Technical problems with "Singles" ? Please discuss

WTF? I bought mine today (in fact I'm listening to it right now...) and there's nowt wrong with it!

the bonus (hidden) tracks on my copy dont work?

I think it's pretty important to list the equipment you're playing the CD on as well. A lot of things like consoles and computers can sometimes play a little fast and loose with standards, and sometimes so do the manufacturers, and sometimes it goes boom.

I can think of a couple of places crap could go wrong in the mastering/encoding/cutting ( do they still use the term despite t's antiquity?). But for once in my life I can't be arsed filling the screen with technogibberings :)

no way man that's a pile of cheap shite :) I think we can safely says those are real errors at least on your disc. The fact that they play precisely the same on each machine pretty much means it's definitely a screwup in mastering ( or more likely P/Q encoding). A physical error on the disc would elicit a different response from each system owing to each using it's own error correction routines (TRANS: different brands skip in differnt ways).

my comments were't really referring to this sort of thign anyway, more the vanishing tracks and intros, those just sound like the kind of crap you get when you burn a cd with insane software, if there's something wrong with the layout of the disc, some systems will work it out and operate around it and others wont. there could be important clues.

Don't suppose anyone has any top notch cd authoring software than can do disc format and compatibility analysis?

I should have the Japanese release today or tomorrow. A full report will follow.

Steve Campbell wrote: Don't suppose anyone has any top notch cd authoring software than can do disc format and compatibility analysis?

I've got Plextools Pro that'll do a disk and error analysis, but I haven't got a copy of singles as of yet. If it's a goof up in the actual audio, this won't show much of anything. From the complaints I've heard so far, it sounds like it's a case of carelessness from whomever mastered it. I'd have to hear it be be more certain.

BTW Steve, if you have Retro Disc 1 handy; see if you notice anything weird from 1:51 - 1:57. A snare hit definitely disappears very briefly, I understand from previous threads it's a widespread problem with the box-set.

if you're talking about Ceremony then that happens on the original vinyl 12", so they didn't really mess anything up in the remamstering. It was like that in '81

I noticed the skip in True Faith - but I think thats on a previous release, either Substance or Best Of. Can't remember.

We could get really picky and point out all the tracks that aren't "Singles" in terms of what version was used, but I suppose that's not really a 'technical problem' as such.

Here are the track times and my impressions of the Japanese issue of the Singles double cd collection. I’ll list any specific issues that could/should be corrected for the US release.

It appears the entire album has been mastered with the left and right channels reversed.

CD 1. 69:41

1. Ceremony 4:39
2. Procession 4:29
3. Everything’s Gone Green 4:10
4. Temptation 5:24
5. Blue Monday 7:26 – Missing initial beats.
6. Confusion 4:56 – Appears to be an edit of the Rough Mix, not the 7 inch or video edit.
7. Thieves Like Us 3:57
8. The Perfect Kiss 4:51 – Low-Life LP version, not the 7 inch.
9. Sub-Culture 3:26
10. Shellshock 4:24
11. State of the Nation 3:32
12. Bizarre Love Triangle 4:22 – Brotherhood LP version, not the 7 inch or video edit
13. True Faith 5:54 – 12”/Substance LP version, not the 7 inch. Skips previously mentioned by Ally are present.
14. 1963 4:21 – Lame edit, not the Arthur Baker mix that was the single a-side.
15. Touched by the Hand of God 3:44

CD 2. 72:43 1. Blue Monday 1988 4:09 2. Fine Time 3:10 3. Round & Round 4:00 4. Run 2 4:31 – As timing shows, this it the Technique LP version, not the 7 inch. 5. World in Motion 4:32 6. Regret 4:10 7. Ruined in a Day 3:58 8. World 3:40 – This is the Radio edit but the Perfecto edit would have been welcome. 9. Spooky 3:45 – This is the Radio edit but the Minimix would be more appropriate. 10. Crystal 4:21 11. 60 Miles an Hour 3:50 12. Here to Stay 3:57 13. Krafty 3:47 14. Jetstream 3:44 – This is the Radio edit but the Richard X remix edit would be welcome. 15. Waiting For the Sirens’ Call 3:52 16. Turn 4:14 – Why the jarring edit unless this will truly be a single? 17. Everything’s Gone Green–Cicada Mix 4:35 18. Bizarre Love Triangle-Richard X Remix edit 4:19 – There’s plenty of room on the disc for the (promo only) full length remix.

Regardless, this was a worthwhile purchase and they got more right than wrong. Not only does the Japanese release add the 2 mixes, you also get the obligatory poor lyric translation booklet and a sticker with tiny pictures of many (but not all) of the single covers. Strangely, the sticker pictures the Factus 1981-1982 EP and Blue Monday-95 sleeves. The jewel case is interesting as well. It’s much thicker than any I’ve seen before as it houses the two CD’s and the two booklets.

Let me know if you’re interested in the creative lyric interpretations.

English mangled into japanese, hmmmmmm that will make a change, sounds excellent.As I was sayin elsewhere, you get the real feeling english and japanese are just too different to accurately translate between.

Alistair, that one IS on the original master.....sounds more like a noisegate refusing to open than a mis-stick from steve :) Good ears tho, I thought I was the only bugger that heard it.

Just to be clear, remastering doesn't ( or shouldn't) involve going back to the multitrack tape, that would be re-mixing.

Plextools sounds like the very thing to use, I have some simmillar stuff, but no singles either. I know plextools won't see anything like mastering errors, but it WILL pick up on disc format errors and illegal settingd that may be used.....as Spotnic said, quite a few people are getting intro;s and outro's dissappearing and stuff. Things that that can be caused by screwing up how the disc deals with pregapping, or even how it responds to your controls ( yes foks, CD players are computers and their OSis on the disc....try putting a cd upside down into your machine, see how long it takes you to get it back, some machine's have no internal backup brain at all, and if they can't read the "stop" command from the disc they wont stop ! )

How much do these micro-gliches REALLY spoil the music? As far as I'm concerned, not at all. The pursuit of perfection seems like a pretty fruitless exercise - there'll always be *something* wrong.

Exactly, there seems to have been a bit of a bollox in the mastering and encoding, and our feedback could stop it happening again.

Still not heard any good stories about disc format madness on here.

I have all my NO albums mp3'd in a folder and the originals locked away. Although I downloaded some of them cos I was too lazy to rip em, the ones I did rip myself were done with a linux package called cdparanoia, it will NOT give up and move on until it gets usable data, or you tell it otherwise, needless to say it rips over the IDE bus. Anyway, I listened to to ceremony off substance, and guesss what....all the snares are there at that point.

This makes a nonsense of at least one part of what I said above, because if it IS a lazy noise gate (ie threshold and attack set a bit wonky), then both versions must be mixed from multitrack. You can't remove a snare drum from a finished mix with any great finisse. Still don;t think it sounds like an encoding error, but that's just based on years of trturing digital gear and getting a feel for what it does and doesn't sound like when it goes nuts, rather than on any scientific principle.

it's a very odd one to happen tho, I mean it sort of requires that something's actually plugged in backwards?????????

Unless it's bonkers encoding that is.

My synths at the beginning of sub culture are bit a bit muffed - sort of out of sequence or time or something. This is on the Australian release. But it is noticable so I reckon that must just be my disc.

Also missing those BM beats.

mil wrote: Also missing those BM beats.

How many beats are we meant to get at the start of BM? - on 'Singles' mine starts with 3. (Retro version has 2, International has 3)

Alistair wrote:

johnny james wrote: if you're talking about Ceremony then that happens on the original vinyl 12", so they didn't really mess anything up in the remamstering. It was like that in '81

To my ears that snare/sound disappear glitch is not present on the Substance or International masterings of Ceremony. I haven't played my original 12" copy in years and I can't vouch for that source so I'll take your word for it.

We're talking about the 7" version of Ceremony, not the 12" (= Substance = Retro) version...

Sometimes when I listen it seems that the bass on tracks like Spooky gets a bit distorted - could be the speakers I'm using, but I was a bit surprised. I will experiment with different headphones and so forth. But yes, the channels are definitely reversed on every song! I think they should try to rectify this on future issues. :)

Also, the missing beats at the beginning of BM are a rather major issue!

Dont know exactly how many BM notes there are supposed to be - but you can tell straight away that there is a different number -you sort of start off in the middle of the intro so are a bit out of whack until you realise what happened.

Alistair wrote:

Ben wrote:

Alistair wrote:

johnny james wrote: if you're talking about Ceremony then that happens on the original vinyl 12", so they didn't really mess anything up in the remamstering. It was like that in '81

To my ears that snare/sound disappear glitch is not present on the Substance or International masterings of Ceremony. I haven't played my original 12" copy in years and I can't vouch for that source so I'll take your word for it.

We're talking about the 7" version of Ceremony, not the 12" (= Substance = Retro) version...

Looking at johnny james post he seems to be responding to my comment regarding the Retro (re-recorded 12") version of Ceremony and its glitch. I mentioned the Retro problem and he said it was an original mastering problem present on the 12". The 7" Ceremony version hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet unless I'm misunderstanding johnny james's post

I may have read your posts too quickly. Thought you were talking about glitches in Singles' Ceremony...

My Ceremony sounds awful. The distorted guitars fluctuate in volume as does the beat during Temptation.

Spotnick wrote:

NO Regret wrote: My Ceremony sounds awful. The distorted guitars fluctuate in volume as does the beat during Temptation.

There is a reason why they re-recorded it for the 12" version you know, not only because of Gillian ;)

...and well glad i am that they did too. Its far superior in my humble reckoning!

Spotnick wrote:

NO Regret wrote: My Ceremony sounds awful. The distorted guitars fluctuate in volume as does the beat during Temptation.

There is a reason why they re-recorded it for the 12" version you know, not only because of Gillian ;)

.. and adding modern cd mastering (loud and over compressed sound) you'll have a bigger mess... :\ohwell: