I've Concluded I Don't Like Nick Davis' Work

This Wherehouse 33% off thing gave me a chance to pick up some Genesis "Definitive Edition" Remasters cheap and really compare with other pressings. I have spoken about certain albums and comparisons before, but here's what was revealed today:

Three Sides Live

The DE has the midrange sucked right out of it. The Virgin/Charisma beats the pants off of it. (Side Note: I recently compared and found the original V/C is the about the same as the WEA Atlantic mastered by Barry Diament on disc one. Disc two of the Atlantic is better than the V/C, but of course the 4th side is different. Still, that third side sounds better on the Diament mastered Atlantic than the V/C).

Anyway, the V/C beats the DE, hands down.


Trick Of The Tail

Had dumped the DE before and now it's easy to see why. The original Atlantic (again one of the WEA pressed gems) beats it. Midrange is again sucked right out of the DE. Davis seems to use the same mastering style on all the DEs.

Abacab

Same problem. The DE has the deep midrange sucked out and the lower treble bands tapped slightly. It works better here than on the above examples, but failed in comparison to the original Atlantic (WEA pressing).

Seconds Out

He did less with this than the others, but the original Atlantic (WEA) beats it. Better midrange. DE has slightly tapped treble.

All of these are roughly the same in volume as the original issues, but there seems to be some compression of the signal or something. I don't know how he does it but he makes things sound hard and digital. He just sucks the midrange right out of these recordings and the bottom end suffers a bit as well. Especially on the first three examples.

There has been some praise of the DEs here. The idea I've seen is that the DEs sound like the original vinyl. I don't have any Genesis vinyl any longer but I don't buy this. I think Davis uses a certain style and I doubt it's based upon comparing vinyl with his mastering. He has almost no sense of midrange at all, to my ears. Everything sounds very similar.

In a way, it isn't really his fault. The albums above were all recorded well to begin with. I guess he had to do something. But, IMO, he'd have been better off just running them flat through tubes and calling it a day.

If you are living with the DEs, you owe it to yourself to track down some older pressings. And if you are waiting on the 5.1 SACDs, you have more faith in this guy than I.

Too bad some Genesis fans worship the ground upon which this guy walks.

At least Jaimie has called him out!

 

Expect Nick to drop by.....as he did before!

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?p=922121#post922121

 

I just got an older CD of Duke (made in Japan Atlantic) and it blows the DE disk away.

I agree with you about ABACAB too although the older CD sounds like it's from a higher generation source.

 

I made some comparisons between the original Atlantic CD and remaster of Duke in this thread, and have temporarily restored the audio clips I had linked to. I had withdrawn them about a week after submitting the original post for space and bandwidth considerations on my server.

As before, I'll maintain that I don't think any of the "Definitive Remasters" I have listened to are bad, even if some of them might not be as good as they could be.
I think the remastered Abacab compares favorably with the original vinyl, and if I'm in the right mood I may even find myself liking the remastered Duke due to the extra bass.

 

I'm inclined to agree with you about the source on _Abacab_. The Atlantic CD is a bit dull. But you can really crank it and the sound is right there and ready to roll. The DE is futzed with too much.

The Atlantic (Made In Japan) of _Duke_ is fantastic. Btw, it is digitally identical to the Atlantic (JVC US pressing). I have tested them on EAC. They are the same. However, both of these are just ever so slightly beat by the Atlantic (US WEA pressing), IMO.

 

Yes, I know, and I hope he does again.

 

Great clips. "Turn It On Again" doesn't suffer as bad on the DE as certain other tracks. "Behind The Lines" explodes on the original Atlantic. It sounds a bit suffocated on the DE.

I agree the DEs are not bad. Well, except Trespass, but as discussed recently that may be a bad UK tape and not just no-noise, because the MCA wipes the floor with the V/C. Although the DE is even worse!

 

Actually the original Duke CD has more bass than the remaster.

 

I think I agree. I guess I'm not in one of my "DE Duke is better" moods today after all.

As for "Turn It On Again," I deliberately chose to sample that part of that song so that I could directly compare the original Duke with Jamie's audio-clip comparison in this thread between the remastered CD and the same song on the Definitive Collection.

 

Yeah, it took me a while to hear it but when I did it was like night and day. What happened for me was that I was comparing "Misunderstanding" on the DE and original Atlantic. I was having trouble determing much difference. Then, somehow I played back each from the beginning and "Behind The Lines" just *exploded* right out of the gate on the Atlantic, wheras the DE sounded compressed or something. It just sounded stifled in comparison. From then on I began to understand the differences better.

_Duke_ is a weird sounding, but IMO there are two excellent pressings on CD:

1. The WEA US pressed Atlantic cannot be topped, IMO. It is flat as a pancake and this album needs that, IMO. If you try to open it up, Phil's hi-hat sounds tinkered with. It has to be tight as can be to sound right.

2. The Japanese pressed US Atlantic or the JVC US pressed Atlantic. These are both fantastic and exactly the same. Digitally identical. But they have just a *tad*...and I mean a **tad** more crispness to them and I think that causes them to lose to the WEA pressing. But ymmv. Either one beat the DE. I would suspect most here could agree on that.

 

Agreed. To my ears, Davis' typical mastering style seems to be:

Less bottom end.
Even less midrange.
Tap some treble bands a hair.

Walla... "remastered."

 

Nick worked on XTC's "Nonsuch," "Apple Venus" and "Wasp Star" so he gets a lifetime pass from me even if he replaces all Peter Gabriel's vocals with Phil Collins.

 

Jeff, hope you don't mind me correcting you, but it's "voila" (a French expression
literally meaning “look there!”)

 

I assume this is the same Nick Davis who co-produced/engineered "We Can't Dance" and engineered a-ha's "East Of The Sun West Of The Moon". No lack of bottom end on those records.

I think the original recordings sonic characteristics should be retained, unless there was a disaster during the original LP mastering. SEBTP and TLLDOB sounded warm and full, and a definitive version should still have this characteristic, no? I cringe when they try and make a 1973 recording sound like a 2005 recording, or try and EQ everything into consistency. It's tampering with history.

 

Haha, Peter, thanks, but I am familiar with the correct term in French. That was just my sort of "Americanized" version.

Hope I didn't confuse you.

 

I agree but Davis didn't do that with the 1994 remasters. I just don't care for his EQ choices. Somehow he makes things sound hard and digital to my ears. Now the stuff about to be issued... well, we'll see, but the stuff I've heard from _The Platinum Collection_ fits your description a bit.

 

I've decided that I agree with you Jeff! I just put in Foxtrot tonight and I took it out after "Time Table". There's definitely way too muc NoNoise going on here. I really wish I had kept my original Atlantic CD for comparison. But there's simply no "breath of life" here at all. The high end has been completely stripped away.

I didn't realize how much Davis messed with things until I pulled out my ABC(!) American vinyl version of Trespass several months ago. I haven't listened to the remaster since. Those gorgeous twelve string guitars sound incredibly lifelike next to the dead quiet remaster. To think I used to believe these "Definitive Edition" remasters were definitive...

 

Sorry to doubt you Jeff. I mistakenly thought it was illiteracy!

 

Ditto! I'll petition to have him made a saint if he calls Partridge and Moulding up and coaxes them back into the studio.

 

Oh, I suspect you could find a compendium of illiterate remarks from me in here, Peter. My hands have often been prone to typing velocity that leaves little room for mental equilibrium. So don't give up hope!

 

So true. And they aren't *that* bad, so it's easy to be a bit lazy and not research the Genesis catalog. But I'm glad I did! Some of those early Atlantic and Virgin/Charisma CDs are superb. And the MCA CD of _Trespass_ is like finding GOLD!

 

Finally got the _Foxtrot_ DE again to compare to my Virgin/Charisma (CASCD 1058).

Good LORD! What a difference! The DE doesn't even touch it.

 

Too right. With help from Jeff, these are chunks from Watcher Of The Skies; first half is from a Virgin/Charisma disc, the second half is the DE.

Watcher Of The Skies

 

well what can i say- apologies to those of you who dont like my work, and thanks to those of you that do.- a kinder topic titile would have been nice!
when working on the genesis remasters, the eq'ing was done at abbey road by a mastering engineer (chris blair) and i was responsible for the de'clicking and no- noising (can i say that phrase here?) and compiling the albums.- dont forget i'm a producer/engineer- not a mastering engineer.
tresspass and foxtrot were both done from second generation 1/4inch tapes i'm afraid as the original masters were lost.- in retrospect tresspass is overdone on the no-noise- my inexperience at the time i guess- though the tape i was working with was in a terrible condition.
its funny people complain about a lack of bass and that 'if it was transferred flat it would have been ok', as this is just not the case. many of the master tapes are lacking a lot of bass end. the master of 'duke' has absolutely no bass on it at all and we had to add a lot of bottom end onto it in the transfer process as without it it sounds very wrong (so much so that i think there must have been a monitoring fault in the mixing studio).
throughout the process i was comparing the tracks to the original cd's (not to vinyl) and i thought they sounded a lot better. we were concerned that they weren't too 'squashed' onto the new cds.
glad some of you like my xtc and genesis work- i had also forgotten about aha!!
i really dont think anyone 'worships the ground i walk on'!!- and the 5.1 mixes are going to sound really good-working on 'wind and wuthering' at the moment, and it sounds great!!