Western Works Demos online

Here ya go, 192Kbps MP3s...

Cleaned up the best source I had, removed large amounts of noise, etc... Also slowed down the pitch as Steve Morris often sounded like a castrated chipmunk on some of the passages. These now should be the best versions out there.

Oh, you want a link?

Western Works Demos

Access forbidden for me..

If you get "Access Forbidden" messages, that's because too many of your fellow NewOrderOnlineans are getting the files. There's a 10-user limit at a time, unfortunately. Try again in a bit...

People, stop trying so I can d/l them

Be patient, I was denied access but after a few minutes I got in and was able to d/l the tracks.

Finally have them, LOVE the version of "Dreams" and "Ceremony", Steve should get a guest shot at vocals on the next record. "Homage" is...well...it's "Homage" I guess. "Truth" is pretty cool, but who sings this one? Barney, Steve, Hooky, HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey"?

Steve sings on Truth... He sounds like a chipmunk already, and the fact that the source I had was about 1/3 faster made him sound like a chipmunk, after sucking on a helium balloon, with his balls in a vice clamp

Originally posted by drewc Here ya go, 192Kbps MP3s...Cleaned up the best source I had, removed large amounts of noise, etc... Also slowed down the pitch as Steve Morris often sounded like a castrated chipmunk on some of the passages. These now should be the best versions out there.Oh, you want a link?Western Works Demos

So how did you clean up the MP3s? Is there like a program to do that. I've tried downloading a few, but the most they let me do is change the volumes and cut and paste.

I had these on cassette from a trade some years back, and this particular tape was much better sounding than another tape of the demos that I'd heard. When I got a CD burner a few years ago, one of the first things I did was to put these on CD. I recorded the cassette onto the computer as WAV files, ran the files through CoolEdit, and eventually ripped them as .mp3.

CoolEdit is a shareware audio editing program that allows you to "sample" noise you would like to remove from the .WAV - in this case, a large amount of hiss between tracks. This hiss was almost louder than the songs themselves and was audible over the entire tape, a big sign this tape was many generations removed from the source. I sampled the hiss between two of the tracks, messed with a bunch of sampled noise removal settings, applied the "remove sampled noise" filter across the whole thing, and then did some EQing to balance it out. At that point I finally noticed that the tape was about 1/3 faster than it should have been, so I was able to slow it down also using CoolEdit, using the released versions of Ceremony/Truth/Dreams Never End as pitch reference points (accounting for the fact they may have played the songs faster rather then all of them pitch-shifted a whole fifth up the scale).

At the end of the day the final result was orders of magnitude better-sounding than the tape.

I don't think the older shareware version of CoolEdit (CoolEdit 96, I think) that I used is still available, which sucks because it had less features disabled in the shareware release than its successor (CoolEdit 2000) has.

CoolEdit: http://www.syntrillium.com

edit: Found CoolEdit 96 here.

HOMAGE is kinda cool...sounds like an early JD song.

drewc.....great job. I've got the western works demo on vinyl, but the quality isn't great. It's the only boot I bothered to keep, because of 'homage'. You've cleaned it up really well.

Thanks... ;) I was particularly pleased with how they turned out, considering how hissy-sounding the originals were.

I'd do the same to other boots, but I haven't got any worth the time! If I ever get my hands on any of the late-1980 shows I'll see what I can do to clean those up, as I suspect they'd be rather poor-sounding as well. But seeing as how I've never heard them, I could be horribly wrong...

I'm a tad confused here. Of the four tracks on Western Works demo, is this Steve on vocals on all four? Thanks in advance.

Originally posted by Some Distant Memory I'm a tad confused here. Of the four tracks on Western Works demo, is this Steve on vocals on all four? Thanks in advance.

I know that on Truth and Ceremony, it's Steve....as far as Dreams Never End, I'm not quite sure....but judging by the sound quality of the original recording, it could be Gillian, only really distorted

it's asking me for authentication - username and password. how do i get round this? thanks.