Log file - errors on the "Remastered" Factory Years CDs

This is my first post here, but I just wanted to share this. This is the email that I sent to Neworder.D2C@warnermusic.com: As a consumer and potential customer, I can only speak with my dollar, and my dollar says this (and I don't think I'm alone in this sentiment):I will not be purchasing the re-issued New Order CDs UNLESS the next pressing corrects all of the errors that have been compiled at this website:http://www.neworderonline.com/Forums/MessageList.aspx?ThreadID=43684On top of that, if the remastering of the albums are done carelessly, with only an emphasis on loudness instead of things like sound quality and dynamic range, I'll be keeping my originals.To sum up, if you want my money:1- Correct the errors on the original discs. Really, it's no wonder that people have stopped buying CDs when record labels are willing to sell such a sub-par product.2- Remaster the discs to make them sound BETTER, not just louder.Thanks,-Nick Wilhelmy, a New Order fan.

I'd encourage everyone here to send similar letters if they haven't already. Let Warner/Rhino know that they'll only get our cash if they put out a quality product. I'm a firm believer that money talks. Maybe it won't do any good in the long run, but I think it's worth a shot...

I dreamt today that I was on a store and looking at the New Order remastered in form of vinyl double albums. The covers were bigger than the regular vinyl, almost like a portrait. The covers were also slightly different, like the remasters are. They were wrapped in fine plastic and smelled new.

They were brand new, and had full dynamic range in their remastering. The insides had lyrics and tons of recording information. And they cost just about 2 dollars per disc.

WHAT A DREAM!

According to NME the reissues are being recalled.

New Order recall 'poor quality' reissues

Manchester veterans pull first five albums after fan complaints

New Order have recalled collector's editions of their first five albums after complaints over poor sound quality on the bonus discs.

The reissues each include B-sides, instrumentals, remixes and rarities.

"Warner Bros UK, Rhino and New Order regret that the initial pressings of the collector editions of 'Movement', 'Power, Corruption And Lies', 'Low Life', 'Brotherhood' and 'Technique' contain some minor audio problems on the bonus discs," the band said in a statement.

"We are now in the process of correcting the problems, but it should be noted that due to the age and condition of some of the original source tapes, the sound quality may vary."

The reissues were released last month, but they were only recalled when they were released in the US, reports The Guardian.

Reacting to the recall, bassist Peter Hook wrote on his MySpace blog: "This is a very difficult one. We are aware of the problems and because we did not have finished product to listen to [beforehand] it has, shall we say, slipped through the net?"

Hook went on to promise that his "great friend" and New Order biographer Claude Flowers would "sort this mess out personally".

http://www.nme.com/news/new-order/41306

The NME is just copying the same story that's been in the Guardian and others.

johnny james wrote: The NME is just copying the same story that's been in the Guardian and others.

Doesn't that apply to all NME articles (i.e. copying from other sites)? :p

Well I've just picked up my Chrisse present to myself in Sydney . I now have all five remasters and have listened to all the bonus cds bar the PC&L one on the way home.

I have to say I heard no obvious cracks and pops and was pleasantly surprised at the content given the track listing. There are a few gems there that even I didn't have on cd and extended versions of singles.

I have to say that so far I'm a happy camper.

Now I have to go and watch Caligula, well it kind of has a New order link and well. ;)

edit: OK I noticed a few pops and crackles on my home stereo. Is the BLT 12 inch mastered off the video with the sound fading in the middle?

Still I bought them for the albums and who knows they may become collectable yet.

Just why did I get a cardboard cd as an extra when I also bought the Spooky double cd? Weird stuff indeed.

Yes the double cd was intact but I also got a full cd inlay and cardboard cd for the normal single. Weird indeed.

Only disappointment I have is that I bought Low-Life and Power at the same time and installed all of the cd's onto my itunes, but Power was the only one to come up in Chinese print and not english, go figure. I'm slightly confused but in my eyes New Order could do no wrong.

NOOLigan wrote: Just why did I get a cardboard cd as an extra when I also bought the Spooky double cd? Weird stuff indeed.

Yes the double cd was intact but I also got a full cd inlay and cardboard cd for the normal single. Weird indeed.

Slightly off topic, but not weird at all. Spooky was not released as a double CD, but as two seperate CD singles (everybody was doing it these days). Part 2 came in a slim double CD case, and they put a cardboard single in tray #2 to give the customer a hint that there was another CD for sale also. They did the same thing with the Runied in a day and World releases.

Similar case too with the NINETEEN63 CD single (1995 released UK thick-white-box-with-1963-cutout-front)- as the inner foil-board inside the white box folds out with 2 trays to house 2 discs...so a cardboard CD sits in the spare tray to remind fans to fork out more moolah for another bunch of ordinary remixes

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"Thieves Like Us" was OK on "Substance". On 1994's "best of", it had this particular glitch introduced.

Don't think anybody expected them to mix everything again. To go back to the stereo mixdown master (or at least the best copy thereof, if the master is gone) should be adequate. and I blog is about Nike air shox and Nike AIR Force,welcome to my blog and give me some good advice!

Vocal bleed? Oh dear.

You are aware these are reMASTERS not reMIXES?

Any channel bleed you suddenly here is because it was always there and it's just become more audible now.

Unless of course you believe Nike AIR Force they fired up the original 2" 24track tape with all the original fx and other outboard and made a new mix that's EXACTLY like the one they did 25 years ago, apart from a little channel crosstalk.

Well, Rhino already said they're redoing them. And BTW Chuck Taylors.

I've just bought all the re-masters and listened to all the tracks listed and I do not find anything as far as clicks are concerned. I do hear some distortion on some of the earlier recordings. I believe the resolution of these masters to be better as I’m hearing things I’ve never heard in the past like the band talking in the studio at points. You might want to look into your system setup as I have had this digital clicking in the past when I first started using SACD’s my system it couldn’t cope with the higher resolution and would produce a clicking sound at the same point on a disk and I passed it off as a bad disk only to find out after I upgraded my speakers that there was nothing wrong. Digital setups can be buggy and very hard to get right.

LFOJunky wrote: I've just bought all the re-masters and listened to all the tracks listed and I do not find anything as far as clicks are concerned. I do hear some distortion on some of the earlier recordings. I believe the resolution of these masters to be better as I’m hearing things I’ve never heard in the past like the band talking in the studio at points. You might want to look into your system setup as I have had this digital clicking in the past when I first started using SACD’s my system it couldn’t cope with the higher resolution and would produce a clicking sound at the same point on a disk and I passed it off as a bad disk only to find out after I upgraded my speakers that there was nothing wrong. Digital setups can be buggy and very hard to get right.

Try "Touched By The Hand Of God" on the Brotherhood bonus CD... That'll give you an idea - first 30 seconds are unlistenable, and probably the most outrageous of the lot (considering it's available on CD anyway)...

OK I just played TBTHOG and I was shocked but somehow it would figure that Rhino/Warner is responsible. They seem to bastardize everything they lay there greedy little hands on.

I still haven’t forgiven them for what they did to the Depeche Mode DSD re-masters on the North American release.

LFOJunky wrote: OK I just played TBTHOG and I was shocked but somehow it would figure that Rhino/Warner is responsible. They seem to bastardize everything they lay there greedy little hands on.

I still haven’t forgiven them for what they did to the Depeche Mode DSD re-masters on the North American release.

What did they do to the DM DSD's?

They removed the SACD layer of the album disks. I had to get the UK versions at a higher cost. The format war is over and both parties lost. I don't see the harm in releasing product on the competitors format now.

When they re-master the re-masters I do hope they get someone good and well known to handle the project as I didn’t see any credits as to who’s work it was that messed up these releases.

Not sure if this has been discussed already, but I have a vinyl rip of Blue Monday (not sure which particular issue but it sounds old anyway) and the same panning errors occur as in Substance and these new releases. I guess with stuff like that there's not really any way to fix them without losing quality unless they got the original multitrack masters and mix them from scratch which I'm sure is neither easy nor cheap to do.

However, most of the other errors are not accountable like the above and the whole "remastering" process seems to have added nothing but compression and clipping. The old CDs sound better IMO, so I think I'll stick to them.

some news about new versions (recall)?

Zilog Jones wrote: Not sure if this has been discussed already, but I have a vinyl rip of Blue Monday (not sure which particular issue but it sounds old anyway) and the same panning errors occur as in Substance and these new releases. I guess with stuff like that there's not really any way to fix them without losing quality unless they got the original multitrack masters and mix them from scratch which I'm sure is neither easy nor cheap to do.

But then there was the 24 Hour Party People soundtrack...

Every digital version of the original Blue Monday had either the panning issue or the first beat cut out, but when this soundtrack was released, Blue Monday appeared on it and was perfect from start to finish. Fully remastered sounding, no missing beat, no panning issue. Clearly someone in Warner who put this soundtrack together had to have a master tape to do this, but then after we get shafted with BM panning on the Retro box set, missing beats on BOTH International and Singles compilations, then panning once again on the PC&L remaster.

It just doesn't make any sense how a movie soundtrack can have a better quality sounding version of one of New Order's most historically important songs than any of the group's official releases.

After all, let's point out a critical question: Because of the bad sound/mastered CD's, can we really blame New Order for the lack of quality control and faults on discs/sleeves for New Order CD's nowadays?

I think not, because they're the makers of the music, the record companies have the honourable task to make it sound, look and feel good. That's what lacks these days.

What exactly does Remastering consist of? Is it just running the Masters through a computer software? I've got a BBE 482I Sonic Maximizer which works similar to an equalizer and it cleans up the original release cds pretty well. Granted it's not Digital, but unless you have truly digital ears, who could tell. I prefer Analog anyway. There's only so much that you can do with the originals without remixing them with today's technology. Tracks these days have a fuller sound, where as the 80's were known for the higher frequency recordings with little bass. Today's country songs have tons more bass than our beloved 80's/90's New Order cds.

So what's going on? Has there been ANY new information on the recall yet? It's almost April, we should have had this sorted out already.

Ricky Silahua wrote: So what's going on? Has there been ANY new information on the recall yet? It's almost April, we should have had this sorted out already.

Still nothing that I've heard of. I'm dying to get my copy of "Movement".

Still no word?