New Update on Genesis 5.1 Reissues

I am quite a rookie around here. So my comments may sounds superficial.

But some stuff surprises me.

For instance, there were numerous comments about the Marino/Page remasters of the Led Zep material. When you read the threads, there seems to be a general agreement to the effect that the re-masters were a step back from the Diament masterings from the 80's.

Then somebody made a poll, and the remasters were the CLEAR winners.

Would it be possible that some people are just not open-minded regarding re-masters of their favorite CDs?

I remembered the Beggars Banquet SACD been criticized, partly because they corrected the speed on Sympathy for the Devil. I mean, they corrected it!

I have a deep love (yes!) for early Genesis material and I may have problems with Mr Davies remixes. But if the band agrees with him (and if Mr Hackett and Gabriel agree with him!), the least I can do is keep an open-mind.

And the fact that Mr Davies is here with us tell us something about the man and his ethics as well.

And, you know, the graph, the numbers: they are not a listening experience. They never were. They never will. And yes, numbers do lie from time to time.

(hopefully, you can understand my English!)

 

Nice post. Your english is just fine.

I agree that it is the band's doing more than Nick Davis, so we can't dump all over him.

I'll give the stereo remixes a shot. If I don't like them, I can go back to my originals. As I've said, I'm all over these for the 5.1 mixes.

 

I'm buying the remixes also. I'm excited to hear the 5.1 mixes. The few I've heard on the music videos DVD sounded great! Can't wait to hear them all.

Also, Nick Davis is an amazing engineer. Listen to XTC Apple Venus or Genesis' We Can Dance. Unbelievable recordings! He's not George Lucas in this case. That would be the band. I just hope they don't make these revisionist mixes the standard from now on. Hopefully the originals will stay in print.

 

Nick, thanks for chiming in! It's nice to hear comments from the source, rather than speculation.

Does anyone know whether the box set will be a limited release in general, or is it just initially limited for pre-order? I've already got ATOTT on order, and if I like that, I want to pick up the box set. I'm itching to get the bonus discs, as there are some really good tracks on them.

 

hey nick thanks for your responses

this batch of reissues is how i will get to know the genesis back catalogue so i appreciate you have tried to resist current market trends as much as possible. these are the only mixes i will know of as i am only of the age of knowing Genesis' 'hits' era (barely old enough for that even !!). your reponse gives me encoragement to check out these issues when available and hopefully making it to australia some time.

 

Perhaps Nick will be kind enough to return and answer this, but to my memory, I've not seen him or anyone representing Genesis say that the box set is to be a limited edition only. Only HMV.co.jp has posted on their website that the box set is a limited edition and, as a result, they have sold out. Again, however, I've not seen this confirmed anywhere, so I'm not sure where HMV.co.jp is getting this information. Perhaps they have a limited supply from the manufacturer at this time.

I remain hopeful HMV.co.jp will get additional inventory and offer the box set for sale again, especially since they were giving such a reasonable price. As soon as they do I will make updates to the list.

Best,
Josh

 

Nick, I am curious as to how the amount of limiting was chosen. Did you listen to the playback with no limiting at all and then slowly increase it by 1 dB until you got to 3 dB or was it arbitrarily chosen to be +3 dB? It sounds like you know that excessive limiting can "squash the life" out of the music. Is +3 dB of limiting just slightly squishing the life out of the music?

I would have thought that it's better to avoid the limiter entirely. Even if it allows you to use more bits, what's the benefit of those extra bits if the audio is compressed? Do those extra bits allow you to do things you couldn't do without them?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Thanks,
Kevin

 

yes- old fashioned though it might be- we used our ears. there was a range of limiting from about none at all (for some of the 'nonpeaky' tracks) to most of the tracks between 2 to 3.5 dbs- with an average i would say of 2.5 to 3.
as i said earlier getting the level up a bit does get the low level sounds out of the miasma of digital noise but yes in a way you could say that any limiting is detrimental. we felt that some was required to give us some comparisson to modern cds.

re the box set- it is not a limited edition- so hmv japan can order more in if they wish.
you can also go to the genesis website and order sacd +ntsc directly from there if you are interested.

 

Nick, we agree...

Members: We need to more careful with any comments that might be deemed to be "personal" in nature. You are welcome to discuss mastering [good or bad] all you want but, any comments which appear to be "personal attacks" on those performing mastering will be removed and such comments may result in thread closure.

We are indeed fortunate to have mastering professionals post as members here. As such, we need to demonstrate hospitality and a friendly discourse in our posts. Please consider this directive as formal in nature.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Bob & the SH Forums Moderation Team

 

Thank you Nick. . .I've shared this comment with the folks on the Genesis forum under the price list thread to hopefully reduce any additional confusion.

Best,
Josh

 

Thanks for that, nice to know that someone still uses the side appendages. I'm looking forward to hearing these, (the SACDs), especially the 5.1 mixes. Some of my favourite music is on this batch, (and the early Gabriel years).

 

Thanks Nick. That's good to know.

Josh, great job on the vendors list. Thanks for that, too!

 

Hi Nick... your responses are interesting reading...

One thing, I guess I don't really understand is the comparison to "modern CDs" all that much. I mean is someone really *not* going to play these discs once they've bought them because they have to turn their volume knob a bit more? I can swallow that more with "Greatest Hits" type releases but not on catalog reissues as much.

It just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. Personally, I'd rather see hi-res mixes where the complete and total objective is best sound quality possible.

Lastly... if you can land me primo seats in the first 10 rows for Columbus, Ohio... feel free to PM... I'm perfectly willing to pay face value!

 

Hmm...

At the risk of sounding ignorant to the challenges of marketing re-issues of a band that hasn't existed as a recording unit for a decade, I wonder who felt the need to have these discs sound comparable to "modern cds" and why? One of the difficulties I had with the remixes on the Platinum Collection, specifically the Duke and Abacab material, was there was now a contemporary "sheen" (for a lack of better description) layed on top of these mixes that altered the beautiful feel of the original recordings.

 

way to go Nick and thanks for you responses

I am rather new to this forum and have been reading different posts from time to time. I find it amazing that a person like Nick posts his comments in forums like this and as a Genesis fan from the early 70's I am just so happy that we are having an opportunity to hear the music in a new way. It might not be to every ones liking but it has us talking about the music. So hats off to you Nick for your input in getting us these surround mix's., I am really looking forward to these. I am even ordering box set 3 even though its not my favorite era of Genesis music as my favorite are the cd's that will be in Box 1 and the first 2 cd's from box 2.

 

"Next to impossible' is more accurate than saying 'they look exactly the same'. That's all I meant. Btw, if you wanna see something funny/shocking, the DE Squonk waveform (below) looks extremely different from yours, when opened with Audition. (And as with yours the mp3 of same, not shown, 'appears' at first glance identical to the wav...but differences are easy to see with toggling, and then in side-by side once you've seen what changes when toggling). Which only goes to show how different the exact same track can appear, depending on how the software displays the data.

No one said there were no differences in loudness. No one said the difference was due to mp3. I don't know what argument you're responding to, but it ain't mine. My point was more along the lines of the issue discussed here:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=7834&st=0&p=77265&#entry77265

where people were trying to predict the sound of different mp3 settings by evaluating pictures of waveforms and spectra.

 

Nick is obviously the one to answer this (or possibly Genesis themselves), but I don't think the concern is that someone that buys it won't listen to it because it's too quiet. I think the point is that someone will listen to it, if it is a louder CD, and say "Hey, this new remaster sounds powerful" and sing its praises, thus persuading others to buy it as well. While, if it wasn't 'loud', that same person, would be posting on the net about how lousy the remaster is. Unfortunately, not everyone shares the same view as most of the SH.tv crowd as to what sounds good. In fact, we're almost certainly the minority. I would imagine that a compromise like this is intended to please both worlds to the extent that is possible. Like it or not, from a marketing perspective, that makes sense.

*edit* Note: the phrase "Like it or not" in the above sentence was not an intentional pun.

 

does cduniverse have the best price at $25 for these discs ?

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7402261&cart=509928558&BAB=E

 

I clearly stated twice that my shots are zoomed in to 1:512 in SoundForge. If you don't know what that means, it's that you're seeing about 12 seconds of music. Your shot is zoomed out to the entire six and-a-half minute track in 480 pixels. (low resolution?) My shots were meant to compare the three tracks using the same settings. Comparing that to some completely different setting seems worthless to me?

Plenty of folks have said just that. AndrewS, for one: "Is there any point, really, in looking at the waveforms of the 128K MP3s?" I was stating in my reply to him, yes there is. You replied to that statement, by quoting it, with; ".wav and 128 kbps .mp3 waveforms will only look 'exactly' the same at low resolution." I seemed to me you were agreeing with AndrewS' post, not replying to something on hydrogenaudio.org. . . .

 

Depends. I got mine from CD WOW for under $20, but they are PAL DVD's.

 

Thanks for the responses here, Nick.

Did you use any NR on the new mixes? My biggest complaint about some of the 1994 "Definitive Editions" is the amount of NR that was used. Hence, I don't follow the band's thinking that consumers already have decent versions of the stereo mixes available, but perhaps Genesis are unfamiliar with might be thought of as "picky audiophile" type thinking. That is certainly understandable.

 

So, just go to the Genesis Store and buy the box and choose NTSC for the option and it is the sacd set ?

 

Not really, if you include the shipping. Amazon is listing them for $28.98 with free shipping if you select it. Buy.com has them for $25.46 plus $1.90 shipping. Bestbuy is listing them for 24.99 plus shipping ($1.49) and, for me, tax.

I might wait until someone actually receives one from CD WOW to find out if the DVD really is PAL.

 

Keep posting Nick. Most are really polite and appreciate your knowledge.. Thanks for the helpful info..

 

Actually, I just found out that CD universe is running another one of those $10 off $30 offers if you use Google checkout (until 4/9). So if you order 2 of these, it might (so far) turn out to be the cheapest option.