The 2012 Vinyl Re-Issues Were From 44.1khz Source

[Lord Reith]

This is what I remembered reading...

"It's worth mentioning that 2009 RBCD versions of louder tracks feature a very slight additional limiting applied compared to their 24/44 USB counterparts, f.e. Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby null-test delta (zoom=128) looks like that:

[​IMG]

So having a 24/44 USB versions gives a tad of an advantage over RBCD for louder material."

...seems it was being alleged that the stick had different limiting noticeable on the 'louder' tracks.

I dunno... first I've heard about it. I don't have the cds handy so can't verify his results. The usb is still limited though... you only have to zoom in on one of the louder tracks to see.

[ringo9]

Your knowledge is gold LR. Thanks. A bit OT but I don't want to start a new topic. When one get hold of rips in dsf audio files is it a good option to capture the sound with audacity in 16/48? foobar warns me the conversion to flac will be lossy. I heard tascam can do the job but I havent tried it yet. Has anybody tried it? Thanks

[4-track-mind]

Nobody ever thought vinyl had miraculous dynamic range actually by LISTENING to it. The (narrowed) separation as well as (especially: lack-of a) guttural bass response couldn't even compete with a vintage, factory duplicated, 7 1/2ips reel to reel tape. This "boutique" record collectors' market hucksters like Hoffman/Fremer/Diament et al pander to, is based upon fabricating: MYTHS for SELF ECONOMIC INTERESTS.

When one combines the foregone technical premise(s) of: the RIAA curve artificially jacking-up the treble at a lower frequency to, essentially, fool the ear where it's most sensitive (the midrange --- to compensate for how the high frequencies get more and more rolled-off the smaller the groove radius becomes; to the point of: the inner band barely having anything over 9k) AND how pre-emphasis distortion IS ALREADY coloring a record's grooves according to frequency, THAT is why a graph would show a false positive of making it appear there is (somehow) this broad frequency register (strangely?: even eclipsing a comparison to the master tape itself!) when, by pure sonics (judged against, conversely, playing the same material on a modded tape deck able to reproduce FLAT from 16 - 23,000Hz), THE FAULTS OF VINYL LOSE BY A MILE(!).

As for mono records: no way in hell, would they have bettered even the 15khz response limit for mono FM radio.

[Lord Reith]

I think another myth I can almost dispel is that they rolled off the bass on the stereo lps. While demixing Evolver, I was EQ-matching mono to stereo mixes and what do I consistently see? Bass rolloff on the mono mixes compared to the stereo ones:

bassrolloff.jpg (163.47 KiB) Viewed 2577 times

Now, thinking about it this does not surprise me. Why did the cutting engineers in the 60s roll off the bass? To stop the record jumping. But this would only apply to the cheap Dansett record players beloved of teenagers at the time. As mastering engineers these days adjust the eq and dynamics of a mix to match the intended delivery format (eg: big bass boost, no important stereo information, crushed dynamics for mono Bluetooth speakers and earbuds), the cutting engineers in the 60s mastered for the intended listening setup: Dansetts and AM radio. They had a cheap little record player in the cutting room at Abbey Road for checking how the records sounded. The mono mixes are not only bass rolled off, they often have less top end as well, and are much more dynamically compressed than the stereo mixes (the loudness wars started in the 1950s, no matter what engineers from the 90s say). But the stereo ones don't have any of this extra processing, presumably because the records would be played on superior quality stereo equipment. People sometimes say the early Beatles albums had less bass because it was rolled off, but if you listen to the session tapes, they don't have much bass either. Neither did the BBC radio sessions. That was just the fashion in the UK at the time. Bass was a background instrument, to be "felt and not heard" as Phil Spector liked to say.

[Lord Reith]

And on an unrelated note I see that the "German Horzu Die Beatles" nonsense has surfaced again on the Hoffman forum. The prized lp supposedly a generation better than the UK lp because it was made from mythical unprocessed twin track masters. In fact it is a dupe of the UK master tape made in January 1964, and eq'd by the German engineers in the mid 60s for the rerelease, same as all the German lps have extra eq.

That said, it does sound quite nice. But you can eq-match the UK lp to the German one and save a tape generation.

[alphabeatles]

the "German Horzu Die Beatles" nonsense has surfaced again...

Based on your comments I checked my collection as I knew I have more than one rip of this...:

"Original pressing" rip by PBTHAL, 2009

Apple/Electrola Catalogue number: 1C 072-04219 rip by McCannon

1977 Apple/EMI Electrola German Repress Using “Special Tape” Matrix A2/B2 rip by Anonymous

Undated Mirror Spock rip (2019 or earlier)

Jimi Ray "pristine copy" rip, 2021

I probably don't need 2 or 3 of these, opinions please. Or maybe you or someone else has done that re-EQ of the UK release...

[paul62]

"I Saw Her Standing There" (Take 9) from the "Free As A Bird" EP would have to be one of the top candidates when considering the cleanest and most natural-sounding PPM-era tracks, though, don't you think? Mastered fourteen or so years before the 2009 remasters (and before the fabled "loudness wars"). Not a lot of difference between the 1995 mastering of take 9 and the 2009 remaster of the standard version when it comes to the subsonic range between 20-60Hz. I did these quite a while ago:

01 - I Saw Her Standing There (2009 Digital Remaster EQ-matched to Take 9)
https://yung.cloud/track/38014/01-i-saw ... -to-take-9

02 I Saw Her Standing There (take 9 EQ-matched to 2009 stereo remaster)
https://yung.cloud/track/38015/02-i-saw ... o-remaster

Here's what the EQ-curve to make the 2009 remaster sound like take 9 looks like:


Here's what the EQ-curve to make Take 9 sound like the 2009 remaster looks like:


I don't know if the tapes sent to Vee-Jay Records ended up being recovered by Capitol after legal action was taken: at any rate, it would be interesting to hear a tape-to-digital transfer of the tape EMI sent to Vee-Jay Records to see if that was a straight dupe of the version EMI issued or was EQd differently by either EMI or Vee-Jay (or by both).
(I suspect the tapes were recovered, as the counterfeit versions of "Introducing The Beatles" are believed to be made from 'drops of original "ITB" issues: my counterfeited mono copy shows the tracks running at different speeds (the difference being >1.00%, from memory) to EMI versions of the same tracks, with both channels not being 100% in phase, one channel lower in volume than the other, each channel being different tonal/EQ-wise to the other channel, as well as cross-talk between the channels).

Here's a snapshot of my raw, unprocessed 'drop of side one:

[paul62]

At the risk of completely derailing the thread (without meaning to do that...):

Nobody ever thought vinyl had miraculous dynamic range actually by LISTENING to it. The (narrowed) separation as well as (especially: lack-of a) guttural bass response couldn't even compete with a vintage, factory duplicated, 7 1/2ips reel to reel tape.

What's your opinion of well-preserved eight track cartridges, carefully digitised with good equipment used?
(I know, they're unlikely to be as good as well-preserved R2R tapes, carefully digitised with good equipment used, but I'm still curious to read what you'll say about them).

From what I understand, someone with a good quality R2R deck and an eight track cartridge could take the tape out of the disassembled cartridge and carefully snip the looped tape and do a digitisation with the R2R deck (then splice the tape back into a loop once finished and then reassemble the cartridge).

I found a recent upload called:
1967 - The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1970, 8-Track, Capitol, 8XT 2653, Canada, 24-96)

Here's a collection of photos (and some info/back story from the notes) found in the download:


Lineage:

8-Track Cartridge (restored) > J.I.L. Candle JS4141 No. LL21552 8-Track Player / Receiver > Line out > Radio Shack modified heavy-duty shielded output cables with gold rca phono plugs to 1/8" stereo gold jack > Zoom H2 3.5mm stereo line in @100 record level 24bit 96khz > SDHC card / USB transfer / Hard Drives > Acer Aspire Win XP > Adobe Audition 3 (automatic phase correction tool) > Wavelab 5.01b (track editing, time / pitch correction, limited to -0.03db to catch any stray peaks) > A fork in the road. Choose one making you feel better…:)

for Full High Resolution 24/96 files:
> Trader’s Little Helper > FLAC8 > FooBar2000 for FLAC tagging with Discogs tagger > mystery file transport mechanisms > YOU!

for RedBook CD Ready 16/44.1 files:
> SoX ReSampler via Foobar2000 for resampling from 96 khz to 44.1 khz (passband 95.2% disabled aliasing 25% phase response very high quality) > iZotope RX for dithering from 24 bit to 16 bit (MBIT+ ultra noise shaping high dither) > Trader’s Little Helper > FLAC8 > FooBar2000 for FLAC tagging with Discogs tagger > mystery file transport mechanisms > YOU!

Audioarchivist notes:

I found this old 8-track receiver literally abandoned in a public park while I was on a walk one day. I carried it home before a heavy rainstorm would have taken it to the electronic graveyard for sure! I cleaned it up as best I could and worked on fixing the tape speed issues that the unit had. I owned a few scrappy 8-track tapes that I used to test this deck. I had it "on my bench" for a while, cleaning belts flywheels and oiling motors and stuff. I got it running a lot smoother than when I found it! I'm surprised it worked at all! It was very hard to make adjustments to the playback speed on the unit. It went from very slow to super fast in less than a quarter turn of the adjustment screw! After a couple of hours of trying, this is as good as I could get the speed. It is still a little bit fast, but very close to being right, and I think it might fluctuate a little bit...

About a week after finding the player, I was given the Sgt. Pepper tape for free from a small second hand shop I live nearby. They had hundreds and hundreds of crappy 8-tracks, and a few kind of cool ones! I was a little between paycheques, and I told the nice lady behind the counter how much I wanted the Pepper tape and how broke I was. She responded that it was her gift to me - take it. Free. It's yours! So, thank you nice lady behind the counter... When I was paid next week the cool tapes were gone. I think I got the best one!

The 8-track cartridge tape needed some restoration work. I carefully opened the tape shell, prying the plastic spring snap-lock tabs without breaking them (which is hard to do). The tape needed to be re-spliced, and the foam pressure pads needed to be replaced. I fabricated a new foam pad from some foam door insulation tape and some heavy duty moving packers clear tape. With the new parts installed and the tape repaired, I re-closed the shell, and played it. I adjusted the tape head azimuth to come as close to this tape as I could. This is the best I could average the azimuth out so there was maximum high end "in focus" and minimal cross-track bleedthrough for all the programs.

When I captured the tape playback, I decided to record some pre-roll on my recorder as the tape loop played on as I was waiting for it to come into position. I hit record as the reprise of Pepper begins. I then let the tape play right through 4 complete loops, playing all four programs of the 8-track. After it was over and I'd recorded the whole album complete, I let the tape play some more, and began pushing the program selection button at semi-random intervals to switch tracks. So there's a recording of highlights from the album, lasting the length of one more loop of the tape to finish my tape capture...

I ran the file through Adobe Audition 3.01 and into it's Automatic Phase Correction tool. It can be useful for tape transfers with poor tape head alignment (azimuth). I was pretty close with the real world analog azimuth adjustment with my trusty screwdriver, but the APC tool tightened it up a lot more in the digital realm. It's no high end audiophile experience, but it's damned good for something I was able to do completely for free! Plus, it's a rarity in The Beatles catalog.

Files split with Wavelab 5.01b, FLAC'd with Trader's Little Helper, and tagged with Discogs tagger in Foobar2000.


Okay, time passed, and I kept listening to it and comparing the tape transfer to several needledrops and tape drops and USB drops of Pepper. I actually have a downloaded "boot" of a Pepper 8-track already, too! My tape drop was a little fast - just enough that a casual fan might not notice, but when compared back to back with other releases, the slightly raised pitch could be heard a little more clearly. I wanted to fix it, but I didn't want to spend hours and hours with a screwdriver and a prayer to get it perfect in the analog world, so I began messing around with doing a pitch / time correction digitally...

All things in life being approximate, the group of different needledrops I have are ALL slightly different timing-wise. It seems that EVERYONE'S turntables are "off" a little bit! hehe. But, my 8-track tape drop was "out" by a minute or more to the average needledrop. I attempted to use my trusty Wavelab 5.01b to do some timestretching, but I had problems with the usually 100% stable program, and it kept crashing when I tried to process the master file. I pulled it into Wavelab 6 (which is a little glitchy for playback on my system so I don't use it) and it successfully processed the file. It took over 35 hours to render the new file for me! Ouch! But, it sounds a lot more correct now than it did. Is it running totally at perfect speed now? Probably not. It's very VERY close now (maybe just slightly slow?) but for how long it would take to try it again, so I'm satisfied with it...
..................................................................................................................
So, to compare an apple to an orange (so to speak):

Here's a spectral view in Adobe Audition of "Within You Without You" from the eight track cartridge 24/96 transfer: a lot of "purple haze" above the bright spectra and there's "audiophile-quality hiss" to assure me that it is a hi-rez tape-to-digital transfer from an 8-track cartridge:


Here's a spectral view of the same track, from Dr. Robert's Audio 5 'drop:

[r9453]

So, reading between the lines, there are four digital versions at EMI: the flat 24 bit 192khz dub of the analogue tapes; the 24 bit 44.1khz remasters without limiting (used to cut the 2012 lps); the 24 bit 44.1khz remasters with limiting added (used for the usb dongle); and 16 bit 44.1khz redbook remaster with limiting added (used for the cds and streaming).

Very interesting, I would have dubbed every inch of Beatles tape at EMI. Is there any more info available on the dubbing process used?

[alphabeatles]

Just read about this Spotify lossy vs. lossless hearing test:

hxxp://abx.digitalfeed.net/spotify-hq.html

"HOW DOES IT WORK?
This test will test whether you can tell the difference between a losslessly compressed and lossily compressed version of a song sample, without trying to choose which is which. It does this using an ABX test.

You will be presented with two reference samples (A and B), and a target sample (X). You have to decide whether sample X matches sample A or sample B. You will be administered multiple trials for each of the five tracks used in the Tidal test.

The accuracy of the test will increase markedly as the number of trials increases. Although 5 trials is sufficient to estimate whether you can tell the difference between lossy and lossless, to work out which tracks you can tell the difference on will require 20 trials per sample"