Looking for Best Sounding King Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Are you referring to the EG 1980's Dutch or the 1999 30th Anniversary HDCD Dutch?
I have the 1999 30th Anniv. Dutch and they smoke every earlier cd version I've heard.

Are the waveforms posted previously here (from 30th Anniversary Editions) from the later Japan 30th Anniv. or earlier 1999 Holland 30th Anniv. pressings? Maybe there's a difference.
Please specify the country of origin when posting waveforms of the 30th Anniv. editions.

To add to the confusion there are also Chinese versions of the 30th Anniv. - the biggest difference being a limited edition for the jacket for Lizard uses a beautiful gold ink instead of tan.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

As i already said, all 30 Anniversary CD's are digital clones. But Japan CD's (as usual) was made with more care & better plastic (glass). The difference is slight but noticeable.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

I referred to the 30th Anniversary edition. I had about 5 or 6 CD of it and i can't say they sound bad, but (as usual) Dutch EMI and Virgin are slightly dry-sounding (don't know how exactly say it in English, so translated literally from Russian) for me.

And I completely agree with Serj.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Serj, do you mean you notice an audible difference, or visual (packaging). And, what do you mean about "better plastic (glass)?" Do you mean the CD is made w/ glass instead of plastic? Sorry; just interested in understanding what you meant.
Thanks,
Doug

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Of course i'm speaking about the audible difference. But the Japan packaging is more pleasent for me to And yes, I didn't mean that Japanese made their CD's with glass instead of plastic But their manufacturing is more high-quality.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

The Larks'... was actually the DE edition. It has the same peak levels as shown in post 37. This is what I think.

This seems like a flat transfer.
There is plenty of tape noise.
The drums have a fuller sound than on the 30th edition.
It has a more laid back presentation than the 30th edition with a lot more air.

I also have the "The Young Persons' Guide To The King Crimson (Polydor 2335-136A 2LP)". The DE sounds very similar to the Larks'.. tracks on this LP (Book Of Saturday and Coda From Larks' Tongues In Aspic, Part I).

IMO it sounds just great.
I far prefer this over the 30th anniversary edition.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Were any of the DE's actually released in the UK? Fripp mentioned in the 'Frame By Fame' booklet that they came out only in the US and Japan, but I once came across a UK Virgin 'Larks' that had the DE credit on the back cover, but didn't change the sound from their earlier master.

The dead giveaway, I believe, is if there's extra Bruford chatter on the 'Part Two' fadeout.

I'm not sure if there were any other UK Virgins with miscredited covers.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Mine is Made In USA. The lenght on part two is 7:09 on the DE and 7:07 on the 30th anniversary edition. I can't hear any chatter at the end of "Part two".

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Yeah, you got a genuine DE.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

a lil' bump

does anyone else have "Larks" on Japanese LP, and/or any other King Crimson albums on Japanese LP?

i've recently found pretty much all of their albums available here for purchase, and am wondering if these pressing are some of the best sounding ones out there.

listening to "Larks" now, and it sounds fantastic! has anyone done a shootout with any of the UK originals vs. their Japanese counterparts?



thanx all!

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Yup, but it's been a while, and my vinyl collection is now long gone (don't a$k).

The Japan vinyl was decent, but the pink label UK Islands were better... more full-sounding, but not by a gigantic degree... the same could be said for the 80s titles (Japan Warner vs UK Polydor).

If you're a vinyl maniac, I recommend the UK slabs.

But – after a fair amount of time comparing – I still say the 30th Anniv CDs sound better than even the vinyl... am guessing due to better source material.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Yep, The 30th Anniversary Editions are fantastic, IMO.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

hi all,

thanx for those responses re: Japanese vinyl vs. the UK.

yeah, i'm sure that the latest CD editions beat most of the vinyl out there (especially in the case of the first two albums).

well, being that most of their albums are readily available over here on not so badly priced Japanese vinyl, i may give them a go and hopefully someday score some of the UK pressings of my more favorite Crimson albums.

thanx!

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Bit-perfect ripping retains HDCD encoding. For 'decoded' playback of HDCD tracks on nonHDCD players, you'd have to decode them first, output as analog, then redigitize in real time. Alternately if you could digitally capture the decoded stream from a ripped track played by Windows Media PLayer (with HDCD decoding on) its conceivable the process could be kept all digital.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Not so bad, either. Possible clipping near the end (definitely compression) but it might not be audible either. The rest of the track looks fine.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

The only CD version of Lark's with the chatter I've ever found, was the first EG CD release. DE didn't have it, and the 30th doesn't either.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

It's easily audible (see post 56).
The Compression is ruining the "imaging". On the Larks.. DE the soundstage is very wide and deep and relaxed. You can easily place the different instruments and the vocal. On the 30th edition parts of this is lost and the sound is more in your face. If I listen to this for too long my ears starts to hurt. It just does not sound natural. The DE edition does.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

What about the original vinyl?

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

I got the 30th anniversary editions of the three and was pleased overall. I was a little disappointed in the drum sound/mix on Red, anyone else notice this? Perhaps it was the mix, but Bruford should have been more up front imo.. Larks and Starless seem much better.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

That had it.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Try matching the levels.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

I finally got my 30th anniv of Larks.

Made for some interesting listening. First, the numbers.

Track 1:
DE max: 0.9956, RMS: 0.0696
30th max: 0.9016, RMS: 0.0891

Track 3:
DE max: 0.4884, RMS: 0.0666
30th max: 0.6584, RMS: 0.0744

Track 6:
DE max: 1.000, RMS: 0.0972
30th max: 0.9017, RMS: 0.1752

We all know what the max is. Info is available elsewhere, but I take RMS to be the "power" or "energy" of the recording. The wav editing software I use says that normalizing to RMS value is a lot more accurate than trying to normalize by peak value. It's a better way of "averaging" the loudness level of a track.

OK, so see the problem right off the bat? For tracks 1 and 6, the 30th has a higher RMS value, but a lower peak value. That means compression, limiting, truncation whatever. The DE mastering is more dynamic. Period.

For listening, normalizing between the two versions using RMS didn't work. (Mostly because of the large difference in dynamic range between them.) So here, I just visually picked the levels using the wav editing software I use. This sounded closer in volume too. I focussed on sections of of those same 3 tracks. (I included low level and high level parts from 1 and 6, as well as the ending from track 5 into the beg of 6.) I listened to the character of the drums, the acoustic guitar in Exiles, the nasalness of John's voice, the fuzz of Robert's electric guitar, and the texture of the mellotron.

I prefer the the DE version. The 30th CD is mastered more "in your face", more up front, more obnoxious and aggressive. The DE version is more laid back, and this is what I remember from the lp. Actually, I spent about 40 min comparing the sections I chose from each of the 3 songs. After that time, the 30th versions became really fatiguing to listen too. The DE version has more air, and a greater sense of depth to the recording. The 30th seems more flat and one dimensional in comparison.

The 30th *does* have better packaging. But that's about it.

This is the system I used for comparison. I also used a pair of Sennheiser HD-535 headphones to help with the comparison.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Your Pioneer Elite DV-59AVi CD/SACD/DVD-V/DVD-A player doesn't decode HDCD does it?
As dgstrat's thread indicates:
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=73285&page=1

So of course you're going to get compressed sound without the decoding process. Same with ripping the tracks for comparison, unless you can decode the 30th Anniversary issues, the waveforms you're looking at are going to look compressed. Has anyone been able to rip these tracks HDCD decoded and then compared them to the DE isssues?

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

So, the only way to get good sound out of the 30th anniv editions is to have an HDCD compatible system? That seems very ... limiting.

 

Re: Looking for Best Sounding Crimson: Lark's, Red, Starless

Yes, RMS Avg 'level matching' is better than peak matching. Replaygain-type matching is better still. Listening comparisons are best done with some sort of ABX software, though it's usually not hard to 'tell' remasters apart, even blind, esp if headphones are used.

Things to also consider (besides HDCD decoding) - the magnitude of dynamic range reduction (less than a dB? Several dB?) and the tradeoff between better sources vs less DR. OPne thing Fripp has never been totally clear on is which remasters actually were sourced from original masters.