Solitaire (96kHz New Mix) The Carpenters

I'm not an audiophile, I just know I love Karen's performance on this song. I'm with Mark, sounds great to me!
 
Sounds like he just goosed the highs and lows to me.

It's also a little compressed. You can tell when her vocal comes in. He then added reverb that he then rolled off when the choruses come in. I know, I know...shut up, Ed...LOL! It's just not my thing. The original mix was so good that it never needs to be messed with. All of "Horizon" sounds so good sonically. As for the 96/24 thing, that's dubious too. He'd have to have access to a master and we know they're gone. (sniff, sniff) It's also a little hissy The master tape had DBX on it if I'm not mistaken so it was pretty quiet. Maybe this is a goosing of a Quad LP or the reel?

He's done a few of these that I can see. "This Masquerade" sounds really hollow and just bad, though it is kind of interesting to hear the flute nearly naked. Love that solo.

Ed
 
Yes, he's a complete lunatic, haha, but some of his mixing choices are v interesting.
 
The still from the video thumbnail says it's a 4.0 quad reel. So yeah, probably goosed the highs and dumped digital noise reduction on top of it to kill all the tape hiss. (Mass produced pre-recorded reels are mid-fi at best--not much frequency content above 12k at the most, and that ancient bulk tape stock was never the best quality--durable base for high speed duplication, but nothing like the formulations we could buy for home recording like Maxell UD35.) Most audio editors work best at 24-bit/96kHz and above due to rounding errors that would happen at lower sampling- and bit-rates--if that's what the tape was recorded to on a hard drive, then there was no need to downsample to upload as a YouTube video.

Any bets on how long before it gets a DCMA takedown notice?
 
It's also a little compressed. You can tell when her vocal comes in. He then added reverb that he then rolled off when the choruses come in. I know, I know...shut up, Ed...LOL! It's just not my thing. The original mix was so good that it never needs to be messed with. All of "Horizon" sounds so good sonically. As for the 96/24 thing, that's dubious too. He'd have to have access to a master and we know they're gone. (sniff, sniff) It's also a little hissy The master tape had DBX on it if I'm not mistaken so it was pretty quiet. Maybe this is a goosing of a Quad LP or the reel?

He's done a few of these that I can see. "This Masquerade" sounds really hollow and just bad, though it is kind of interesting to hear the flute nearly naked. Love that solo.

Ed
As for the 96/24, Iron Mountain made high quality digital backups before they sent out the analog masters. So there are probably 96/24 DAT audio tape masters (unless they used DASH In the early-2000’a or their own format)), at Iron Mountain, and Richard would used those masters for the RPO, so the current digital masters are probably at a high resolution and would be comparable to the analog masters.
 
As for the 96/24, Iron Mountain made high quality digital backups before they sent out the analog masters. So there are probably 96/24 DAT audio tape masters (unless they used DASH In the early-2000’a or their own format)), at Iron Mountain, and Richard would used those masters for the RPO, so the current digital masters are probably at a high resolution and would be comparable to the analog masters.

I know all of that but this guy wouldn't have access to any of that. Richard has digital backups of both the ¼ inch ½ tracks and the multis.

Ed
 
Remember, anyone can take any recording, add a smiley faced EQ, and get all kinds of oohs and ahs from an unwitting public.
 
Remember, anyone can take any recording, add a smiley faced EQ, and get all kinds of oohs and ahs from an unwitting public.
Yeah, I've only heard a small number of these amateur "remasters" or "remixes" and they are uniformly awful.

Even certain professional mastering engineers have slapped a smiley face EQ, digital noise reduction and brickwall limiting on official reissues from the labels, and the general public gushes over those also. 🙄

Never got more than 20 seconds into the video.
Seeing that it's a quad reel, I won't even waste the 20 seconds. 😁
 
The still from the video thumbnail says it's a 4.0 quad reel. So yeah, probably goosed the highs and dumped digital noise reduction on top of it to kill all the tape hiss. (Mass produced pre-recorded reels are mid-fi at best--not much frequency content above 12k at the most, and that ancient bulk tape stock was never the best quality--durable base for high speed duplication, but nothing like the formulations we could buy for home recording like Maxell UD35.) Most audio editors work best at 24-bit/96kHz and above due to rounding errors that would happen at lower sampling- and bit-rates--if that's what the tape was recorded to on a hard drive, then there was no need to downsample to upload as a YouTube video.

Any bets on how long before it gets a DCMA takedown notice?
I know all of that but this guy wouldn't have access to any of that. Richard has digital backups of both the ¼ inch ½ tracks and the multis.

Ed
According to this thumb nail, the guy had access to a 16-track analog master of “Sing” 2 years ago. I don’t recall any commercial 16-track formats, so did he license these?

 
It's also a little compressed. You can tell when her vocal comes in. He then added reverb that he then rolled off when the choruses come in. I know, I know...shut up, Ed...LOL! It's just not my thing. The original mix was so good that it never needs to be messed with. All of "Horizon" sounds so good sonically. As for the 96/24 thing, that's dubious too. He'd have to have access to a master and we know they're gone. (sniff, sniff) It's also a little hissy The master tape had DBX on it if I'm not mistaken so it was pretty quiet. Maybe this is a goosing of a Quad LP or the reel?

He's done a few of these that I can see. "This Masquerade" sounds really hollow and just bad, though it is kind of interesting to hear the flute nearly naked. Love that solo.

Ed

Yes, the "new mix" label is misleading. The You Tube poster most likely sourced either the quad reel tape or CD-4 LP from Japan as you said. However, I am not sure that the multitrack for "Solitaire" was "lost" in the Universal fire. Some of the lesser "Hit" songs on the RPO release used the multitracks. The tapes themselves may have been lost, no one here knows for sure, but I think the multitracks might have also been backed up to digital files before the fire.
 
According to this thumb nail, the guy had access to a 16-track analog master of “Sing” 2 years ago. I don’t recall any commercial 16-track formats, so did he license these?



I think for this song he used the surround sound version from the SACD of "1969-81" and re-balanced the tracks.
.
 
I have the SQ and CD-4 vinyl of those songs and it’s definitely not the mixes on any of those albums. It sounds like he mixed them through some kind of equalizer to enhance certain instruments for a “new” sound to me. It’s not the Japanese 96/24 gold cd mixes either. That disc is actually pretty good.
People have lots of time to mess with mixes since they’re not working, or just like to stir controversy. Mission accomplished.
 
Yes, the "new mix" label is misleading. The You Tube poster most likely sourced either the quad reel tape or CD-4 LP from Japan as you said. However, I am not sure that the multitrack for "Solitaire" was "lost" in the Universal fire. Some of the lesser "Hit" songs on the RPO release used the multitracks. The tapes themselves may have been lost, no one here knows for sure, but I think the multitracks might have also been backed up to digital files before the fire.
The RPO album used digital multi-track tape for most of the songs. But, even if a song wasn’t on the SACD, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t in the Universal fire. “Trying To Get The Feeling Again”’s analog master is most likely lost as it was on the same tape as “Only Yesterday”, which was on the SACD and was most likely at Universal. But with RPO, Richard was able to isolate seperate instruments, so that he could have both Karen’s drumming and the new drumming, to make the drums stereo, even though Karen’s were in mono. Or even adjust the levels for the vocals. And the digital copies would’ve been at the same generation level as the analog.
 
Yes, the "new mix" label is misleading. The You Tube poster most likely sourced either the quad reel tape or CD-4 LP from Japan as you said. However, I am not sure that the multitrack for "Solitaire" was "lost" in the Universal fire. Some of the lesser "Hit" songs on the RPO release used the multitracks. The tapes themselves may have been lost, no one here knows for sure, but I think the multitracks might have also been backed up to digital files before the fire.

Richard had those multis backed up ages ago. He has the digital files. Based on what we've heard, the analog tapes burned up.

Ed
 
Richard had those multis backed up ages ago. He has the digital files. Based on what we've heard, the analog tapes burned up.

Ed
Also Iron Mountain, where the analogs were stored, would’ve created safety backups just before the tapes left their facility so that, should the tapes be destroyed before being returned, there were copies still available.
 
Richard had those multis backed up ages ago. He has the digital files. Based on what we've heard, the analog tapes burned up.

Ed
Also Iron Mountain, where the analogs were stored, would’ve created safety backups just before the tapes left their facility so that, should the tapes be destroyed before being returned, there were copies still available.

Yes, as I thought, there are digital back-ups of the analogue multitrack masters. Thank goodness that Richard (or someone) had the foresight to do this! It should be standard practice for any owner of analogue masters to have them backed up either digitally and/or on another analogue tape - preferably both!! Universal should have been doing that all along and I hope they have been doing that since the fire.

Fortunately, the Motown master tapes, also owned by Universal, are kept in New Jersey - less than an hour from Universal's NYC offices. However, back about 15 years or so, Harry Weinger, who was (or still is?) in charge of overseeing the Motown vault felt that there was no need to do backups at the time.

Another reason to do backups is that analogue tape degrades over time, especially decades.
 
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