Red & Blue Albums

[zaval80]

I'm not sure what conclusions if any can be drawn from this, except that the first two appear to be from the same source (which may already be known), while the second two appear to be taken from the same source; perhaps a different generation with different mastering, but they are visually quite similar. I thought that some of you who who like to get into the forensic nitty-gritty (especially of this song) might find this interesting and want to do some investigation also. The only adjustments made to each version were speed matching as noted, and volume normalization.

Beautiful illustration - they sure look different in the first half, that's the immediate impression, but on closer looking it's indeed the same track. Maybe there are sections in the song which would produce more radically different impressions.

[Kwai Chang]

OK, so they mixed down to provide space for chorus and orchestra on a new tape and then mixed those down to add back onto the basic track take 17.

"Recording the Beatles" is on my list of fun things to buy but it's very expensive.

"For an encore, they managed to find an actual clean recording of the BBC broadcast of King Lear and flew it into the mix, recreating the radio static and tuning noise as well."

I read that as NEWLY created, ie creating it themselves. That's the whole issue I have with the new mixes. There's no reason to have added anything (again) you can spectrally pull enough out of the mono mix itself and there would be no complaining other than it's too loud or not loud enough.

When there was a beautiful new bootleg called Not Guilty from Europe, it was actually one new acetate and all rehash/fake!
Did it teach us ANYTHING?
Yes! Lesson to become rule! BEWARE Extra NEW added audio!
Missing components GOOD!
New Rickenbacker(Electro?) on Lose That Girl BADDDD!
Just a rule of thumb from Dark Ages!
This discourse is most interesting and quite young!
KC

[Refugee]

I'm not sure what conclusions if any can be drawn from this, except that the first two appear to be from the same source (which may already be known), while the second two appear to be taken from the same source; perhaps a different generation with different mastering, but they are visually quite similar. I thought that some of you who who like to get into the forensic nitty-gritty (especially of this song) might find this interesting and want to do some investigation also. The only adjustments made to each version were speed matching as noted, and volume normalization.

Beautiful illustration - they sure look different in the first half, that's the immediate impression, but on closer looking it's indeed the same track. Maybe there are sections in the song which would produce more radically different impressions.

Yeah, I guess the spectrograms say more than the waveforms, and the spectral plot is definitely far superior on the EP version. The bottom two may actually be phase inverted. I've never understood why someone would flip that switch to begin with, but it's inverted on the 2015 mix of "The Ballad of J&Y" compared to the one on the 2010 67-70 (and probably all others before it) also.

[csnyfan]

There's not much to conclude from looking at the waveforms, because something as basic as analog EQ will shift the phases independently according to their frequency and make it very hard to align and compare.

[bogus]

so I decided to load up the version from Mono Masters, the previous mono release on the 2010 1962-1966 CD, and the EP version.

For fun and out of boredom I compared all CD versions released syncing them up with one another and I assume there were probably 3 sources or different transfers of this track?

#1 - used in 1988 "Past Masters", 1989 single, 2001 "1"
#2 - used in 1992 "EP Collection", 1992 single, 1993 red
#3 - used in 2009 "Mono Masters", 2009 "Past Masters", 2010 red, 2015 "1"/"1+"

[Kwai Chang]

All I hear is like three different radio feeds at once: the Lear broadcast, some orchestral music over the top of that, and a French broadcast over the top of that. If there's an ADT tape and they used that then it sounds like he's just thrown the original template out the window and mashed up all sorts of stuff from the ADT tape including some that is not in the original mono mix.

I'm not saying it's bad, but it's nothing like the original record. This should be an alternate bonus mix on an SDE, not one intended to substitute the original version on a much loved album.

Don't forget to remember!
(atmos PROMO!)
Please! DON't ask the cook!
KC

[zaval80]

The bottom two may actually be phase inverted. I've never understood why someone would flip that switch to begin with, but it's inverted on the 2015 mix of "The Ballad of J&Y" compared to the one on the 2010 67-70 (and probably all others before it) also.

It looks so on even closer inspection.

Could be the question of polarity in a certain circuit, not a switch.

[Kwai Chang]

The bottom two may actually be phase inverted. I've never understood why someone would flip that switch to begin with, but it's inverted on the 2015 mix of "The Ballad of J&Y" compared to the one on the 2010 67-70 (and probably all others before it) also.

It looks so on even closer inspection.

Could be the question of polarity in a certain circuit, not a switch.

I thought an earlier discussion was about a measurable fluctuation of vintage on-the-fly voltage!.
(Lord Reith???)
Grid flaw! Ohm!
OM!
Gooo Gooo Gooo Joob!
KC

[Lord Reith]

The EP version of SLY is eq'd isn't it? It sure sounds different from past masters.

For what it's worth I inspected the 1992 EP collection once and found a lot of No Noise being used. The most obvious and destructive example was the mono Blue Jay Way. But the set overall does have a nice use of eq. I think Peter Mew was very good at EQ but unfortunately was completely obsessed by NoNo.

[zaval80]

Probably NoNo was all the rage at the time.