

rjl · April 07, 2007, 17:56:07

In the case of the Cure re-issues, I don't really mind LOUDER. Especially if you compare the original and re-issued KMKMKM CD releases. It really helps there, in my opinion.

Maybe my ears aren't in their best shape, but no glaring, awful clipping ever came to my attention. It's not to say that it's not there, however...

I mean, it's not a tenth as bad as the "Raw Power" re-issue that came out maybe 10 years ago (I think there's since been another) that Iggy "remastered" - which means that all he did was walk into the studio, shove all of the sliders up and create a noisy distorted mess. And it's digital distortion.

It sounds nasty. In my limited experience, analog distortion can work well in a recording situation. Digital distortion just seems to result in really really gross clipping/buzzing.

On another note, however, all of this talk about the Glove re-issue has convinced me to finally pick it up. I had always wanted to pick up the original CD out of curiosity, but never did. After hearing a few tracks (via a friend, most likely), I was glad that I didn't. But all of the talk about the bonus disc has sold me.

Robert & Severin's dubious claims and all.

japanesebaby · April 07, 2007, 19:25:56

i don't notice any alarming volume boost on the cure remasters either. the references i made there were meant to be references in general.

but i got truly curious about this vinyl vs. CD thing again and dug out some vinyls for more detailed comparison (also because i wanted to make sure i'm not just saying things out of memory only).
i listened to 'pornography' and KMKMKM from original CDs, remastered CDs and from vinyl, and i definitely haven't changed my mind about the sounds quality. on the contrary, i'm certain about it now. regardless of the volume boost (which also has happened, but in these cases i too see it being rather beneficial for the end result).
there's just something that's overall "wrong" with the the old CD versions when compared to how the vinyls sound like. the old CDs sound pretty blunt and flat, simply dull, flattened. like they were packaged by pouring the sound into a mold that's definitely of different shape than the sound itself. all songs are packaged into this same mold while none of them fits. one could say they sound only "different" and not "bad", but i do hear striking differences when compared to the vinyls - which i think one could more or less rightfully consider as being closer to how it all was supposed to sound like.

for me, the spaciousness of the sound found on vinyls gets totally butchered on those original CDs. together with that, there're simply a lot more all kinds of details found on the vinyls. the CDs sound simply muddy. and yes i could always perfectly well hear robert counting in the beginning of 'catch' on vinyl - all the details are there whereas on the old CD pressing it all got strangely muffled and muddy somehow. :(
then again, i don't find such huge difference between the vinyls and the remasters. i'd be willing to say there's more improvement on 'pornography' for the benefit of the remastered CD over the vinyl, but that could also be because my old vinyl copy is simply a bit battered already - it's maybe not the most ideal copy one could find...

i remember listening to the pornography remaster for the first time and being just totally thrilled by the time i got to 'a short term effect'. i remember it was really awesome, to hear it sounding like that, it was almost frighteningly gorgeous.
i'm now convinced that it really suffered really badly from the crappy way it was originally mastered on CD. with the start of '100 years' you could hear this spacious booming huge mass of sound pouring out on you when you used to put on the vinyl. you can hear this even better with the remaster - but the old CD pressing sounds to me almost like you were trying to listen to a record via phone or something.... well ok, maybe not that bad... but definitely like the sound came through some kind of invisible, flattening obstacle that washed out the details and somehow packaged it in the process.
or try 'cold' for instance - the difference between original and remastered CD version is just huge. the spacious, three-dimensional sense of the soundscape is just totally flattened on the original CD pressing.
(and damn i love that record!)

even with the remasters on my shelves, i definitely wouldn't even think of parting with my vinyls, no way. even with KMKMKM i'd still choose to listen to the vinyl version over the original CD version - neverminding those multiple flips and other inconveniences. i don't want to over-nostalgisize the vinyl era though, it's definitely not a perfect format. but in this case it's surely a winner.

i have to say thanks for extra inspiration for this thread for making me pay more attention to the vinyls once again!

besides they are beautiful anyway - the whole concept of album cover art still meant something then. or it was an altogether different concept, with different cabapilities. it had near poster-like expressiveness and poster-like artistic possibilities.
just look at robert's mouth and eye on the cover of KMKMKM in vinyl cover size, then compare it to a CD booklet/cover. easy to see which one presents the way it was designed to look like, the way it was thought of...

Oso Blanco · April 07, 2007, 20:11:37

Quote from: rjl on April 07, 2007, 17:56:07
In the case of the Cure re-issues, I don't really mind LOUDER. Especially if you compare the original and re-issued KMKMKM CD releases. It really helps there, in my opinion.

If you don't really mind "louder", I'm sure you have a volume knob somewhere on your equipment?

But you are right, Kiss Me is the album that benefitted most from the remastering process. Actually, I think it's the ONLY album that has really improved so far. And as far as I can tell, nothing has been cut! They even did something I had never believed they would do ... they put Hey You back in! So maybe there is hope for future Deluxe Editions after all.

rjl · April 07, 2007, 22:28:20

Oof. I totally forgot to mention "A Short Term Effect". I agree, that stood out AMAZINGLY on the remaster. Always a favorite, and it just got better. A close second is "Bananafishbones" on "The Top" re-issue. I was thrown by the speed-change (back to the original, intended speed, right?) for a second, but it just sounded much clearer, spacious and pretty in-your-face (although that could be attributed to volume).

Still, I think I'm going to have to start assembling all of the LPs now.

This thread inspired me to fire up the turntable while cleaning this morning, and I forgot how great some things can sound (Elvis Costello's "Armed Forces", for example... wow).

rjl · April 07, 2007, 22:32:12

Quote from: Oso Blanco on April 07, 2007, 20:11:37
Quote from: rjl on April 07, 2007, 17:56:07
In the case of the Cure re-issues, I don't really mind LOUDER. Especially if you compare the original and re-issued KMKMKM CD releases. It really helps there, in my opinion.

If you don't really mind "louder", I'm sure you have a volume knob somewhere on your equipment?

Yes, of course, but it's pretty irritating when you have, say old-KMKMKM, and a few other discs in a CD changer and you want to play it all on random. Besides, the louder you have to turn something up, the greater chance you have for some noise being amplified (I know that right now one of my speaker wires is being tweaky, or there's some ground-loop interference or something... and my PC speakers at work have some noise I'd rather not hear, just to hear the quiet passages).

Then again, if they didn't amplify the volume, it wouldn't be the end of the world for me. But isn't a wider range of volume always better? Even if you don't necessarily use it all the time?

japanesebaby · April 07, 2007, 23:54:45

Quote from: rjl on April 07, 2007, 22:28:20
Oof. I totally forgot to mention "A Short Term Effect". I agree, that stood out AMAZINGLY on the remaster. Always a favorite, and it just got better. A close second is "Bananafishbones" on "The Top" re-issue. I was thrown by the speed-change (back to the original, intended speed, right?) for a second, but it just sounded much clearer, spacious and pretty in-your-face (although that could be attributed to volume).

hehe yes i should have mentioned 'bananafishbones' too, that's surely a close second. the remaster takes it back to Bb, whereas the "original" is 75 cents too slow (that's 3/4 of a tone). and listen to the original after the remaster and it sounds like everyone had their lungs half full of water there... robert's voice sounds weird.
i wonder how it ever ended up being slowed down like that. if robert wanted if slowed down just because of the tempo then they should have bothered to record it again.
because it's an interesting thing to notice that they actually used to play it live in A, not in Bb. so they played it closer to the pitch of the original album version than the remastered version - although not exactly in either one. but since they also used to play it a lot faster than the original album version was, the remastered version might sounds somehow "more familiar" (although well, they used to speed up a lot of songs live then, of course). anyway, especially if one has listened to the live version enough to have somewhat memorized the pitch and tempo of those, then the remastered version might sound almost like it's aiming to correct the tempo, and not the pitch. because in order to correct the pitch according to what it was live one should actually slow it down even a bit more... which would be murder of course.
anyway, a rather strange case!

Steve · April 08, 2007, 08:27:53

Aaaah vinyl.
Brings back some good memories.
But, when I moved to Hungary, I put all my vinyl into storage (should see if I can get it shipped here).
I like the idea of the re-masters, as technology has certainly moved at a rapid pace & I would expect more benefits than just volume increase.
The re-issues do sound a lot fresher than the old discs, but I am still left a little cold by CDs in general.
I think I said earlier, that I would dearly love to see a SACD edition of these LPs. The technology is available, so why not make full use of it.
Just the thought of a high res version of A Forest makes me grin from ear to ear.
Without wanting to go right off topic, does anyone have the Psychedelic Furs re-mastered discs?
Saw them on Amazon yesterday & was severely tempted.

Janko · April 08, 2007, 18:26:12

I'D ONLY SAY THAT FIRST FOUR REMASTERS WERE GREAT:

SUPERB SOUND
OUT IN TIME
GREAT BONUS STUFF

WHILE THE SECOND BATCH WAS A BIT RUSHED:

SOUND IS JUST GOOD, NOTHING MINDBLOWING
ROBERT COULD GIVE IT ANOTHER FEW YEARS
BONUS STUFF WAS BELOW AWERAGE

:(

Janko · April 08, 2007, 18:44:04

Quote from: Steve on April 08, 2007, 08:27:53
Aaaah vinyl.
Brings back some good memories.
But, when I moved to Hungary, I put all my vinyl into storage (should see if I can get it shipped here).
I like the idea of the re-masters, as technology has certainly moved at a rapid pace & I would expect more benefits than just volume increase.
The re-issues do sound a lot fresher than the old discs, but I am still left a little cold by CDs in general.
I think I said earlier, that I would dearly love to see a SACD edition of these LPs. The technology is available, so why not make full use of it.
Just the thought of a high res version of A Forest makes me grin from ear to ear.
Without wanting to go right off topic, does anyone have the Psychedelic Furs re-mastered discs?
Saw them on Amazon yesterday & was severely tempted.

THE VINYL WILL ALWAYS BE THERE.

I WAS NEVER TOO ATTACHED TO IT BECAUSE WHEN I STARTED TO LISTEN TO MUSIC THE CASSETTES WERE THE MAIN STUFF FOR ME, BUT I STILL OWN COUPLE OF SINGLES AND ALBUMS ON VINYL...

japanesebaby · April 14, 2007, 09:16:09

Quote from: Janko on April 08, 2007, 18:44:04
Quote from: Steve on April 08, 2007, 08:27:53
Aaaah vinyl.
Brings back some good memories.
But, when I moved to Hungary, I put all my vinyl into storage (should see if I can get it shipped here).
I like the idea of the re-masters, as technology has certainly moved at a rapid pace & I would expect more benefits than just volume increase.
The re-issues do sound a lot fresher than the old discs, but I am still left a little cold by CDs in general.
I think I said earlier, that I would dearly love to see a SACD edition of these LPs. The technology is available, so why not make full use of it.
Just the thought of a high res version of A Forest makes me grin from ear to ear.
Without wanting to go right off topic, does anyone have the Psychedelic Furs re-mastered discs?
Saw them on Amazon yesterday & was severely tempted.

THE VINYL WILL ALWAYS BE THERE.

i admit i'm still a sucker for big vinyl fairs. i love going there and going through all those endless boxes of old and used vinyls - sometimes i can spend hours and hours there and come back home happy even though i didn't even buy anything.

i know i've said it before but i just like the format of the vinyl cover art in principle: so maybe a part of the enjoyment is that it's a bit like going to an art exhibition. CDs are small as stamps, you can't really enjoy those in similar manner.

and ok now i sound like a complete geek - you know record fairs are always filled with these geeks hunting for some rare-beyond-comprehension 7" singles from early 60s and who hold on to their scratched old vinyls until the day they die, refusing to admit CDs ever even existed - maybe please don't count me as one of these hehehe

rjl · May 17, 2007, 19:47:59

Question for those with the remastered Pornography - is it me or do some of the tracks clip/distort? And by that, I mean digital distortion when mastering to CD, not analog distortion when recording... I first noticed it in "A Short Term Effect", right before and after the 2 minute mark. It's there on a few others, as well.

I just listened to the remastered album with headphones for the first time last night, and it sounds even more amazing than I thought, although the clipping is bothersome...

Oso Blanco · May 22, 2007, 15:52:27

Quote from: rjl on May 17, 2007, 19:47:59
Question for those with the remastered Pornography - is it me or do some of the tracks clip/distort? And by that, I mean digital distortion when mastering to CD, not analog distortion when recording... I first noticed it in "A Short Term Effect", right before and after the 2 minute mark. It's there on a few others, as well.

I just listened to the remastered album with headphones for the first time last night, and it sounds even more amazing than I thought, although the clipping is bothersome...

If you think THAT's clipping distortion, take a listen to Join The Dots!

Bloodflower · May 25, 2007, 05:49:39

There's a small cut out in M on Seventeen Seconds (both on the remaster and original CDs) that annoys me endlessly.... is this present on the vinyl as well?

rjl · May 25, 2007, 06:07:02

Weren't the masters for 17S destroyed or lost or something? I find it hard to believe that there weren't other copies made, but I remember reading about how parts of A Forest had to be re-recorded for "Mixed Up", as the multi-track masters were somehow gone... The drums were sampled from the album version, if the story is true... So maybe it's from whatever copy (probably mixed down already, I guess) that was used for the original pressing. Maybe it's the same thing, just EQ'd/compressed/normalized...

Then again, who knows for sure.

All I know is that the remaster sounds MILES better than the initial CD pressing.

I never noticed the flaw on both of them. It's in the same place? I'll have to listen to them at some point...