Jon Anderson's Animation - Check *THIS* out!

Did I make a spelling error? That is so unliek me.

 

How do you know *why* he keeps the Yes flame burning? I am sorry but you really have no busines speaking of the motivations of Jon Anderson unless he has told you as much. Does the idea that he may be driven in some part by pride and a geniune love for his art really strike you as out of the relm of possibility? As an artist I can tell you that not all artists are driven purely by profit.

A non touring year? Sure about that?

Perhaps he did not spend hours listening to that CD and aproved it. I don't know nor do you, but that hardly means he is not concerned about cutomer satisfaction. One does not neccessarily disregard quality just because one deligates certain responsibilities to others. And it may very well be a case of age and concerts getting the best of his ears. He is what? 62?
Again, until Jon Anderson personally chimes in I will reserve judgement on Jon Anderson

 

Everybody...

there has been written documentation of Jon signing off on this....that's all we know....Please...let's keep this thread on focus....All the concerts you have attended and records you have bought (that means me as well!) cannot change the situation...We are faced with a horrible situation....we all wanted this LP out. It is now on CD....back in print...and it sounds horrible.

Let's not let this thread devolve....He signed off on it and it sucks...end of story...motivations aside, that's what we're left with....

Something constructive out of this would be Jamie's suggestion....If he could get the rights to do this, perhaps we should start a fund to make this happen...(investors so to speak)

 

Hey, I’m not meaning to judge Jon or upset anyone in here especially a fellow forum member. So I’m sorry if I’ve rankled you Scott. It is not my intention to rankle anyone. I’m just contributing to a thread I feel I can talk in. I'm offering my ideas on this snafu.

I have a bit of working knowledge about Jon as I worked at record labels that have put out material by him and Yes in the past. So I do know a tiny bit about the machinations that go on in their camp. It’s all good, they are great people and I love them dearly as a fan. I really do.

Do I think they put out Animation for any reason other than to generate cash.? NO. Based on many people in here’s comments, there is something very wrong going on. If we’d all paid $30 for a bad needle drop being sold on ebay we’d be none too happy and slagging the seller. I see no difference here. But I will now wait with you to pass judgement on Jon. Its unlikely he’ll be the “fall guy” though.

I stand corrected if I am misinformed- did Jon did NOT approve this master? Now I’m confused. But if he did approve it and it sounds this bad and then there is the high cost. ???$30????

Well, then this exercise of releasing Animation was about making money. The music business is like that. People participate in it for money, the most they can get. This much I can guarantee you seeing it first hand for 15 years.

To the best of my knowledge Yes did not tour this year. If Jon did a few solo shows, well that’s not the same income for him believe me. All the more reason to sell reissues then and I’d rather Jon make lots of money cause he’s talented and I love him, I really really do and sorry for any offence I put out there to any Jon fan.

 

Fair enough.

My sensitivity isn't so much one on behalf of JA as much as one about other people presuming things about the intentions of one who is not here to respond.

Clearly something has gone wrong. Why it has gone wrong is another matter. If JA did listen to it and sign off it could be either he doesn't care and wants to save money on production costs or he thought it was good which may be a result of the gear he used to hear it or perhaps at 62, after years of touring his low level hearing is shot and he needs compression just to hear the low level information on a recording.
What has gone on at the Yes forum is truly bothersome. I am all for moving forward towards fixing the problem. I see no way to contact JA unfortunately. And I am afraid that those who interface for him are much like the people that attacked Jamie over his views. If it turns out that JA did in fact sign off on this because he was being cheap and has no regard for the quality of his product I will step right in line and condemn his actions. I just won't make presumptions. IME it is a formula for misunderstandings and ill feelings.

 

Jamie, I've perused the thread and don't see the label outright admitting it was a needle-drop (for what it's worth, the sourcing doesn't bother me much, but that over-the-top mastering evident in the waveform is just...jaw-droppingly inappropriate for an album originally released in '83) . I do see 'smatt', who claims insider info, giving some veiled impression that maybe it was a needle drop, and maybe the mastering choices resulted from Anderson's own desires. Is there somewhere where Voiceprint has fessed up to sourcing from vinyl?

Also, AIUI, the person assembling the upcoming boxed set was Dan Earnshaw himself...are you saying he said he knows where the masters are? Or someone else? The other guy you mentioned (Kernon?) seems to have now denied knowing where safeties are.

The story is all a bit murky to me at this point.

(btw, I've done my own rips of the Animation CD and I see those nasty waveforms, but it doesn't seem that the Olympia actually clips (i.e., flattops of more than one sample in duration). It has thousands of individual peaks at 0 dB though, which could easily lead to clipping at output when less-than-stellar playback devices are used.)

I think the treatment of you at Yesfans was absurdly heavy-handed. However, I *would* agree that calling an engineer's work incompetent is hard to separate from calling the *person* incompetent...when that's his job.

 

It appears clearly that he should consider looking for another career. If this guy isn't going to stand up and demand some quality sources, he's not going to have much of a career to begin with. I'm sure the allure of working with Jon Anderson was a major consideration in this project but being known as a guy who masters projects from vinyl is all that anyone is going to remember.

 

No, you won't find it there. That would hold them publicly accountable.

Much of this information about the needle drop was given to me in PMs. I included these quotes in my posts over there but they were promptly deleted.

Dan told me "We now know where the masters are" in a PM. I put this in a post quoting him directly but that sentence was quickly deleted.

I assisted for Neil Kernon on a Flotsam and Jetsam album and asked him several questions about Animation. Sometime during that time he said he still as safety copies somewhere.

I was just describing the mastering job not the person. I made a post explaining this which I assume was either altered or deleted. At no time were my comments directed at a person. They were all directed at the poor mastering job.

The meters on all of my digital devices show this CD has constant overs.

 

Ya know...I find it even more contemptable that a concerted effort to actually locate the tapes didn't take place until after some of us complained about the quality of the CD on an internet message board. It seems like they could have held back the release for a few months to try and get the decent tapes instead of smearing digicompressinoizeacombobulation all over a flea market LP and then claiming that "All of Animation’s music has been meticulously re-mastered and has never sounded more vibrant, full of energy, alive, or fresh." and charging me thirty bucks.

 

Nicely put my friend.

 

you should copyright this!

 

That is some crazy caca!

So, Jamie, you mean the sound of the CD of Animation isn't "clean, clear, and crisp"?? What's your problem, man??

 

Well, in your amazon review (which someone linked to on the Yesfans thread) you call him 'an incompetent mastering engineer'. The distinction between the 'person' and the 'job' is quaint at that point. Even if you do confine your comments to the 'job', I think it's unrealistic to believe that any mastering engineer *wouldn't* take it personally to have their work labelled as incompetent. I'm not saying that to 'ban' such talk (I think people should be able to say it -- Yesfans should lighten up) but only that it's unrealistic to expect such a clear divide. Even here I see there have been occasionaly warnings against dissing the work of Peter Mew, John Astley and other mastering engineers.

Do your meters count single peaks *at* 0dB as overs (e.g., the way Audition calls these 'possible instances of clipping)? Or is it a meter that can count intersample overs? I'll take another look at some waveforms; I could be wrong but my recollection of 'Olympia' is that the wav is compressed to an extreme, but it's not actually showing consecutive peaks at the same value (i.e., flat-tops, signs of digital clipping).

Btw, Dan E. on that thread mentioned the possibility of a rerelease of the CD, with a return policy. If they've found the masters that could be good...but I wonder who's to say that the dynamic range won't be smashed out of that too? :>

They aren't too clear on legal issues over there...they briefly banned the posting of a waveform *screen capture* thinking it was some sort of audio copywrite infringement.

 

Those warnings against dissing the work of Peter Mew, John Astley and other mastering engineers were never for me.

There is no way to point out a poor mastering job without total separation from the person, after all, they were the ones who did it.

In this case, with such an obviously bad example of CD mastering it would be impossible for an experienced listener not to point out how atrocious it was. I happened to be that guy and have had many personal attacks because of it. Not because my opinion was right or wrong but purely because I had the audacity to even mention I wasn't happy with the CD. Okay, fine. I can take that. But I never wrote this guy's name into a post (I still don't know it without looking it up) nor did I suggest he, as a person, was bad. Others have posted he should find another career.

The problem here is basically syntax. If I were to re-word my statements would you feel better? My opinions will still be the same. As I said before, I worked on those posts to take out any inference to the person and leave only a critique of the job. If I failed to erase all the references to a person I apologize. It was never my intention.


Then again, maybe he really should find a new career.

My digital meters show overs. No big deal. The whole thing is way too loud and peaks this loud, whether they are overs or sitting perfectly at 0 will sound distorted no matter how good your D/A converters are. Even when I digitally lowered the volume there was massive amounts of distortion so besides my meters showing overs that amount of audible digital clipping leads me to believe there were overs.

 

Okay folks, here we go.

Sample 1 from a needle drop of Animation done by a friend of mine:

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=F5AC0825234270F8

Sample 2 from the new CD:

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=8D1D4F061939CF5B

 

Be careful Jeff! They might threaten to sue you too!


BTW, I've been doing some investigating. It seems the rights for this album may have reverted back to Jon himself. I still have a few calls to make to confirm this but if he does now own the rights it'll make things pretty difficult, especially for me since I was so vocal about not liking this CD release.

 

OH... MY... GAWD...

 

Jamie,

if you do get to license it, count me in for a purchase!

Joe

 

Now this is coming out in Japan in the mini LP sleeve format on the ArcAngelo label on December 22nd. It has the 2 bonus tracks so I'm assuming the sound will be identical but we won't know until it comes out.

Scott B

 

It will be the same. Voiceprint have licensed to Arcangelo before. It will have a Voiceprint CD and use Arcangelo's mini lp sleeve.

 

This version of "Animation" surely looks like it has flatlined.

 

I just checked Amazon UK and now they removed the current Voiceprint disc and now have it as a pre-order out January 29, 2007. So I guess Voiceprint got wind of the bad press and are going to re-remaster this. I should find out some more info from someone I know at Voiceprint tomorrow and I'll post that info once I get it.

Scott B

 

i say we all donate 100 bucks and let jaime roll the ball as far as it can go...i could donate some money for production costs..,,not a lot, but some..

 

I have calls in to Atlantic but lots of people are away for the holiday already.

I'm trying.