Metamorphosis SACD: What went wrong?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2003 3:25 am
So finally, after years of being out-of-print, Metamorphosis rises from the ashes as part of ABKCO's SACD series of Rolling Stones reissues. That it ever went out of print was confusing from the start; sure, it was maligned by most Stones fans as a cheap cash in, featuring one side of material that barely even featured the actual band, but it was ABKCO's baby! They conceived it, they marketed it, they were cheap enough to cut two tracks off for the American market (and be honest: who was seriously expecting them to reissue both versions, in the fashion of the two Aftermaths and Buttons?).
And now, they've brought it back.
Unsurprisingly, then, it was one of the first of the series I bought, right behind Buttons and Banquet. At the time the hybrids were reissued, I was surprisingly unfamiliar with the actual album. I have, you see, that "Klein's Revenge" disc that features--amoung other things--the pre-production versions of many of the side 1 tracks, and the underdubs of many of the side two tracks...whenever I needed a Metamorphosis kick, that was what I tended to put on. I own the LP, but heck, it's Metamorphosis, *and* it's the American edition...surely I shouldn't pay attention to it.
But in any case, I got home, put the CD on, and went "ugh." This didn't sound good, at all. Everything sounded ugly and duphonic on side 1...the production values were awful...the overdubs shabbily appl...
Oh wait. That's just the way the album is.
Still, the crappy sound took me by surprise. I just shrugged, assuming that the side one tracks were pulled from the LP master, and went on with life.
That didn't last long. While listening to track 3, I thought I detected something fairly insidious...and, unfortunately, it turns out I was right. While it certainly isn't a constant problem, "Metamorphosis" is absolutely *loaded* with digital clicks. Side 1's tracks are hit the hardest: for example, Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind has clicking every few seconds throughout the song, and "Heart of Stone"'s right channel is hammered particularly hard. These are unmistakably digital clicks, and any veteran of the Tommy remix or the Piper at the Gates of Dawn mono CD will immediately notice 'em. They're subtle, but they're there, on both layers.
This is, of course, troubling on many layers...firstly, it's a basic quality control issue. But how could this happen in the first place? Digital clicking, I would think, would certainly be a PCM phenomenon at the very least. Was some processing stage attempted that resulted in the degradation of audio across the board? If so, why didn't anybody notice it? The obvious answer is, of course, that nobody cared: Metamorphosis simply isn't a hot-button title, and they were probably scrambling to get it out the door.
It is telling, for example, that the Metamorphosis track on the sampler--Jiving Sister Fanny--sounds better on the sampler than it does on the album. For one thing, it seems slightly smoother, less harsh; for another, there's a bizarre bias "pop" as the drums come in on the album that's missing on the sampler (and, indeed, all previous versions I'm aware of)...perhaps the use of NR abruptly switching off? Clearly, then, this would indicate that some PCM sub-processing stage was probably the culprit.
A quick aside...A side effect of Metamorphosis's official release on CD was that bootleg copies--which once tended to go for top dollar on eBay--suddenly went for next to nothing. On a whim, I picked up a fairly odd Japanese boot of the album (it comes in one of the oddest LP-sleeves I've seen...basically, think of an oversized CD booklet with a CD in a sleeve contained therein). It is, surprisingly enough, an amazing sounding disc...it doesn't sound at all like it's from vinyl, although it may be...far more likely that it's from a production tape.
In short, I find it a much more pleasing listen in general than the ABKCO disc, which is by comparison very aggressively EQed, and suffers from the audio faults described above. Odd, that.
Any thoughts? Discussion? I do wonder whether it's been fixed in the interim.
And now, they've brought it back.
Unsurprisingly, then, it was one of the first of the series I bought, right behind Buttons and Banquet. At the time the hybrids were reissued, I was surprisingly unfamiliar with the actual album. I have, you see, that "Klein's Revenge" disc that features--amoung other things--the pre-production versions of many of the side 1 tracks, and the underdubs of many of the side two tracks...whenever I needed a Metamorphosis kick, that was what I tended to put on. I own the LP, but heck, it's Metamorphosis, *and* it's the American edition...surely I shouldn't pay attention to it.
But in any case, I got home, put the CD on, and went "ugh." This didn't sound good, at all. Everything sounded ugly and duphonic on side 1...the production values were awful...the overdubs shabbily appl...
Oh wait. That's just the way the album is.
Still, the crappy sound took me by surprise. I just shrugged, assuming that the side one tracks were pulled from the LP master, and went on with life.
That didn't last long. While listening to track 3, I thought I detected something fairly insidious...and, unfortunately, it turns out I was right. While it certainly isn't a constant problem, "Metamorphosis" is absolutely *loaded* with digital clicks. Side 1's tracks are hit the hardest: for example, Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind has clicking every few seconds throughout the song, and "Heart of Stone"'s right channel is hammered particularly hard. These are unmistakably digital clicks, and any veteran of the Tommy remix or the Piper at the Gates of Dawn mono CD will immediately notice 'em. They're subtle, but they're there, on both layers.
This is, of course, troubling on many layers...firstly, it's a basic quality control issue. But how could this happen in the first place? Digital clicking, I would think, would certainly be a PCM phenomenon at the very least. Was some processing stage attempted that resulted in the degradation of audio across the board? If so, why didn't anybody notice it? The obvious answer is, of course, that nobody cared: Metamorphosis simply isn't a hot-button title, and they were probably scrambling to get it out the door.
It is telling, for example, that the Metamorphosis track on the sampler--Jiving Sister Fanny--sounds better on the sampler than it does on the album. For one thing, it seems slightly smoother, less harsh; for another, there's a bizarre bias "pop" as the drums come in on the album that's missing on the sampler (and, indeed, all previous versions I'm aware of)...perhaps the use of NR abruptly switching off? Clearly, then, this would indicate that some PCM sub-processing stage was probably the culprit.
A quick aside...A side effect of Metamorphosis's official release on CD was that bootleg copies--which once tended to go for top dollar on eBay--suddenly went for next to nothing. On a whim, I picked up a fairly odd Japanese boot of the album (it comes in one of the oddest LP-sleeves I've seen...basically, think of an oversized CD booklet with a CD in a sleeve contained therein). It is, surprisingly enough, an amazing sounding disc...it doesn't sound at all like it's from vinyl, although it may be...far more likely that it's from a production tape.
In short, I find it a much more pleasing listen in general than the ABKCO disc, which is by comparison very aggressively EQed, and suffers from the audio faults described above. Odd, that.
Any thoughts? Discussion? I do wonder whether it's been fixed in the interim.
