Pink floyd the early years 1965-1972

[sb33334]

That's a pointed statement yes. Not in any way the kind of review I wanted to be making about any of this! The evidence in front of us speaks for itself unfortunately.

The band has this music a lot of us want to hear. The masters came off their digital workstation in modern 24 bit full dynamic range lossless format (as is the case now in this golden age of HD audio we live in). They took these and mastered them down to portable device quality and only released that. Then they came back with these 24 bit files that turned out to be copies of the portable mastering work. I'm nor sure what the hell else to call crap like that! Obviously there's some seedy marketing type that wants to keep hoarding the unstepped on audio for some future release. The only other explanation is epic clueless screwing up. I mean... did the person in charge of this get hit in the head really hard at some point?

This box set IS cause for celebration but it's stained by crap like this.

It goes without saying too that some of the material they decided to release in degraded form is still just night and day in better shape than we've ever heard it before. This is truly wonderful to have. It's also awesome that what are the lower fidelity "portable" formats now sound as good as they do. The lowest common denominator has really been raised along with the high mark. It just really rubs you the wrong way when someone comes along and says "Hold on, I'm not giving you the master. I'm going to set the quality switch a notch lower and you can only have that. Just because."

Is this kind of stuff going on with video releases too? Do you sometimes buy a bluray edition for your 4k screen and discover it's only a clone of the lower res DVD?

I wonder how this works out in the end too. Do they really get multiple sales this way? People actually coming back months or a year later and buying the 'new and improved' version? It looks for all the world to me that the end result is material never getting released or only getting released in degraded form at the end of the day. It used to be more fun looking for the best vinyl pressing when it was honestly difficult to produce good ones. This is just frustrating now.


The BBC stuff was at least an honest mistake. And genuine kudos to them for at least releasing it even if it was destroyed copies! Of course some of us realized they screwed up and didn't look hard enough. But it was still an honest mistake.

Spot on. Why tamper with the pure files!!!

[jimfisheye]

Yeah, so you get tickets for a concert.
You see the "golden circle" seats being sold for 3x the price.
Fair enough choice. I can pay more to be up close or be happy to at least be in the same room.
So I'm either looking at the folks up close and thinking "Must be nice. Wish I would have had extra cash for that." or I'm one of them - wooho!

Imagine paying for the good seats and getting to the show to discover the "VIP" seats are actually still in the balcony. "VIP" just meant the front row.
Then you look down at the front section on the floor and it's roped off and empty! They refused to actually sell any of those seats.

That's what this feels like.

[Markbot]

I'm quite enjoying these 24 bit versions.. They sound great on my Pono in my car and during those times when I'm too lazy (a.k.a. buzzed) to get of the sofa and spin the vinyl. If they were mastered at 24-96 it is a little disappointing that they were released at 24-44.1. I guess there is always room for improvement.

[meneerjansen]

[...] Sure, it would great to just release all of his work at the same resolution and bit rate of his remasters but that's not what the corporation decided to give us. [...]

Exactly: it's a decision made by the corporation that published the material. End.

[jimfisheye]

Jim - with all due respect I continue to have a problem with your posts due to the choice of words you use to describe the mastering process. I wonder how many other people are confused by things like "portable mastering work"? I know that Andy was when I asked him about it. Simply call it for what it is - mastering audio for CD or MP3. Mastering for portable devices is unclear to me and suggests certain MP3 downloads offered by iTunes that are specifically mastered for this medium.

For TEY audio Andy worked from numerous sources - from lossy MP3 (obviously BBC Flaming) to tapes that he transferred himself (96/24). Andy then worked on remastering the audio maintaining the resolution and bit rate. For the release of the box the result of his work was bumped down to 44.1/16 for the CDs. Now the result of his remastering has been bumped down to 44.1/24 for HD tracks (he had nothing to do with this, he didn't even know about it). Sure, it would great to just release all of his work at the same resolution and bit rate of his remasters but that's not what the corporation decided to give us.

Fair enough.
The thing I'm trying to describe is literally the mastering work that was a conscious decision. The decision to limit the dynamic peaks to raise the volume. The decision to brighten the high end with eq. The decision to use noise reduction (because that bright eq brought out the hiss more!).

These aren't done automatically for CD or mp3 because of specific limitations of those formats. That's why I'm calling this practice "Mastering for portable devices". I'm pretty sure everyone knows what portable devices are these days? CD and even mp3 doesn't automatically degrade things like this. Yes, they are limited compared to full HD formats but not anywhere near what many people think. Most of the "vinyl is superior to CD" experiences actually have their root cause in the mastering decisions made. That's why I'm not saying "CD" or "mp3". You could rightly call me an idiot for such a statement and find plenty of examples to disprove it. It's the mastering decisions made with portable device playback in mind.

What do you do. They make these crude devices that work better with squashed and brightened audio. That's a fine thing too. More music getting into more ears!

It's the throwing the baby out with the bath water thing. Those of us wanting the deluxe editions for the home system are getting a pretty 2nd class treatment here.

But this point:
"For the release of the box the result of his work was bumped down to 44.1/16 for the CDs."
Not in the box I bought it wasn't! I would have been more OK with that. The CDs in the box I bought have been dynamically limited, brightened, and hit with noise reduction vs. the same tracks on the Creation sampler! All stuff that goes way beyond comparing the same program reduced to CD res. Maybe Andy is not aware this was done to his work?

That would just give Jim more to complain about: yet another bait-and-switch and bumping up lower resolution audio to 96k. I don't see this happening.

Well yeah, if I'm being sold the HD edition and discover someone literally took the reduced version and put it into the higher quality container to masquerade as an HD edition!
Is that not the definition of bait & switch?
I'm pretty open to settling for shitty audio to hear something interesting when that's all there is. This is just messed up.

Maybe this box set and the download versions were never intended to be deluxe HD editions for the audio? That would be fair enough. Sure looked like they were though...

I think I do need to go beat my head against the wall!
And by that I mean move distortion around in this Dec 1967 recording.

[pinkaline]

So, I've followed this thread, and I'm wondering if I have this straight:

The tracks in question were mastered ONCE, with a view to making them sound optimal in the current major listening environments, which are earbuds, computer speakers, etc... (and also within the style of the 'loudness wars' and being amenable to compression)

From these masters come CD releases.

From these masters ALSO come the HD releases.

There was no specific mastering done specifically for the HD environment???

[jimfisheye]

It's the other way around.

Audio is produced to the highest standards possible with professional equipment first.

Now depending on what the end goal is, you might listen to your work on small speakers or a laptop to make sure you aren't producing something that requires an audiophile reference system to even listen to.

The output of the modern digital audio workstation (used for mixing and mastering) is HD. 24 bit 96k (sometimes people work at 192k). So an HD master is pretty much straight from the mastering desk to the consumer. (This is the short version. Yes, there is more to talk about there.)

HD audio (like HD video) is about reproducing real life. Real world dynamics with a home theater or 'audiophile' system.
Seen the 1812 Overture albums with the warnings about blowing up speakers in lesser systems? That's what we're talking about.

What's been going on in the industry since all these iThing devices and 'soundbars' and other portable digital devices have become more popular is to make an additional master with more compressed dynamics. That derives from the HD master. It's become SOP to use the CD format for that. The CD format doesn't force this. It's more limited than more modern HD formats but it's specifically this hyped mastering that is the complaint.

This is just what's been going on.
It's a bit of the wild wild west out there too and you can find examples that contradict all that.
You can put audio that makes you say "What the hell is that noise?!" in an HD container (like we do around here ) and you can put a pristine recording into mp3. And that HD still sounds like hell and the mp3 still sounds pristine (again, short version here).
We just expect to hear a flat real world dynamics recording when we see HD vs. a loud bright tight bundle of sound when we see a CD or mp3.

Everyone is happy when all formats are released.
Some of us feel left out when the HD master is not released.
The CD version in a HD package? That's a paddlin!
And some of us may not have had their medication yet earlier this morning.


For the record, these Floyd releases have been very much above the average for music releases! And that includes their CD versions.
It's just that they set the bar impossibly high with their history and I'm commenting with that history in mind.
As a consumer who has decided he wants to invest in the most deluxe version of the audio possible, this is most frustrating when they aren't offering that.

[pinkaline]

It's the other way around.....As a consumer who has decided he wants to invest in the most deluxe version of the audio possible, this is most frustrating when they aren't offering that.

OK so is this right?

Awesome HD master made. (24/96 is more than enough for human ears...)

Remastered for CD & other inferior formats..

That Remaster is then used to release HD files instead of using Awesome HD master?

[jimfisheye]

OK so is this right?

Awesome HD master made. (24/96 is more than enough for human ears...)

Remastered for CD & other inferior formats..

That Remaster is then used to release HD files instead of using Awesome HD master?

That's how it appears and that is solely what the bitching is aimed at. (Even though this is still good sounding stuff in the long and short of things.)

[pinkaline]

That's how it appears and that is solely what the bitching is aimed at.

Well sheesh.

I mean, it makes me think there's a problem within the organization.

Initially, there wouldn't be any extra expense in order to use the better files for HD, would there? The work had already been done...

But if someone fsked up and they went into production with the lower quality master, that might explain it.