Ongoing Rolling Stones thread

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jbohdan
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Postby jbohdan » Sat Apr 29, 2006 4:54 am

lukpac wrote:
jbohdan wrote:BTW, you might want to fix your e-mail address - I keep getting bounce messages for you.


That's weird. I just checked it and it's correct. :?
John

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Postby Xenu » Mon May 01, 2006 9:56 pm

Oh ick. JWB nails it: "Off the Hook" sounds really fucking weird on the old ABKCO and the new SACD.
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Postby Xenu » Mon May 01, 2006 10:52 pm

Jumping back on this...it seems like "No. 2," odd as it may seem, may be the source of the few really unsatisfying London transfers. I don't think ANYTHING on the Japanese No. 2 has frequencies above ~16kHz. Or at least somewhat; this issue only seems to affect the stereo tracks that're shared between discs (i.e. "What a Shame," and "Down the Road Apiece" are the same transfers on Now! London and No. 2, but "You Can't Catch Me" and so on are all inferior transfers on No. 2).

As More Hot Rocks 2 uses that version of "Satisfied," that would explain the 16kHz cutoff. Hell, even "Time is On My Side" has the 16kHz cut-off there, whereas on HR it is (of course) in its full-spectrum glory.

Hey, speaking of which: anybody here have the "crappy" HR1? I can't find my old CDR of it, and I'd like to do some frequency analysis.
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Postby lukpac » Tue May 02, 2006 8:43 am

You sure it's as high as 16k? Seems like it would be much lower than that. Or at least the roll-off would start much lower.
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Postby Xenu » Tue May 02, 2006 11:56 am

It varies. Generally, though, 16kHz is the reference point. On some tracks (even the mono ones!), the right channel extends slightly farther, for some reason.
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Postby Xenu » Tue May 02, 2006 1:51 pm

Confirming a suspicion of mine: "It's All Over Now" on the London More Hot Rocks is a slightly tweaked version of the transfer on the Japanese "Big Hits 1."

Thus, it seems pretty clear that London mined those two Japanese compilations for More Hot Rocks, as they didn't have any tapes natively lying around.
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Postby lukpac » Tue May 02, 2006 1:58 pm

Interesting. Digital sync?

What about the MHR tracks that didn't show up anywhere else?
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby Xenu » Tue May 02, 2006 2:10 pm

Digital sync, slightly different EQ (the phase is also inverted).

Dunno about them. For those, I guess they went with whatever they had lying around. "I'm Free" is from the UK album master, maybe? They might've been trying to cut down on costs/effort: when they had the tape mastered already, they used it. When not...

Except, obviously, they didn't do this to stuff like "I'm Free," so I really don't know.
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Postby Xenu » Wed May 10, 2006 1:17 am

Aww hell. Another weird variation to report...and this one actually doesn't have to do with the London CDs.

We've known for a while that there are two versions of the old ABKCO "Hot Rocks" out there: one version has the "organ intro" version of "Time is On My Side" (this is the one I have), while the other has the "guitar intro" version of "Time is On My Side" (it's this disc that accidentally gets cloned for the French "Hot Rocks 1"). I am, of course, loathe to buy any more old ABKCO discs, but today I struck library gold by coming across a copy of the guitar-intro version in the stacks. Sweet. I guess.

OK. Firstly, the discs themselves look different. My copy (organ) has a London logo as well as an ABKCO logo on the disc. The other one has just an ABKCO logo. Intriguingly, the printed track times differ as well, although they're probably not accurate. The library copy is missing the booklet, unfortunately, so I can't note any differences in that department.

Secondly, while I've just done a cursory examination, it appears as if the two discs are completely different mastering passes, using what sounds like two totally different sources for some tracks. The fuck? This from ABKCO, of all people?

Now, there's some indication that the "guitar intro" version of the set is the earlier version. For one, it has those stupid hybrid stereo-intro-mono-body takes that I heard about for years but never actually had to endure. Additionally, some of its audio is suspiciously close to the London Hot Rocks 1 ("Play with Fire" comes very close to synching, in fact).

Other than that...fuck, I'm clueless. Here's the rundown, folks. Nothing thus far has synched between the two copies. "Play with Fire" runs *way* faster on the guitar-intro edition (matching the stereo mix speed), and may actually be the mono mix on the organ-intro version. "Satisfaction" is the other way around, though: it's faster on the organ-intro copy (close to the speed of the stereo mix), while it's at the normal "hit" speed on the guitar-intro copy.

Any thoughts?
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Postby lukpac » Wed May 10, 2006 7:45 am

Thoughts? Other than the fact that I *have* the "guitar intro" verson?

Play With Fire is stereo, just super narrow.

And, IIRC, the booklet mentions "stereo versions" for Heart of Stone, Play With Fire and Satisfaction. I'd have to double check, though. I remember Time is on My Side is NOT noted.

Got my copy pretty late in the game, although I don't remember exactly when. Mid-90s maybe?
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Postby Aftermath » Wed May 10, 2006 1:21 pm

There was a recent thread in SHTV noting that some of the Abkco discs were manufactured in other countries such as West Germany, but I don't know if that has any bearing on this issue.

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Postby p » Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:24 am

hello,

I bumped into this forum after finding the very well-written and documented stones FAQ. Very interesting, cheers.

I live in Paris (France) and I am a musician (you might want to check my website and listen to my stuff).

My two (euro) cents concerning Hot Rocks :
There was a french compilation called "Les années stones" that Barclay issued when they toured for "Steel Wheels". Actually it was "Hot rocks" with a special cardboard design around it.
Image
I had it in cassette format, and the contents were the same as the London CDs : HR1 side A, HR2 side B. It's broken now but I remember there was the stereo version of Satisfaction, etc etc... I'm not sure if there were fade-ups or not though (I think there weren't).

I also still have the CD version of it (2 CDs packed in a big double case, just like Abkcos) and its contents are the same as the Abkco CDs (guitar intro), though the EAN is the same as the Londons. Confusing, eh?
some stupid guy tryin' to reach another number.

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Postby Xenu » Sun Oct 08, 2006 12:23 pm

So who wants to help me finish the FAQ?

A new entry: I finally got ahold of "Hot Rocks 2" (later version) and "Flowers" (German). This prompted some new testing. Some conclusions:

a) I prefer the sound on the WG/Japanese Flowers (same disc, with slightly different volume) to the old ABKCO in general. Intriguingly, though, "Backstreet Girl" and "Please Go Home" are wider on the old ABKCO than they are on the London. Curious. It sounds as if London uses a tape at least one generation down, copied on the same machine that is responsible for all of the Stones' "bleed-through" tapes. Why would ABKCO have access to better sources?

b) Yeah, the early-version and late-version HR2 are definitely different, despite not much changing concretely between the two issues. The EQ is different enough so to quite-obviously show up on a frequency analysis.

-D
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Postby Mike Hunte » Sun Oct 08, 2006 5:03 pm

OT:

Did you get my Turtles PM the other day, Xenu? I wasn't sure if it went through.

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Postby lukpac » Mon Oct 09, 2006 12:08 pm

Xenu wrote:So who wants to help me finish the FAQ?


At some point...

a) I prefer the sound on the WG/Japanese Flowers (same disc, with slightly different volume) to the old ABKCO in general. Intriguingly, though, "Backstreet Girl" and "Please Go Home" are wider on the old ABKCO than they are on the London. Curious. It sounds as if London uses a tape at least one generation down, copied on the same machine that is responsible for all of the Stones' "bleed-through" tapes. Why would ABKCO have access to better sources?


How do they compare to the SACD? IIRC, I only have Flowers in SACD form, excepting whatever FLACs you sent me.

b) Yeah, the early-version and late-version HR2 are definitely different, despite not much changing concretely between the two issues. The EQ is different enough so to quite-obviously show up on a frequency analysis.


No fade-ups?
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD