McCartney FAME CDs: A Conclusion
Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2003 9:44 pm
Today, after a long and nigh-unbearable wait, my FAME copy of McCartney II came in the mail. You may recall that the common sh.tv consensus is that the FAME variants of Macca CDs, when available, are the best available versions (save for the DCC discs, of course). This revelation has, unsurprisingly, caused recent eBay auctions of these titles to skyrocket, but I managed to snag myself a Macca II because...well, uh, nobody likes that album, I think.
First impressions: the album is packaged *very* similarly to the way my other copy of Macca II (the US version with bonus tracks) is packaged. Hmmm. Same note with regard to the bonus tracks and everything.
I lovingly inserted it into my CD-Rom drive, and fired up EAC. I extracted everyone's favorite track, Temporary Secretary, for comparison purposes. I had recently included Temporary Secretary from my US copy on a little compilation I made called "Aural Black Death," so I extracted it from that CD. What would I find?
I loaded both tracks into Cool Edit Pro. Hmmm...while the waveforms looked *very* similar, Cool Edit was drawing them slightly differently. They were, however, pretty close to being in sync, with no detectable drift anywhere in the song (you know where this is going).
I zoomed in. Aha! My US version started a few samples earlier (and, of course, this could be due to the fact that I never bother correcting offsets). I corrected the difference between the samples, lining them up perfectly, and did a null test.
Nothing. Complete silence. Not even that weird static that CEP insists exists every once in a while.
Conclusion? Scientifically, the two discs are *exactly the same*. Repeat: *exactly the same*. My infinitely superior methods have determined this. At least in this particular case, the idea of the FAME CD being a flatter, more accurate approximation of the UK master tape is utterly shite, as it's exactly the same as the US disc (which isn't too terribly shabby).
One must, of course, then wonder the following: is this true for *all* of the Fame discs? Specifically, I'm thinking of Wild Life (which has the same bonus tracks in both of its configurations, Fame and US) and London Town.
So another "REALLY! THIS OBSCURE PRESSING IS FAR SUPERIOR" rumor bites the dust. I gotta say, I was sad to see it go.
...
HAHAHAHAH!
First impressions: the album is packaged *very* similarly to the way my other copy of Macca II (the US version with bonus tracks) is packaged. Hmmm. Same note with regard to the bonus tracks and everything.
I lovingly inserted it into my CD-Rom drive, and fired up EAC. I extracted everyone's favorite track, Temporary Secretary, for comparison purposes. I had recently included Temporary Secretary from my US copy on a little compilation I made called "Aural Black Death," so I extracted it from that CD. What would I find?
I loaded both tracks into Cool Edit Pro. Hmmm...while the waveforms looked *very* similar, Cool Edit was drawing them slightly differently. They were, however, pretty close to being in sync, with no detectable drift anywhere in the song (you know where this is going).
I zoomed in. Aha! My US version started a few samples earlier (and, of course, this could be due to the fact that I never bother correcting offsets). I corrected the difference between the samples, lining them up perfectly, and did a null test.
Nothing. Complete silence. Not even that weird static that CEP insists exists every once in a while.
Conclusion? Scientifically, the two discs are *exactly the same*. Repeat: *exactly the same*. My infinitely superior methods have determined this. At least in this particular case, the idea of the FAME CD being a flatter, more accurate approximation of the UK master tape is utterly shite, as it's exactly the same as the US disc (which isn't too terribly shabby).
One must, of course, then wonder the following: is this true for *all* of the Fame discs? Specifically, I'm thinking of Wild Life (which has the same bonus tracks in both of its configurations, Fame and US) and London Town.
So another "REALLY! THIS OBSCURE PRESSING IS FAR SUPERIOR" rumor bites the dust. I gotta say, I was sad to see it go.
...
HAHAHAHAH!
