Is that true?

Started by male21, November 05, 2005, 12:41:36

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male21

Is that true, that Chriss perry erased in1990 mastertape of Seventine Seconds?  :? and is it true, that there was some anrealised traks? And what the names of these traks? thanks :smt109
[backwards talking starts - see below]

[voice 1 - male]: "Yeah, and bring the van..."

"Oh no, the lights [???] gone out on the truck And they took the tyres and the gas"

[keyboard starts]

[voice 1]: "They've robbed the cash register too!"

lostflower4

The story I heard is that the master tapes had been stored next a washing machine, and that the magnetic fields generated over time erased them. That's why A Forest had to be re-recorded for the Mixed Up album.

Maybe some unreleased tracks did get erased in the process. I just realized that there are no studio outtakes on the re-release of Seventeen Seconds! :(

So this leads me to the question, how can it be true that the Seventeen Seconds "remaster" was "digitally remastered from the original master tapes", as it says? If the above story is true, it couldn't have been!

I've generally thought of remastering as a marketing ploy just to get people to buy the same albums a second time. I've only seen marked improvements for remasters on really old stuff (before The Cure's time). The main difference I'm hearing with the Cure "remasters" is that they have been compressed and limited to be louder. This is actually a bad thing, and I'd rather turn up the volume knob when listening to my original releases. But in this case they were smart enough to add bonus discs, else I might not have bought them. 8)

male21

Thanks a lot!
:-D  :smt026
[backwards talking starts - see below]

[voice 1 - male]: "Yeah, and bring the van..."

"Oh no, the lights [???] gone out on the truck And they took the tyres and the gas"

[keyboard starts]

[voice 1]: "They've robbed the cash register too!"

japanesebaby

i've also heard a speculation that the master tapes might have been erased simply because master tape used to be pretty expensive in those days. it sounds unbelievable but i've heard this from a guy who did studio work  during early eighties & he thought back then this really used to happen every now and then, just because someone needed a blank tape...
well, i don't know...
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine

Oso Blanco

Quote from: lostflower4The story I heard is that the master tapes had been stored next a washing machine, and that the magnetic fields generated over time erased them. That's why A Forest had to be re-recorded for the Mixed Up album.

I think that's just another of those lies Robert is so famous for.

Quote from: lostflower4Maybe some unreleased tracks did get erased in the process. I just realized that there are no studio outtakes on the re-release of Seventeen Seconds! :(

There is an alternate version of "Three", but that's really it ... :-(

Quote from: lostflower4So this leads me to the question, how can it be true that the Seventeen Seconds "remaster" was "digitally remastered from the original master tapes", as it says? If the above story is true, it couldn't have been!

I've generally thought of remastering as a marketing ploy just to get people to buy the same albums a second time. I've only seen marked improvements for remasters on really old stuff (before The Cure's time). The main difference I'm hearing with the Cure "remasters" is that they have been compressed and limited to be louder. This is actually a bad thing, and I'd rather turn up the volume knob when listening to my original releases. But in this case they were smart enough to add bonus discs, else I might not have bought them. 8)

Exactly right. I think the remasters don't sound any better than the original cd's, just louder. And in some cases, the remaster sounds even worse than the original (World War) and are edited at the beginning or the end of a song (Weedy Burton, the WMS b-sides, etc.). I think they should have left the job of rematering to the guy who did the Greatest Hits album, he did a much better job.
Time is the fire in which we burn ...

lostflower4

You're right about the Three remix... It slipped my mind. :wink:

I think the snare drum sounds a bit "different" on the Three Imaginary Boys re-release. Not really better, not really worse. The next three albums still sound kind of brittle to my ears. I was expecting them to fix that. Seventeen Seconds still has that boomy thud bass drum sound, which never seemed quite right to me.

I totally agree about the edits on some of the remastered stuff. Join the Dots is extremely guilty of that. Why would they do that? Not enough room for those extra few seconds here and there? Ridiculous!

And the the story about the master tapes being destroyed, I mean, why would a professional organization store musical recordings in a laundry room? I guess anything's possible, but it's definitely questionable to me.

It's true that analog tape was/is very expensive, so I guess that's another possiblity. We'll probably never know the truth about a lot of things that happened long ago... :?

Oso Blanco

I don't know much about the process of remastering, so I may be wrong about it, but here is another thought that I had:

If they use the same (analogue) master tapes in 2005 that they were using in back in 1985 (or whenever the first cd editions were released) ... wouldn't the master tapes have at least slightly degraded in those 20 years? And wouldn't that make the remasters actually worse than the original cd's? I mean, a remaster can only be as good as the source material!

About the edits on JDT: There is actually one song (Hello, I Love You) that has a few extra seconds at the beginning, but that doesn't make up for all the butchered songs on it.
Time is the fire in which we burn ...