shoegaze

Did somebody else buy "Remaster" of Chapterhouse's Whirlpool from Cherry Red? I am sorry to inform you that first 9 tracks were made from mp3 (low bitrate). It maybe sounds crazy but it is fact:



tracks 1-8 have cutoff above 16khz (128 Fhg)



track 9 has cutoff above 17khz. this spectrum looks as 192kbit Fhg.



tracks 10-16 have normal spectrum (cutoff above 19khz)


Now the listening test:
First 9 tracks have distortion at high frequencies, for example hi-hats (sounds as 128kbit mp3).

Try to rip your CD with EAC or some other program (like dbpower). Make V0 VBR and what you see? None of the first 9 songs will have an average bitrate above 190. For example song 6 (April, which is noisy one) has AVG 187. That's crazy. Impossible. Try to rip your original CD (not "remastered") and every single file will be fair over 200.

I don't know like you but I feel cheated. My copy (in my country) cost me 25 dollars. What did I get? New booklet? Louder volume? Where are 2 extra tracks? Legal issue with Rain and Die, Die, Die? I don't believe it. What conflict could be with DDD other than that they used old 74 mins CD's?

IMO this is a scandal. I always liked Cherry Red but this crossed the line. I do not want to spread negative vibrations here. Nobody died so no big deal actually. But such things make me angry.

Wow. What prompted you to analyze them in the first place? Could you hear how crappy the first tracks were?

Nice catch btw. You should make a HUGE stink about this, in my opinion ... it's worth it.

I originally thought that maybe they fucked up the first 9 tracks in mastering ... but I think that you're right, they must've ripped them from an mp3. I bet this was mastered with Adobe Audition or some shit, haha. I suspect that it's probably your typical mastering job these days : crank the living shit out of it and say "fuck off" to the dynamics of the tracks. It sickens me about most mastering jobs these days on CDs. If you take an older CD, then compare it to a remastered version ... you can take the newly mastered file and turn it down, and you'll notice a serious lack of quality.

I think that this whole thing is unfortunate really. So many bands albums get ruined by brickwalling the damn song, and the dynamics get killed. I also think that radio stations & major labels have a hand in this. I know that they already compress shit before it goes over the radio waves, so why even crush it even more? It's freaking rediculous. Why can't people just turn up the damn volume knob? It's why it's there in the first place.

Thank you. The "credit" actually belongs to my friend who started to analyze it after I shared my rip with him (he wanted to hear first before ordering it because he owns the original album). First I did not want to believe it but then I started to think about it. AVG bitrate of V0 rip 187?

I believe that maybe the guy lost the original files and made it from back up mp3? I do not know. If he called me I would burn my Whirlpool CD for him.

This is a shame. I do not actually know if they presented it as remaster. Maybe "reissue" only. Either way it is not the "real thing".

And yes. In hi-fi with my "studio headphones" I can hear the bad quality while playing it really loud.

Otherwise I agree with what you said.

Hah. Blind Mr. Jones' Spooky Vibes under microscope next .

If they just ripped the first 9 tracks then this is a bit of a scandal.

Just out of curiosity I'm gonna run their remaster of The Telescopes 'Taste' through some software and see if I get similar results.

BTW Spooky Vibes is okay. I assume it happened just this time. I don't believe it is something the company would do on purpose. It must have been failure by one individual. Or at least I hope so.

i didn't catch this from your post but as Stephen remided me this isn't a remastered version and was never advertised as such.

that said, he said the evidence is quite compelling. The band were under the impresion that they were using the original DATs. He is going to check into this