Radiant Sea performance origins, When and Where the live tracks and two new songs came from Options

[AgentK7]

I was hoping this thread could pull the forum's vast Live live knowledge together to track down where the live tracks came from on Radiant Sea. I was kind of miffed that they didn't include that information on the CD packaging.

Anyway, I know track 8 "Nobody Knows" is the same live performance as found on the Birds Of Pray DVD recorded on May 18, 2002 at PinkPop, Landgraaf, The Netherlands. (I know that's an easy one, but it's a start).

I know I could probably use Bootleg Heaven and figure out most of it myself, but I don't have enough free time to do that. I'm sure other members are also curious.

I'm hoping we can wrap this thread up by figuring out all the performances, maybe this information could then be added to the live discography, etc.

....and to discover the origins of the two new tracks.

This post has been edited by AgentK7: Sep 24 2007, 8:05 pm

[Alex]

Remember the thread (I forget who started it) that compared the recording style of V to a song off of Mental Jewelry? It also had a youtube link, about the way music is recorded now kills the quality. Could that kind of analysis be done again to compare Radiant Sea to a song that was on V?

This is simply not true. I went over it in the other thread, I think, but the way things are recorded now doesn't 'kill the quality'. Simply that mastering, since about the mid 90's, has become more and more about squashing all the dynamics out of the music, hence the loss of dynamic range. Digital recording however is better now than it has been before.

Anyway, I haven't got Radiant Sea, but I'm fairly confident that I'd be able to tell if was mixed/produced by the same people that did V. But then, depending on whether this was actually a track in consideration for the final tracklisting, the song may not have been mastered at the same time. And then there's the whole Radioactive thing...

To answer your question- no, that 'analysis' was faulty to begin with (the youtube link was compressing an already mastered file). I could go a lot more in depth but I won't...

[mattdm11]

This is simply not true. I went over it in the other thread, I think, but the way things are recorded now doesn't 'kill the quality'. Simply that mastering, since about the mid 90's, has become more and more about squashing all the dynamics out of the music, hence the loss of dynamic range. Digital recording however is better now than it has been before.

Anyway, I haven't got Radiant Sea, but I'm fairly confident that I'd be able to tell if was mixed/produced by the same people that did V. But then, depending on whether this was actually a track in consideration for the final tracklisting, the song may not have been mastered at the same time. And then there's the whole Radioactive thing...

To answer your question- no, that 'analysis' was faulty to begin with (the youtube link was compressing an already mastered file). I could go a lot more in depth but I won't...

I'm sorry, but the analysis isn't all that faulty. I understand what you're saying, but it still proves the point - dynamics in music have been ruined over the past 10+ years.

Bottom line is, when you make the songs an equal volume, the older stuff just sounds better. There's no denying it. Digital recording *COULD* be great, if they knew how to keep the dynamics. Instead, all we get is loud loud loud. Have you listened to the new Smashing Pumpkins album? How about the new Foo Fighters album (or, just about any of their albums for that matter)? Everything is so loud, there's no room for the music to breathe, and it just doesn't sound very good.

MP3 gain is a godsend - I adjust every track to "equal" volume so I can remove all the clipping from songs and at least tolerate listening to music on random from different eras. Siamese Dream, Superuknown, Deluxe - all those albums have volumes around 92-93 (using MP3 gain volumes here) and sound great. All new albums are around 99-100. Californication, perhaps one of the worst sounding albums of all time, is between 100-103. When I adjust all these new albums to equal the volume of old albums, the sound is very wimpy. In fact, while my "normal" volume level is 91, I have to adjust the new albums to 93 or 94 because they sound so weak at 91. Go read diehard Beatles' fans complaints about the "1" album from a few years ago - they all say how it sounds like total shit. That's because they squashed the hell out of all those songs when they remastered it.

I know you know more about this than most, but you have to agree that music doesn't sound like it should. Most albums over the past 10 years could sound so much better if the dynamics werent so sqaushed. This is why I'm considering buying albums on vinyl - the crappy mastering process on CDs can't be duplicated on vinyl.

And to answer the person's question, both of these songs look to be mastered at a different time - these tracks come out to roughly around 97 (in MP3 Gain terms) and have no clipping. TDTH's songs are all around 98-99 and have substantial clipping. V is just about the same, except V's songs are even louder - mostly all are 99-101.

People need to start fighting back against these shitty mastering standards. The problem is, so many people are used to (and accept) shitty, compressed to hell music, that they don't know any better. They don't know how good their music could sound.

This post has been edited by mattdm11: Sep 28 2007, 6:17 am