DJLightray

On 7/12/2022 at 8:09 PM, currygoat11 said:

Yes @DJLightray you are RIGHT. I extracted Tom Sawyer from my own 40th anniv. audio CD (ordered from rush.com) and I hear obvious pops.  I extracted with Exact Audio Copy and it was accurately ripped, track quality 100% (no copy errors, perfect digital copy). I could easily hear the pop at 25 seconds, and the real obvious one at 28 seconds - that one is awful.

 

I analysed in Cool Edit Pro and yup, the artifacts are visible in the Spectral View.  I only looked at the 1st 30 seconds of Tom Sawyer and boom, mistakes are glaringly obvious.

 

(I also downloaded it from Amazon Music and the same pops are present)

 

 

 

Raw .WAV file here:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhLz3m2U6ZgegZwsv98MC0BXwGT3Sw?e=pwPue9

Thanks for looking at this, I like to know when I'm not imagining things!

On 7/12/2022 at 7:31 PM, Bahamas said:

DJLightray, I find your post very interesting!

 

I have a few questions and wish to make a few comments:

 

Are you sampling using a third party app or deliberately looking for defects? You will find them, in almost all digital media.

If you are just turning up the music for easy listening and finding "pops" and "skips" on a CD, it is one of the 1-in-a-thousand defects. You have a defective order and should request a return/replace.

 

(I don't work for, or in any way, am associated with the band) And I used to rip-burn in multiple formats to try and hear differences in sound.

 

I looked at the Backstage offers for the 40th release and it is a lot different than last year. But there is no "3 CD" release, per say. There was? There are no details about the sample rate, the hi-res recordings, etc. I don't see them now and they used to list them. It almost looks like the order and demand system has folded under the pressure. That's a good sign the release was very popular. Have you heard others speak about defects in the recordings?

 

Did you order from a third party? 

Yes, the guys have said they have no control over the marketing and releases, so we hear, but this might not be a RUSH thing - in my opinion, this is an ordering a product thing, no?

 

Reading your post, I listened again to my version of the 40th first CD, Moving Pictures. 

Marantz SR4023 amp with Stagg SHP-2300 headphones (not hi-fi by any means, but not junk?

 

In the past I have wound my own voice coils and built cabinets for speakers to experiment with different sound qualities. I have used tube amps and circuit amps to play songs and hear the difference.

Then (sadly) I lost hearing in one ear, four years ago. But it is amazing how sound still sounds "good", "off", "bad", etc. It's the recording, stupid! I tell myself.

So I am not trying to say what sounds better or not. Those days are gone, but defects? "Pops" and "skips" and "relics" and "loss"? Not in the Deluxe version, with the vinyl and the toy car. Not to my ears.

 

Your link is perhaps a bit "cathedral" sounding, or "Hall" sounding - but I didn't hear pops or skips on it. You were asking who has the same brightness? Tell me now, am I unable to hear obvious defects in recordings?

 

The snares in Tom Sawyer can sound like "clipping" and around 2:18 Alex maybe runs out of fingers, but the song was always one of their most challenging songs. That goes for the recording sessions, every...single time, no?

The references to forums about the release are about 56 pages long. Nobody mentioned an issue with a faulty recording that I read, just other stuff. Or did I stop reading too soon?

 

Curious as to your reply, not in jest, but in the opinion of the the recording and hearing faults. These guys really cared about the recordings!

 

Cheers :)

 

 

You can buy just the 3CD set here. This is definitely a legit release. 
Rush - Moving Pictures (40th Anniversary)[Deluxe 3 CD] - Amazon.com Music

The Giant deluxe package with vinyl and everything seems to have a different version of the album tracks.  So, this is a problem specific to the 3CD release. As noted above, by someone with the same set, this is not just a problem with my CD. I have done a lot of audio restoration work on old vinyl, so my ears are particularly sensitive to minor defects that you can probably only hear in headphones. But I can also fix this myself. 

Anyway my main question(s) were answered, that there isn't much to be done, since it appears the entire run of the three CD set has the same issue. TBH I don't care that much because I mostly just wanted the live stuff. I suppose I should now go in search of the McGee versions tho.

BTW I'm not placing any blame on anyone other than whoever was supposed to verify the test pressing of the CD at the label.  

On 7/8/2022 at 7:55 AM, Rush Didact said:

 

The folks over at the Steve Hoffman forums have discussed this release in detail. 

 

Wow, they sure have. A very long and meandering thread, indeed.  

On 7/8/2022 at 7:55 AM, Rush Didact said:

Anyways, you're not hearing things, that's just the way the CD was mastered.

OK, that answers my main question. I can probably remove the defects manually, there's only a couple dozen across the disc. I'm pretty sure if it was on all the CDs it would already have been discussed. Thanks!  Is the Magee remaster the Sector 2 one or is it something different?

11 hours ago, ninjadave said:

 

 

there is a pop/digital click at 10 sec on yours but i don't believe its on mine. could be CD manufacturing error likely. 

 

yours is brighter as well but that is the volume....that CD is defective but extremely minor. wonder if the whole lot are? 

 

i gotta admit, if this wasn't pointed out, i would have a really hard time hearing it with speakers, but on headphones, i might have picked up on it...curious if anyone else has any thoughts..... 

 

Here's where I hear artifacts on the part I uploaded. It mostly stops after that in this song (there are a couple near the end), but there are some in other songs throughout the disc. The problem is, once you hear them, you cannot unhear them.

00:10 - Digital artifact
00:24 - Thwap

00:27 - Bigger thwap (This one in particular is really noticable to me)

00:31 - Click

Also, I do mostly listen in headphones (Sony MDR 7506, which I use for my work doing music production and radio/Club DJing). In speakers a lot of these are not that noticable, but a few are. Mostly I can fix these by grabbing the offending samples from the other versions I downloaded of the 40th and adding 3db. But I shouldn't have to.  I still wonder why they would release the 3CD set at a different volume level than the deluxe set.

So I just got my 40th Anniversary Moving Pictures CD. This is the 3-CD version, not the Super Deluxe with vinyl and toy Barchetta etc. I immediately popped it in and hit play. Tom Sawyer starts and I'm like, sounds good! Wait. Was that a skip? And now a pop? What's going on? I take it out, wipe it off with a lens wipe, and play it again. Same thing. Shit. So I pop it in my PC and rip the CD. Sure enough, there are audible pops at the start of Tom Sawyer. I listen to my already ripped '97 remaster and there are not clicks or pops where I hear them on the new disc. Hm. You know, this is pretty decent sounding otherwise. It's as 'loud' as the Sector version but sounds clearer. Except for those clicks/pops. OK, well, let's see what an internet version from the 40th sounds like. I grab a version and play it, and immediately notice it doesn't have any clicks, but it also is about 3db quieter. It is *exactly* the same length as my new version (and for context, the original, '97 remaster, and Sector versions are all different lengths, as is the 40th. Why? Who knows). OK, well, let's try yet another version off the internet. Same thing, no weird sounds, but it's quieter. What is the deal here? 

Here's is the first half of the song from the 40th CD I received, with no processing, just the raw WAV file.  I was wondering, for those who have this, does yours sound this loud, and does the mastering EQ sound the same? And is it click-free? In this snippet, you can hear several during Geddy's first verse, particularly on the word 'arrogant'. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/158--w1u0bStYYZmknHrs3rVmt4064sFQ/view?usp=sharing

Do I have some kind of mutant CD? Is the 3CD version different than the deluxe version? Did they do a second run and change the mastering?  Did I get a counterfeit version?

<post moved to different topic>

So, I just did an A/B/C/D comparison of The Spirit of Radio from the original CD, the '97 remaster, the Sector 2 remaster, and the 40th anniversary remaster. Hoo boy. I can do an in depth analysis of these if people are interested, but the TLDR is that the 40th anniversary remix is BY FAR the worst version. It basically sounds like someone took a towel and threw it over the speaker. I don't know what they were thinking.  After that, if you adjust your volume, there isn't much difference between the other three versions. The 97 remaster adds a bit more sub and a little treble to the original, but is mostly just 4dB louder. This makes it sound a slight bit harsher at higher volumes but at normal volume it is a little clearer. The Sector remix is somewhere in between. It is slightly smoother than the '97 remaster, but it is compressed (not a ton but when you A/B them you can hear it), so there is a little less dynamic range. As for the 40th Anniversary remaster? It's like they cut the treble 20% and added in more 300Hz mud at the same time, and put the volume back to where it was on the original CD (which, admittedly, does give you max dynamic range, but when it sounds this bad, does it matter?).

I'm curious, what version did you (the OP) remaster? If I was going to try it, I probably would just start with the original un-adulterated version.

As a side note, I got this version for the live bonus tracks, and they are cool to hear, but they also sound muddy. I don't know what Terry was working with when he mixed them; it's very possible the source material was muddy to begin with (EQing for live sound is very different than EQing for recording).  
 

11 hours ago, Rush Didact said:

 

There wouldn't be much point.  ESL wasn't remixed for DVD like ASOH was, so VHS and DVD should be identical.  (Except the DVD sounds like a pile of ass because of the overwhelming compression Rick Chycki threw on it.)  I don't know about the laserdisc, if it has anything extra compared to the VHS, but it should also be the same mix.

I'm pretty sure it *was* remixed. The ESL liner in the Replay x3 does say "5.1 and stereo mix by Mike Fraser and Alex Lifeson'.  I did a quick A/B and the drums in particular sound way different, and not in a way that a simple remaster could account for. The snare is definitely eQ'd different, and the ride cymbal is much more prominent in the DVD version. I could be wrong of course, multi-band compression  can do weird things. I don't have the audio tracks separate from the video for ESL at the moment (like I did for ASOH) so I can't do an in-depth A/B at this time.

Well shit. I knew that some tracks on the audio version were from different shows (stages?), but for Big Money and some others they both just say they were from Birmingham, so I assumed (my bad) they would source the same audio for those tracks (to save time and (big) money on mixing and mastering). I was too focused on the EQ and mix that I didn't pay attention to the performance. Anyway, that explains a lot of what I noticed. However, that still leaves me wondering what was going on with the Sector version of the show, and why it runs at different speed than the original audio CD or the '97 remaster.  That also explains Alex's vocals on the audio CD being almost non-existent, and why they are buried in the DVD mix as well (since that is a remix more than a remaster). It also doesn't explain why the mix (not just EQ but actual mix) on the video versions don't come close to the mix on the audio-only CD.  Clearly they had access to the different soundboard tracks when they remixed the DVD version as Neil's hi-hat and ride cymbals are way louder in the DVD version. This does give me an idea though.

I've been re-ripping my Rush collection (and digitizing my laserdiscs). I hadn't heard of the Sector sets the other day, but my friend has Sector 3. When doing Big Money off of ASOH I noticed that the Sector version ran at a different version than the original CD and 97 remaster, but also didn't line up well with the DVD/laserdisc version even though the length from opening drum hit to final drum hit was the same.

So I grabbed Subdivisions  and compared the '97 to the MFSL Gold to the Sector version. There is very little difference between the MFSL Gold and the 97 remaster, other than the volume is a little louder on the '97. The Sector version definitely has more multi-band compression and a low mid boost. The odd thing is, once again, the Sector version is not running at the same speed as the '97 or MFSL gold version, and the speed difference is NOT linear. In Ableton I manually marked the first and last transients and using the "re-pitch" warping method I lined them up with the corresponding transients in the '97 remaster. To me this seems to indicate that when they went back to the tape for the Sector version, either the tape machine they used was not running at a consistent speed, or the tape has stretched out in places. It's not really noticeable to the ear but it is interesting. Hopefully they have a 'pure' digital copy of the original session tracks archived somewhere, in case the original session tape is degrading.

Anyway, as far as Sector vs '97, I think it depends on your listening environment. I would think the Sector versions would sound better in a car or cheaper earbuds. The '97s probably sounds better on a really home system or over-the-ear headphones like Sony MDR 7506's or higher end earbuds like the Sony XMRs.  In any case if you are happy if with the version you have the difference probably isn't great enough to justify the cost, IMO.

So, I finally got around to hooking up my old Pioneer CLD-D702 laserdisc player to my pretty new-ish video capture setup.  Two of the laserdiscs I have are A Show of Hands and Exit Stage Left. After ripping the ASOH laserdisc, I compared it to the DVD rip I made from Replay x3 and as everyone has been saying, the audio is noticeably better on the laserdisc.  But that got me thinking, how does it compare to the original ASOH 1989 CD, 1997 remaster, and Sector 3 versions? So, I happen to have the original CD, the remaster CD, and someone was kind enough to send me a copy of Big Money from their Sector 3 box. Maybe a lot of this has already been covered, but here's my take on all of this. For context, I do have some experience in the realm of music production and audio engineering and mastering, although I am not a master in this field.

1) The first thing I discovered is that the audio from the DVD and the laser disc both run at the same speed but are 0.2% faster than the original CD and 1997 remaster CD. That doesn't sound like a lot, but after 6 minutes, you are off by a full second. 

2) The second thing I noticed is that the audio for the DVD and laser disc is not running at a constant rate faster than the original CD and 1997 remaster, but the difference between the video and audio-only version seems to fluctuate. I slowed down the video versions so that the opening chord hits and final chord hits line up. But halfway through the track, the audio from the video versions is quite noticeably off from the audio-only versions.

3) As for the Sector version, it *also* runs faster than the original and 1997 remaster by the same percentage as the video versions. BUT unlike the video versions, if you line the first and least beats up (at least on Big Money), it stays completely in sync with the original and 1997 remaster. 

4) The main difference between the original CD and the 1997 remaster is volume. The 1997 remaster is 4 dB louder. That's a lot, but since the original CD left about 6dB of available overhead, increasing the volume with a good  compressor/limiter would be pretty transparent. There is a very slight midrange reduction and sub boost in the remaster but when you A/B them at relative volume it's pretty nit-picky. The remaster has more bottom but sounds a little 'colder'. I suspect people's preferences on which version is better is heavily dependent on their listening environment. 

5) The Sector version is definitely 'fuller' sounding. I had not heard this version and know nothing about how it was made, but my impression after a few listens is that it was done with pretty careful application of various parametric EQs and multi-band compressors/limiters. I am pretty impressed that they were able to get it to sound this way, especially reducing the harshness in the upper midrange but not reducing the high end clarity.

6) You can really hear Alex's background vocals on the video versions, especially on the Laserdisc version.

7) The crowd noise on the laserdisc version is VERY prominient. It's not quite "Rush in Rio" but it is a LOT louder than the DVD version and most of it is completely gone from the audio-only versions.

8) While the laserdisc audio is clearly better than the DVD audio, neither is close to any of the audio-only releases. Neil's kick drum, for example, is barely audible at times; At the very end of Big Money, there is a pause before the final all-in crash ending. On the audio-only versions, Neil's kick fill is quite prominent. You cannot hear it at all on the DVD or laserdisc versions. It's mostly a indistinct thump on most of the video when the band is full-on.

My original thought was to use the Sector audio to replace the audio on the DVD release but now I'm not sure, since I would have to spend a lot of time syncing the audio to the video where they drift. I almost wonder if that isn't why the Sector version runs faster than the original CD. Maybe someone had the same thought and then realized it was going to be a huge time investment?