Remastered Loveless streaming on The Grauniad
Yes you read that right...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/may/01/my-bloody-valentine-loveless-stream
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cheers, but I think I'll wait for my cds to arrive
I've waited four years, I can hang on a few more days
I'm actually floored by this remaster
The way the lyrics and guitars have been mixed on Loomer... Like the lyrics are floating about the guitars... Fucking incredible. And I know that didn't make any sense, but that's because I'm listening to Loveless for what feels like the first time. It's a good feeling.
It hasn't been remixed.
I probably should have elaborated
on that the copy I've been listening too was ripped to my computer in a really rubbish format so this remaster sounds really ethereal
I honestly couldn't tell the difference
I looked at the waveforms compared to the original CD master and all I could observe with the 'remasters' was that it was louder. It doesn't surprise me really - I'm actually looking forward to the Isn't Anything because the original master for that was shit.
Read Kevin Shield's remarks about the remastering job
in the Pitchfork interview. It will make you all feel like tone deaf idiots. He makes a good case too on why remastering makes sense for albums's from that era and also how it can be done wrong.
Here's the interview for those interested
http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/8809-kevin-shields/
You're very quick to assume auteur
We're not tone deaf idiots. I've listened to the remasters and I can't pick the difference. There are probably a few small things but I just... can't tell. It's louder, that's about it. Also albums from the early 90's are some of the best sounding albums - Chapterhouse - Whirlpool, Pale Saints - In Ribbons are all great sounding albums on CD. All you need to do is turn them up on your equipment and wow! Remastered albums.
He also never explicitly states that the remaster 'sounds better', he pretty much says he's made some adjustments and he also pulls the famous analogue tapes sound 'warmer' bullshit on us to sell the remasters.
Tone deaf is such a weak fucking argument too - the people that call others tone deaf are probably 'tone deaf' themselves and in denial.
Have you listened to the analog master though?
Honestly, it does sound noticeably different. I love it, and actually prefer it to the digital.
Yes, I have
It sounds different, but it doesn't sound better.
I disagree
world keeps spinning
dont think they called anyone tone deaf, it was just a comment on shields level of attention to detail
It is louder and that is the whole point, he has made it louder but not to the level where information is lost and distorted like many other remasters. He makes the point that the way CD players work at an optimum within a certain threshold of loudness, that seems to make sense to me as many early cds have a weird quietness to them that just doesnt seem to go away no matter how loud its played (hard to explain but im pretty sure it is widely reported phenomenon) loveless always sounded good enough to me though so dont know
Weird quietness?
Do you mean dynamics?
No from what I've read the dynamic range is the same
But he says in the interview that cd players and other digital devices don't process quiet sound as well so he boosted it whilst keeping it within the range free of digital distortion. No idea if what he is saying us true but it is certainly my experience that early CDs have a quiet flat and lifeless quality to them and it's not just because they aren't played loud enough or they are less compressed
When I put together mixes on audacity...
...it is noticeable that the tracks from older CDs are far quieter than those from more recent releases. You end up needing to amplify them to get the sound levels right across the mix. I guess this is what you're talking about?
I remember PJ Harvey's Dry being ludicrously quiet.
I'm sure there's better articles and pieces about the issue but here's a start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
The best example I can think of is my old cd copy of Unknown pleasures being uber quiet and the remaster of closer being waaay louder.
I can honestly say as a total sound nerd
I can't fucking wait to hear these
This reminds me of the Raw Power argument
which, I think we can agree, the shitty original Bowie version is actually better than the remastered version.
Not that there's a whole lotta difference, eh. A little more clarity, a little more drums...uhm, same album. A little less charm...
Of course I'm gonna spend money on the remastered MBV albums...not because I think it's gonna be some massive revelation, but simply because I want to put money in the MBV coffers. They deserve it.
And if it sounds better, awesome. And if it doesn't, fuck it. It's MBV.
A lot of early CDs do sound a bit shite
I have the LP of Loveless though and it sounds great, does it improve on this at all?
They don't sound shite
You just need to turn it up. They're just not compressed to shit - see Lush, Chapterhouse, Pale Saints et al.
I've tried that.
It isn't all of them, a lot of punk / hardcore / indie stuff from the 80s can (not always) sound pretty shoddy on CD but the LP from around the time sounds fine. Hard to explain, it isn't quiet so much, more thin? Listen to Black Flag CDs compared to the LPs for an example, it seems to mainly effect small labels. Probably cheap CD mastering and pressing I guess. As far as Loveless goes, the CD always sounded fine to me from what I have heard of it, I only own the LP version personally and they sound about the same. I shall be checking out this remaster (probably via a mp3 download) to see what is what however.
but...the more you turn them up, the more background 'hiss' you get
without doubt!
IF you have a shitty DAC
I have an external DAC therefor no noise
Am I going to be able to tell the difference on my very bog standard stereo?
Not compressed to fuck on MP3 you're not.
CDs are pretty flat to start with to be honest.
I don't see how there is much room for 'compression'.
They're not flat at all
Newer CD's are because of compression.
They're only about a millimetre or two thick.
How much flatter can they get?
vinylz r warmur
I'm waiting for the cassette
ura hipztur
* 2 different kinds of 'compression ITT *
I'll be playing the CD on my bog standard stereo.
Posted this in the hi def audio thread.
Just saw this interview with Kevin Shields (http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/8809-kevin-shields/) . He says the following:
"...So, of the two Loveless CDs that are coming out, one of them is exactly the same as the original, but everything's brought up to zero without crushing it with digital limiting, which essentially takes all the information and chops off the spiky bits-- transients-- that you don't hear as much as you perceive subconsciously. Those are the things that make you feel connected to the music."
He's talking bollocks right? 'Subconsciously'
not necessarily
not that i'm keen on elaborating - this thread is on course to be an epic mindfuck. but i do kind of get what he's saying, and i wouldn't doubt that someone as meticulous as he is and who's experimented with the extremities of sound as much as he has would know what he's talking about.
Poor argument
Just because he's wasted the last 20 years of his life doing nothing*, doesn't mean he should be believed now about subconscious perception.
* partial joke
partial joke maybe
but i wish you'd stop posting.
The thing is
he's much like a wine expert on his chosen subject. I remember a great study a few years back where people were able to distinguish between poor and great wines on the basis of expert knowledge and training, but that in practice, the difference in perceived quality in lay/untrained individuals was absolutely minute.
So it's one of those situations where you curse yourself with your tastes. Shields is listening to these records and all he's doing is listening for the tiny differences that make zero impact on 99.5% of listeners. In general, these improvements don't make the record 'better' as far as most people are concerned, but they do tailor it to a certain type of listener who's going to be looking out for this sort of thing.
I'm not sure he understands that though, so he's coming up with ideas like 'subconscious' enjoyment of the music to come to terms with it. It's not that other people's enjoyment of these things is subconscious; it's that his is horribly, crushingly overconscious.
I don't debate that he knows what he's talking about/doing
but the idea of subconsciously experienced sound increasing someone's connection with music is equivalent to musical homeopathy
i thought
compression worked by taking out the bits that we "hear" anyway, though subconsciously is a bollocks way of putting it.
It hardly needs to be said, but the detail Shields is discussing
is virtually only discernable when you're under the influence of drugs, or using an exceptional sound system. More the former.
I can vouch for this
I don't know why he says subconscious, that's normally reserved for those saying digital is worse for removing everything above a certain frequency, where as he is talking about how people boost volume past a threshold which results in the top of the waves being chopped off, losing original detail and resulting in the harshness you get with squarer waves, it's not subconscious any non audiophile would probably be able to tell
He's kind of saying that these are things
that it's -possible- for everyone to hear if they listen for them (and largely, I think he's right). My feeling is that because they're important aspects of the sound to him, he's assumed that they're important to everyone else (hence 'subconscious enjoyment')
I don't know much about this
so might end up sounding like some embarrassing audiophile idiot, but i don't think it's all that crazy to talk about frequencies that aren't clearly heard, but can still be felt, like certain bass sounds maybe?
Also, is it possible for frequencies that you can't hear to still interact with and affect those that you can? Dunno.
It's a while since I learned about all this
but yeah, I believe that unheard frequencies do have an affect on those that you do hear. It's for this reason that some people want formats with a better frequency range than CD, even though CDs can carry frequencies higher than 20khz (limit of human hearing).
I think, anyway.
Gracias senor ding dong
I have no idea what's true or not in these threads anymore, but at least i don't feel like a complete dunce for it.
In terms of their coming thru a speaker, it's possible for them to interact for sure but usually in the sense of causing unwanted distortion and wasting energy moving the speakers in a way that doesn't actually produce any audible/feelable sound
hence the argument about hi definition sound in brightonb threads
I changed my settings for ripping cds onto itunes the other night
so it includes frequencies below 10hz or something stupid like that, but also stuff should be 320kbps now (the default was 128 or something, that sounds a bit low doesn't it?!).
Getting a bit annoyed now, i just want to listen to future days without worrying about all those subconscious ferquencies i might be missing out on :(
but will it sound good on my phone's loudspeaker!?
Oh the alternate will sound lovely and warm through a phone
I assure you, it's remastered!
To be honest
instead of all this technical / remaster / whatever the fuck crap, can Shields not just get on with making AND RELEASING something new? I have Loveless on tape and it will never mean as much to me, or sound better in whatever new form as it did then, listening to it full blast on my old Sony Walkman.
I found out the other day
I've only ever heard Loveless on 128kbps aac. It was ripped off my cd copy back when I had no idea about differing MP3 quality/didn't care. To be honest, I just turned up the stereo and played the intros to Only Shallow and I Only Said on my low kbps version then the remasters and the difference was only minor. I have alright speakers before you say/bog standard Denon stereo.
my mp3 copy, i found out a few years back
was 96kbps mp3. i only had 256Mb of space on my phone's MMC card back then.
:D
Anyone else find it really funny that KS went into such detail about why these remasters were needed
and then the first place they offer them is via an online stream?
it's pretty funny
more about blog politics than anything else though
for those that can't hear it
listen to the tambourine in the first few seconds of 'blown a wish'.
in all of the tracks the interraction between the vocals and the rest of the sound is completely different.
the live stream thing isn't really an issue - they are on soundcloud so are probably cd quality wav files.
subconscious perception of music is massively important. read up on psychoacoustics.
no
compelling argument mate
Psychoacoustics isn't about the subconscious perception of music
it's about sound perception. Which makes it explicitly about the conscious perception of music: i.e. what you hear/perceive.
it is
when people 'perceive' a difference but don't know the cause of it.
learning about psychoacoustics will help take from subconscious into conscious.
lots of people will prefer one sound clip over another when put to a blind test. some will consciously know why from experience / learning whatever. others will be unaware as to why they prefer one over the other.
etc etc.....
You're talking about two different things
hearing a difference between two sounds is one thing. There's nothing subconscious about that.
Musical preferences is a whole other topic. Psychoacoustics is concerned with the general machinery of the ear and brain; go into preferences and you're into individual differences. Pick up a copy of Moore's seminal textbook on the psychology of hearing and there's barely a word written about likes and dislikes.
Sure, one of the goals of applied psychoacoustics is to produce excellent sound quality (for example, in acoustic space design) but perceived preferences aren't used to judge this. In this case they actually use models of human heads.
``n all of the tracks the interraction between the vocals and the rest of the sound is completely different.``
Completely different? Get a grip Kevin.
This is what I was talking about further up thread
they DO sound different together. Yeah hyperbole, whatever, I don't think it's Kevin that needs to get a grip here.
``Completely``
or just maybe a tiny bit, if you have the right speakers at the right angle at the right temperature in the right mood at the right time in the right space with the right bitrate at the right quantity and the right quality and the right subconscious?
yes completely different
to me. on any system, in any situation, at any quality.
yes the actual notes played / performance of the musicians is identical. the way in which they interract with each other, and therefore picture they form as a whole is completely different.
``therefore picture they form as a whole is completely different.``
Think some people need to look up `completely` in the dictionary.
why would there be any subconcious difference though, he said in that interview
"...exactly the same as the original, but everything's brought up to zero without crushing it with digital limiting, which essentially takes all the information and chops off the spiky bits-- transients-- that you don't hear as much as you perceive subconsciously"
As the original was even quieter their wouldn't have ever been the digital limiting that he thinks causes subconcious differences (im still confused about why he said this, as digital limiting can be heard very consciously but still)
unless it is the cd players not processing quiet stuff as well bit that he mentioned
They might have uploaded WAV files to Soundcloud
But it's streaming out 128kbs mp3s regardless.
If any of you have the CD remasters prior to release, what's the packaging?
Is it digipak with a detailed booklet, essays and photos similar to The Beatles remasters? Or is it cheap'n'nasty plastic cases?
If it's digipak, will buy. If not, then I'm downloading FLACs to compare with my original CDs. I will be getting the vinyl when that's released in the Summer, either way.
Looking at the Pitchfork article on them
they're digipaks:
http://pitchfork.com/news/46345-listen-to-an-unreleased-my-bloody-valentine-track-check-out-what-the-reissues-look-like/
love it when people think remastered stuff sounds different.
SUCKERRRRRRZ.
Once again
you are a guiding light for the sheep of the world.
Anyone interested in seeing how the albums have been reevaluated, or will they just get 5*/10.0s accross the board...?
Does it still sound like it's playing
on a really rubbish record player that keeps slowing down and speeding up?
I hope so
:D
The remaster is much improved and I'm loving it. You really can hear the difference. However, I can't tell the difference between the two remastered versions.
well i prefer the 1991 version, but not really because of sound issues
i think it's very nice of Kevin Shields starting and taking the major role on the remastering instead of some distributors' pressure on the label to rerelease remastered versions so they can keep their dirty system going on and fucking up the small bands/artists and hiring some celebrity engineer to do the work...
I'm not tone deaf, neither an audiophile... but the whole mastering it's really complicated for people who don't work regularly, so we just understand stuff as "loud", "quiet", "compressed" etc. I just don't like remasterings because the way of mastering in 1991 is one and in 2012 is other, i think it's nice to listen to a record by knowing the trends of the times, it's easier to understand the context too.
But just to know that Kevin Shields' is doing that so people who are used to listen to shitty quality downloads (the remastered version already leaked?) it's already something to praise.
This Pitchfork interview also... really good, but nice to read a interview where the band talks about economic implications around them and not the same old answers
oops
* can get a nice quality on the mp3 versions (either downloading ilegally or buying)
the discs are labelled the wrong way round!
and there's a noticeable glitch on the new analogue one.
http://thepowerofindependenttrucking.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/mbv-loveless-2012-remasters.html
Kevin Shields is going to go nuts! You can hear the diffs on Spotify.
This probably means people have been reviewing the disc that sounds the same as the old disc and saying it sounds better.
HAHAHAHA!
Idiots!!!
If this is true, this really is brilliant
it sounds exactly as the guy describes on spotify
noticeable glitch n all!
I doubt anyone would've given a shit if it was any other ablum.
oh no...
I'm feeling really sorry for Kevin right now...
my Loveless cd hasn't arrived yet
I pre-ordered it from hmv more than 14 months ago, but they're currently saying it's out of stock - wonder if that is due to a product recall. Might cancel my order and hold off until all this is sorted (Isn't Anything arrived yesterday from Amazon at least).
So on Spotify...
the tracks labelled 'DAT' are actually the analogue remaster?
That glitch must be the sacrificial lamb Shields referred to... still pretty poor not to get it dealt with.
Is that supposed to be on the digital one
He boosted the volume and it clips in one song
good Quietus interview
http://thequietus.com/articles/08745-kevin-shields-interview-mbv-my-bloody-valentine
That balance of feeling, energy and ideas all together, it didn't happen that much. I'd love to find a way... in fact I'm hoping I can in this period of time, but I don't know if I will. That's the sad part. I'm trying to figure out a way of gaining control over myself. Trying to train myself, like a horse I can ride. Because I feel happier when I'm more productive. And I would like to be happier, so I'd like to be more productive. I mean, not doing things is quite soul-destroying...
Expected...
...and completely deserved.
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16605-isnt-anything-reissue-loveless-reissue-eps-1988-1991/
Wish they'd taken more time to discuss the remastering
and what the differences are. But to be honest it's the EP collection that mainly interested me, and it's bloody great.
re: the EP collection
I have them all on original vinyl but have been pondering the remastered CD upgrade. Worth it for the sound quality alone?
It sounds pretty good to me
Though I'm not sure an upgrade is necessary if you have the originals.
he's taken a whole paragraph there...?
and said the difference is minimal. what more do people want?
* three whole paragraphs, actually...
really wish Pitchfork reviews had comments,
just because I'm pretty sure the first one would be, "OK, but do they have any liner notes?"
Sorry DiS, but...
Pitchfork Review of ReMasters > DiS Review of ReMasters
Loveless is probably the ultimate album that I have never, and will never, understand.
I've listened to it countless times and not a single second of it has grabbed me.
Don't get it.
Yeah you do
You're just not giving yourself enough credit.
Let me rephrase that to `I don't like it`, then.
Fair enough, but you should have probably quit listening
after the first couple of times rather than going on to countless listens
I'll buy the EPs
because I've only ever had sub-standard mp3 copies.
this whole remastering business has been a colossal waste of time, though. pushing the level close to 0dB and eliminating transients is just a concession to a poor-quality format. louder and less detailed.
the only good cases for remastering are the records that suffered in the early days of CD mastering after being originally mastered for vinyl (prime example: The Beatles remasters).
The Smiths
those remasters are the only ones that have been a significant discovery for me.
Probably if I hadn't been told which CD was which I wouldn't have noticed with Loveless although the both of them still sound wondrous to me and I'm just sad for people who don't get this = total genius.
Do people not realise there are unreleased tracks on that EP collection - sent me into ecstacy anyway!
There re no notes with Loveless - didn't Kevin have a 2 year writers block on these? I guess it was terminal, as we don't get anything. Good grief they could have transcribed his interview with Quietus!
Listening
its a bit louder, doesn't change how dull this album is (WHOAAAAAA)