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Post by lamagiadeabba on Jan 19, 2018 11:41:12 GMT
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Post by lovepigeon on Jan 19, 2018 14:25:58 GMT
I literally just opened this thread to suggest that Avenore mashup! I've had it on my phone for a couple of years and I'm still not bored of it. I really love the Torn remix of IKTSGO too.
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Post by jsdyson on Jan 19, 2018 14:43:36 GMT
My big FRUSTRATION when listening to music (esp ABBA) are the huge differences when playing the exact same recording from different CD/record manufacturers. My own goal is to be able to hear what B&B and Mr Tretow actually put out, and not what the record companies morphed it in to. So, I might be misusing the normal term 'remix', where I am mostly taking different aspects of the same recording and moving them around a little -- plus (before the 'remix' activity) doing what is necessary to recover what B&B & Mr T created in the studio (of course along with A&AF.) Some CDs have come out that sound pretty nasty -- even to the extent of real distortion.
So -- I don't mean to confuse when I use the term 'remix'. I am not mashing up or remixing from different sources. There MIGHT be some cases where I could take different copies (from different sources) of exactly the same recording and extract the best of both, then recombine. I haven't done that yet, but have considered it for a few songs. The synchronization effort to do that at the DSP level is a little tricky, but I'd do it if it made the music sound more natural with respect to the recording sessions.
John Dyson
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Post by harpospoke on Jan 19, 2018 20:17:23 GMT
Here is one of my favorite ABBA related mashups. Two of my favorite bands:
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Post by shoshin on Jan 19, 2018 23:08:12 GMT
Ooh please check out 'Is There A Soul Out There' on my earlier thread below. Many mashups are quite natural and obvious based on chord progression. It takes a special talent to hear Duffy's 'Stepping Stone' and imagine 'Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!' laid across it. This would be in my top 5 ABBA tracks of all time, if that were allowed. abbachat.com/thread/196/mashups-mixes |
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Post by jsdyson on Jan 20, 2018 2:46:25 GMT
I do understand your position. I mean NO slight to claim that what I am doing is to recover what B&B & Mr T did in the recording process -- my own work results from frustation knowing that someone in the custody chain of the recordings had distorted them so terribly. There is NOTHING wrong (in fact, perhaps beneficial) to add the work from various recordings together to produce something interesting. When adding pieces of differing recordings, in fact, might be useful to bring the source materials closer to the original -- THEN reprocess them to perhaps match better. So, the output of software like my 'restoration processor' or others similar MIGHT be beneficial for the merging process.
In some cases, the quality of the recordings that we (esp in the US, with the loudness wars) get is atrocious. Sometimes, the recordings are made aggressively loud by the original artist (obviously, Shake it Off was apparently done in that way -- I can remove much of the compression and hear the components fairly clearly -- but the 'sound' was done in the studio/artist controlled recording.) I don't care if the music had been processed to meet the artistic goals -- but in the case of some ABBA stuff, it is apparent due to the EXTREME variation in sound quality from manufacturer to manufacturer, ABBA recordings as presented to the public have INCREDIBLY variable quality and some APPEAR to be significantly different (in a bad way) from the original.
ABBA music is already processed to the hilt -- and does sound pretty good when listened to in a relatively pristine condition (Polar comes close to the most unprocessed copies that I have heard, but still has some compression, some EQ and apparently some matrix shifting of some kind.) Some of the nonsense dostributions that I have gotten here in the US borders on USELESS. If you listen to examples that I placed on the Hydrogenaudio Forums, you can hear an exact comparison between the Polar and a US release -- and then I have a snippet of the most virgin copy of ABBA recording that I have (the 'virgin' copy appears to be DolbyA encoded -- so is also compressed.) On this matter, my processor is not even an issue, but rather the issue is incredible cheat against ABBA music lovers, and even the ABBA team itself.
The 'most virgin' copies of the music that I have are pretty darned clean sounding -- and where I am perhaps slightly misguided, I have gone a step further to minimize/undo some of processing done on those clean copies also. At that point, my other, 'signal processing', hobby comes into the forefront. By attempting to undo damage to the ABBA recordings, I might actually be adulterating it. I might be guilty of actually damaging copies of the music that come close to the intent of the artists -- however, my major defense (or defence for my European/UK/OZ friends :-)) is that a little additional processing can bring what I have produced back to essentially what is on my cleanest copies. That is, I am trying NOT to take away very much from the recordings, and perhaps bring them up A LITTLE to a 2000's sensibility as to what is expected in the technical qualities of the recordings. I have NO interest in changing the artists basic intent.
So -- I guess what I am trying to say -- I am as far from a music artist as one can get. Those who have the talent to create new music (or successfully merge multiple pieces of music), go far beyond what I am capable of. I have REAL artistic limitations, but I am happy (and almost driven) to try to add what few abilities to the world that I can. I am a techie through and through, I love my work, but also understand (deeply understand) my limitations.
I am interested in what is going on, and will probably listen to some mashups and enjoy them. On the other hand, I am trying to help/benefit the music listening community as a whole (and also the producers) with my very limited music creative ability (but I am quite discerning.) My ability to discern and create from a technical standpoint is what I can offer!!!
Take care -- and have fun...
John
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Post by gary on Jan 20, 2018 4:38:47 GMT
I’m sure you must have heard this one, as it’s been around for ages. Anyway, I like it.
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Post by jsdyson on Jan 20, 2018 16:05:53 GMT
Listened to a few mashps -- pretty good. Innovative. Good news -- I have corrected the problem (a serious mis-synchronization of the attack times, causing a raspy harshness that my ears couldn't hear.) I have carefully reworked the synchronization, and have VERY CLEAR and fairly non-raspy results!!! These aren't really 'mashups', but are rather pure copies of some ABBA songs. These are incredibly pure, and are almost distortion-for-distortion the same as the Polar versions, except no compression or noticeable EQ. Also, you'll notice actual bass in these copies. The normal releases appear to rolloff the bass starting at about 100Hz, but that just isn't happening in my versions. The worst one (and my most aggressive test case) is SuperTrouper, but you'll find (esp the start) is MUCH clearer in my version. Again, I GOT RID OF THE DISTORTION... spaces.hightail.com/space/d4fpzoa0zD |
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Post by shoshin on Jan 21, 2018 2:31:54 GMT
Lana Del Rey says that she is being sued by Radiohead for copying Creep in her song Get Free. I don't think she has a leg to stand on, albeit that Creep was itself judged (with less justification imho) to be copied from The Hollies' The Air That I Breathe, and has to share royalties as a result. Now B & B have been both sinners and sinned against when it comes to suspected plagiarism (see Name That Abba Song). So this mashup of TWTIA and Creep could at first sight suggest that a further legal battle may ensue. However, the two songs actually have substantially different chord progressions. Full marks for effort to the 'masher', because this mash-up sounds better than it should, given the chordal disparities. |
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Post by gary on Jan 21, 2018 14:09:38 GMT
The Winner Takes It All, in turn, owes something to Don MacLean’s And I Love You So.
Hum ‘I don’t want to talk’ over ‘And I love you so’!
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Post by jsdyson on Jan 29, 2018 10:50:54 GMT
The following is a pointer to the best yet reprocessed (and VERY vanilla) cleanup of the best ABBA sources that I can find. These results include music coming from DolbyA encoded copies that I got 10+yrs (prob 20yrs) ago (not DolbyB or C), and I haven't really been able to really listen to them until recently (DolbyA sounds a lot like DolbyB, except with more compression on the low/middle frequencies -- so without decoding, sounds quite overcompressed, but not as bad as DBX.) The major thing that I have to contribute is that unless DolbyA is decoded on exactly the same unit at the same temperature, with exactly the correct threshold setting, then the results leave a bit of distortion. I have reworked the software to be able to conform to a wide range of encoder characteristics and have tuned (painful amount of listening) to match the 'dolbyA level' to a reasonable degree. Also, have applied a light amount of expansion/NR to bring the music closer to recent sensibilities. The most major criticism might be the sort of EQ that I used... I didn't do heavy EQ, but tamed some of the harshness in the sound. If you want to hear more of the HF sometimes associated with ABBA, I can make that available. Here is the site -- everything except Dreamworld has been reprocessed within the last 12Hrs as of 6:00AM EST (US) in the morning. There was no extreme expansion being used, and because of the very special kind of expansion the freq resp balance is darned close to the original after expansion (again, I did do a small amount of EQ.) The EQ cant really be 100% corrected after the fact, because part of it was done before processing, but a small amount of treble boost might bring it closer to more common sound character. spaces.hightail.com/space/pG4t4ZFnyB |
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Post by jsdyson on Feb 11, 2018 23:12:28 GMT
I have a truly beautiful collection (much better than ever before) of some ABBA stuff. I also have my latest pseudo-DolbyA decoder posted on the site below (source, win64 binaries and linux/x86 binaries (both 32 & 64).) All of my previous cleanups of my best copies of ABBA had problems with an esoteric DSP problem called 'aliasing'. The gain control was mixing with the audio, because of nonlinearites were producing components outside of the sampling nyquist frequency -- this causes harshness similar to the beginning of SuperTrouper on many ABBA releases (that isn't really aliasing, but is similar.) The examples that I have produced (from the most pristine sources that I could find) are truly clearer yet than anything that I have heard -- less 'harshness'. I am NOT an artist, but only a lowly engineer (I mean EE/DSP/Software, not recording engineer), and so am doing the best that I can do. I want people to enjoy. I have also (finally) restricted my MP3 encoding to comply with my respository site, and can play the mp3s directly. There is a definite loss of quality due to the conversion between 24 bit flac/96k to 48k mp3 @192k -- I have measured some differences, but they still are very representative. spaces.hightail.com/space/pG4t4ZFnyBUPDATE: I just re-uploaded the latest processed versions. Please note that Dreamworld is about the best that I have ever heard, and Under Attack is also pretty darned good. I have left almost all of the original 'sound', and absolutely no re-compression on these. My latest anti-aliasing expanders have been used -- the pseudo-DolbyA is even more advanced than the version that I have published on the repository... WARNING: be careful about setting your levels. In some examples, there are few hints about how loud the level is set -- so just be careful and be ready for loud signal levels. |
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Post by jsdyson on Mar 19, 2018 3:09:40 GMT
Please hold up for about 1HR. I screwed up some of the processing (however minor). It will be fixed by approx 9:00AM EST USA time, 19Mar2018. (I just fixed the error -- the major problem is corrected, but I couldn't provide everything that I wanted. It is still clearer than ANY OTHER VERSION. The previous mistake had a filter that wasn't intended.) I have too many things going on!!! I have some of my own remastering test results that you might find to be very entertaining. My new processor/decoder does things that are down to the point of theoretical ideals regarding intermodulation (due to gain control), etc. I know that the techno-mumbojumbo is meaningless to most, so I won't bother you with it. This is as clean as possible a rendition unless you have the multi-track masters. This is as good as any ABBA that I have ever heard, and you'll hear things that are no longer smushed together, while also having the true bass from the original (I had to contour the bass/midrange and oddly change the 90deg HF a little to get rid of the blaring.) Note that I didn't do any heroic processing or special NR. These examples are as reasonably pure as I have ever heard. Again, ABBA isn't my project, but I use their music (a lot like Suzanne Vega's music being used for designing MP3 itself.) Please enjoy -- I'll keep these up for a few days... I have tried to format the files so that they can be played online for now. I suggest that listening to 'mamamia' might be the best first choice. The reason is that the sound is VERY different than expected --- it is all there, but is much more natural sounding. You might even be surprised that Dancing Queen is also not quite so scrunched sounding. I did NOT expand the music in any non-standard or artistic way, but simply did what was necessary to master the music. This has the ABBA sound, but not the ABBA blaring sound. I found out that some of the over-intensity was hidden in a special electrical place in the signal -- so one thing that I did was to back-off some of that hardness. A simple tone control type thing was not used to remove the hardness, but it wasn't any kind of fancy AGC thingie either. spaces.hightail.com/space/nXCmV47em2PLEASE ENJOY!!! John |
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Post by jsdyson on Mar 19, 2018 21:32:54 GMT
I really need some listening help -- really!!!
I have some slightly cleaned up ABBA stuff with the full names.
What i am most interested in is FEEDBACK on the music files that have the '-p' in the filenames. These are from AGold, and they are cleaner, but sound heavier. I need to know what it sounds like to you'all. I really need input!!!
Wow -- this is an interesting project cleaning up the ABBA sound. I was always envious of the sound of the old ABBA videos, and that is kind of what I am trying to achieve. I just made some other major improvements. They did a real number on the phase of the music at HF-- that is what causes that dense sound from ABBA. I keep iteratively trying to unravel that dense sound. Here is another step of unraveling. You might want to EQ the results a little. The are at least doing one thing that I am trying to undo -- they are apparently moving the HF from the inphase to the quadrature and vice versa. That gives that extra density, but also causes a bit of a distorted sound.
This latest unraveling seems to be pretty good on the older songs, but not so good on the newer ones.
Give it a listen. Some of these might be worth keeping (on my repository.)
John
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Post by jsdyson on Mar 25, 2018 13:43:11 GMT
This is your local 'ABBA clarify/cleanup' crackpot again. I just got some REAL intelligence that one reason for the ABBA sound was that the might have been using an early generation of the "Aphex Aural Exciter". Of course, I took that bit of intelligence as a challenge. So -- I did some further research/reading old magazines from that era/etc, and got enough information that I might be able to undo some of the Aural Exciter damage. It didn't take long to write an un-Exciter, to bring the clarity/lack of fuzz back from the music. Anyone who would like the source code can have it -- it is just a few SOX scripts, but will not work as well on more recent devices. There are several phases of correction -- one is to un-Excite, but there are some further passes that do a filtering operation that biases the signal towards being a signal with analytical characteristics ( a special phase behavior that tends towards what simple, natural things do.) Normal electronic device impedances are such an analytical function also -- when you know that behavior, designing wideband impedance matching (for example) becomes easier. Well -- way, way off topic. Most people reading this like ABBA -- and so do I (maybe less than some, maybe more than others.) So, after the un-Excite filtering, and the regularization of the signal towards the natural signal behavior (tends to remove un-natural distortion sources), you might be able to listen to the clearest ABBA from normal music distributions EVER. Even though I might be a bit of a crackpot -- the examples that I am providing are VERY SPECIAL and VERY CLEAR. Take a listen and enjoy. The site below mostly just has ABBA, and the most recent recovered copies. I have to say that the technology that undoes the distortion here is a breakthrough and REALLY works very nicely. SuperTrouper is my benchmark, and frankly, there is very little distortion left on it. spaces.hightail.com/space/nXCmV47em2 |
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Post by jsdyson on Apr 17, 2018 21:05:57 GMT
Got REALLY good news -- my psuedo DolbyA decoder is now being told (by some recording pros) to me that it is better than a real HW DolbyA. I have also enabled some new anti-intermodulation features that expand the quality further. Also, I have an anti-Aphex-Exciter software pacakge, which helps to remove some of that Exciter sound (makes the sound clearer, removes some nasal quality.) The bottom line, I have also found a way of getting rid of 90% of the distortion on my copy of Dreamword -- sounds really good. Have the examples online at the following location: spaces.hightail.com/space/G5zKvkAr6aAlso have some other examples in: spaces.hightail.com/space/nXCmV47em2The really, really difficult thing is to get the ABBA sound, but clarify it more. My psuedo-DolbyA decoder has less intermod than any HW can produce (really). and also matches the gain curves very closely (I have measured 0.5dB deviation against a real DolbyA unit.) Please enjoy -- I dont think that UnderAttack, Dreamworld, SOS or especially SuperTrouper can be presented any more clearly. |
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Post by shoshin on Apr 17, 2018 22:12:32 GMT
It's a shame that you aren't getting feedback on all your hard work. Maybe it's my browser (IE11), but I never seem able to access anything from the links that you provide. I see 'File Library', and the cursor changes on it as if it's going to be clickable, but then nothing happens  |
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Post by jsdyson on Apr 18, 2018 1:03:59 GMT
Okay -- I took this as an opportunity to re-EQ the selections... I tend to have very variable hearing, and I think that I had too much HF -- so I dropped 6.5kHz by about 1.0dB and 9kHz by 1.5dB. On my Windows Box (which I seldom use), it is running Win10, and I tried FireFox, Chrome, Edge and IE... Seems like they work, but let me try something else. I'll try to supply direct URLS for a few selections: MamaMia: spaces.hightail.com/space/nXCmV47em2/files/fi-81e15cab-212d-4a7b-9eea-57187e45aaa2/fv-79decac8-de70-48cf-89a8-af0a3440717f/MamaMia.mp3TakeAChanceOnMe: spaces.hightail.com/space/nXCmV47em2/files/fi-21817ead-b8ea-4ad0-b4dd-73171ccf8f8f/fv-8ca254b8-ed10-4b90-9f48-84c68c386651/TakeAChanceOnMe.mp3SuperTrouper: spaces.hightail.com/space/nXCmV47em2/files/fi-3535664c-4c3e-49c6-b1c0-d6b725b1399a/fv-09db262f-c396-4ef4-b1a4-24d4dc85f417/SuperTrouper.mp3SOS: spaces.hightail.com/space/nXCmV47em2/files/fi-f11e10d5-2ae9-4452-a39c-6dd2c8c54fac/fv-741233e1-5177-4e8d-af6b-e4c3d068f7a5/SOS.mp3HoneyHoney: spaces.hightail.com/space/G5zKvkAr6a/files/fi-529cb28a-493f-4160-b70e-dabf2b221875/fv-33ba6fb5-bf6d-4593-ae06-661e8ed1961c/HoneyHoney.mp3UnderAttack: spaces.hightail.com/space/G5zKvkAr6a/files/fi-6457d683-beec-4f6a-83ee-29bc7a2ef234/fv-b66d114f-8f2c-4fe1-901d-9cf8fa07d0c0/UnderAttack.mp3DreamWorld: spaces.hightail.com/space/G5zKvkAr6a/files/fi-ad973de8-1e49-41ec-ba25-790bd10bdea8/fv-7759dc87-5617-48e2-9dc7-bb971629e460/DreamWorld.mp3I normally do all of my work on Linux/FreeBSD type OSes -- much easier than Windows (focus on the work and not the messed up GUI choices.) Again, if there was too much HF before, it is worth giving another try. The DolbyA decoder was slightly misadjusted for UnderAttack, but still sounds okay. It takes about 10minutes per song to process (not for the DolbyA, but for the un-Exciter to undo the Aphex Exciter.) The psuedo-DolbyA runs in realtime up to 256k samples per second, and I normally run it at 96k and 192k, even though it works well down to 44.1k, and actually functions reasonably (however far from meeting spec) at 32k. The processing is as follows: Pristine DolbyA encoded 2trk copy -> psuedo-DolbyA decode -> un-Exciter -> removal of 90deg distortion on M+S (on alot of ABBA stuff -- esp Dreamworld) -> 1:1.17 expansion, 1:1.21 expansion on M+S -> 3Band compression @ 1.7:1, 3-5dB depth -> 8Band compression at 1.4:1, 1-2dB depth -> soft limiter 2:1, 1-2dB depth -> hard limiter inf:1 (maybe 1dB once in a while) -> 96k flac master -> mp3 copy The compressors have totally dynamic attack/decay times, and fit the contour of the music envelope (inst attack time, 5msec -> 2second decay time, depending on dynamics and freq. The expanders are 'wild west' with totally variable attack/decay times in both the linear and dB domains. In the linear domain, the transient recovery is done by curve fitting, but the dB domain provides the long term attack/decays. The decay time can be as long as 1dB/sec, but is usually MUCH quicker than that. The compressors/expanders are designed (like the psuedo-DolbyA) to have almost ZERO intermod, and where there is the necessary intermod because of the physics of the gain control operation, it is actually filtered when possible. (You can actually see the difference in the intermod sidebands when doing a spectogram -- the anti-intermod methods actually do work.) Even though it is kind of hard to tell -- the ABBA stuff can be pretty intense on the highs, you might notice that the sound is less 'fuzzed' in the HF range. The voices are SLIGHTLY more distinct than when using normal compressors/expanders -- but the problem is that the kind of processing done on each CD/album can be VERY different... Even using the apparent SAME master tape, the mastering engineers get very different sound by doing matrixing, parameteric eq and different kinds of compression. I am not a good enough mastering engineer (I am not one at all) to get perfect sound, so my work product is the software that does the processing and requires the REAL EXPERTS to utilize!!! John |
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Post by jsdyson on Apr 18, 2018 19:41:22 GMT
The direct URLS that I posted above are no longer valid -- but the URLS to the repositories are correct!!! I reran the mastering again -- got a lot more aggressive, and changed some of the recompression to side-chain instead of fully inline (sounds better yet.) Most of my goal is been trying to get rid of the harsh/confused sound -- and I found that simply being more aggressive with the 'distortion removal' phase works wonders. I was being too conservative by using a factor of 0.707 instead of the much better sounding (as I found) 1.0 removal of the quadrature L-R signal.
The results now are good enough that I am actually happy with them for my casual listening. I don't find enough defects to distract from my enjoyment. There is still one defect that I hear to be easy to remove, but figure that the improvement wont' be worth the 2-3Hrs of computer time (it has about 1.5dB too much between 2.2kHz and 9kHz.) That slight boost doesn't sound like alot, but is noticeable. In fact, in a car or when listening to speakers, might be desirable.
The defects removed since the last upload include further removal of 9kHz on up distortion (sounds reasonably clean now.)
Also, instead of using one setting for every song, a few of the songs are processed slightly differently (other than the DolbyA threshold, which as been different for groups of the songs forever.) Dancing Queen, SuperTrouper, SOS and Waterloo are now processed with significantly different parameters.
The current results (I have pristine flac files -- sound better, believe it or not), are good enough to keep in my archives now.
I might work a little bit on UnderAttack and see what else I can do to I am a City and SuperTrouper, but right now all are pretty darned smooth and ABBA-like sounding.
John
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Post by shoshin on Apr 18, 2018 22:24:42 GMT
The direct URLS that I posted above are no longer valid -- but the URLS to the repositories are correct!!! Those direct URLs did seem OK, although unfortunately I couldn't listen to them because I was at work. However, it's now back to the same problem that I mentioned in my previous post. So I still haven't heard them |
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Post by jsdyson on Apr 18, 2018 22:53:49 GMT
Well -- good news is that I have been improving them more and more. What you might hear in an hour from now will be 10X better than last night (really.) I haven't normally been working on the ABBA stuff -- again (for a few months) until now. ABBA is especially interesting to me because it is so tricky to process. If you look at the AG1 repository (one of the respositories above), I also have some Petula Clark stuff. It is SOOO pretty. But they did some stuff to the ABBA recordings to make it sound loud on AM radio -- and the ABBA is very difficult to make it sound right. However, to try to unwind some of their tricks is quite tedious and actually a little difficult (I didn't know ahead of time what they did.) As this is being written, I currently have some vastly improved ABBA GOLD 1 examples, but I intend to update the SOS and SuperTrouper examples within about 1/2 hour (needs more sidechain compression.) But, from a sound smoothness standpoint, the SOS & SuperTrouper examples really sound pretty good now (as of about 30-60minutes ago.) The AG2 still needs more work (in progress -- running some expansion and compression right now, about 3-5minutes per song), and should have AG2 examples updated in about 1Hr. THIS IS NOT EASY -- because I am working to make it prettier -- not just showing what my best source material sounds like. It is hard to explain what they (ABBA) did -- one thing is that they added stuff (somehow) to the L-R signal at 90deg. It sounds kind of like distortion on high quality equipment, but probably sounds more dense on AM radio. Also, apparently they used an Aphex Aural Exciter, which gives a nasal quality to the sound. It sounds louder but isn't really prettier -- I wrote code (a single program) that undoes some of the L-R and Exciter sound -- but that isn't the most difficult thing. Perhaps one of the more difficult things is that the music is an acid test for my psuedo-DolbyA decoder (don't let the adjective 'psuedo' imply that it doesn't 100% decode DolbyA!!!) The density of the 2kHz to 15kHz is pretty intense, and really tests the tracking of the 3-20k and 9-20k bands on the decoder. Also, any mistakes in the attack/decay are so easy to tell -- I am currently running an experimental version of the psuedo-DolbyA, and it still does have troubles with UnderAttack -- even though the mainline version has NO trouble with UnderAttack. (I am working on some very esoteric improvements -- further mitigating sources of intermodulation.) So -- in some cases my examples might not be as good as possible (yet.) I am intending that the psuedo-DolbyA be used to recover old archives of music -- and do the best possible job -- even better than the real units. One thing that might really confound you (it did confound me) is that perhaps 1/3 of the old music is still DolbyA encoded as it is provided to the end user. A simple example might be the Carpenters from HDtracks. Most people might not detect the compression artifacts on the music distribution -- but if you listen carefully, you'll notice TOO MUCH COMPRESSION, and more hiss than should be. A DolbyA decoder can remove the hiss and recover the original dynamics in the music. This is even on a supposedly pristine music distribution!!! A Queen CD that I purchased about 3yrs ago -- still DolbyA encoded!!! It just keeps on happening. The small ABBA examples that i have on my repository mostly are just a little more transparent than the original and have a little greater dynamic range. The original material is still quite compressed -- but when they make the disk/CD or whatever -- they often do quite a bit more compression. Even the Polar CDs are generally VERY compressed relative to the original material. PS: I now have the examples pretty much as they are going to be for a while. There is still a bit of an EQ issue (not much though), and I reverted the DolbyA decode to the standard version for UnderAttack. (It is pretty good now.)
PPS: Some new repositories -- ABBA in some of them. These are mostly demoing my DolbyA decoder -- really proving the noise reduction/etc.
Site1: spaces.hightail.com/space/z3H68lAgmJ
Site2: spaces.hightail.com/space/ko2yTjF5YY
Have fun!!!
John .. |
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Post by foreverfan on May 25, 2018 8:07:00 GMT
Ok, you must know by now I'm not good at posting anything from you tube  perhaps someone can... Ive just heard the new Matt Pop Mix, ( not everyone's cup of tea, but I think he does an excellent job) of One Man One Woman, it's a little bit faster and more beat, as you'd expect from Matt. However the real twist and works remarkably well, is towards the end he blends lyrics from I ve Been Waiting For You into the track.... it works. have a listen....  |
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Post by chelseacharger on May 25, 2018 14:29:33 GMT
Here it is. Clever integration of 'I've Been Waiting For You' towards the end. Matt Pop's ABBA remixes on Youtube often fall foul of the UMG watchdogs so I've put the Vimeo link up too.
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Post by foreverfan on May 25, 2018 16:01:10 GMT
Thanks^^^ one day I'll get the hang of it.. |
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Post by jsdyson on May 26, 2018 2:56:28 GMT
You really MUST listen to these. I found a much better source -- and applied DolbyA and a DBX style RMS expander (and a bit more 'love'). I found a wonderful package of ABBA music in my collection. I was SO surprised. Of course, it doesnt' sound like this until the proper processing. This is REAL -- and you gotta listen. Kisses of Fire (kof.mp3) Name of the Game (nog.mp3) Repository: spaces.hightail.com/space/UntM4LCdcmIt really is worth the 5minutes to check these out. I have been processing about 50-100 ABBA songs right now, and cant wait to listen to all of them. These were test samples, and not fully complete. Can you imagine what they will sound like when they are done? John |
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Post by jsdyson on Jun 27, 2018 8:48:49 GMT
Really worth listening -- TOTALLY cleaned up SuperTrouper with no added compression, 21dB peak to average ratio, 11+ crest factor. The spectrum all the way to 20kHz. No audible distortion, very natural sounding. Dreamworld as clean as you have ever heard -- no added compression, 18dB peak to average ratio, 7.98 crest factor. The spectrum all the way to 20kHz. Most of the excessive sheen is gone. PS: I just re-uploaded with a slightly different processing -- I added the unexciter to remove most of the evil Aphex exciter nasal sound, and slighty changed the EQ. The processing sequence from the master is: DolbyA -> unflatten -> (uncompress on SuperTrouper & Dreamworld) -> unexciter -> mp3/very mild EQ (no more than 3dB anywhere.) location: spaces.hightail.com/space/wU6nwJD4bWEnjoy -- John |
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Post by jsdyson on Aug 1, 2018 2:44:11 GMT
Gang -- My DolbyA decoder is now being targeted to Archivists and recording pros BOTH. Some of you already know that I have been uploading demos from time to time -- well, these are worth listening to. NOTE: as of a few hours after this original post -- I did an update to the repository -- made an error and grabbed the wrong files for the demos. These WILL blow you away!!!On the site, there are two short files that compare using the high quality DolbyA compatible decoder with an actual Polar CD release (or Polydor?) Anyway, the difference clarity is striking (but, of course not perfect.) I have uploaded three examples, SuperTrouper, UnderAttack and MamaMia -- full quality, only hit on the quality is mp3 encoding at 256k. Strikingly clear - previously impossibly clear and accurate.I am making the very bold claim that the quality that you hear when playing these examples is as good as the studio before encoding in DolbyA. If you compare with non-hyped versions the examples are about as perfect as can be extracted from the material. The ABBA studio TCSR recordings are not really fair -- that material is incredibly heavily processed with crest factors of 4 and peak-rms of 13-14dB. Music usually needs crest factor of 6 or higher and a peak-rms of at least 15-16dB to sound normal. The demos have peak-rms of about 18-20dB, and crest of at least 8. However, the important thing is the recovered detail. For example, the chorus during SuperTrouper and MamaMia actually sound like voices instead of a 'blob'. Do a real comparison -- the short Mama Mia 30second examples do not do it justice. ('orig' is the original CD, 'decoder' is the DolbyA compatible decoder working on something close to a master tape.) I demoed Under Attack because people who know about how attack/release times work -- Under Attack is kind of tricky to get right, and also the Dolby level has to match pretty well. I am not totally happy with 'Under Attack', but it is pretty darned good. Please enjoy the demos -- they have to be erased in a few days (maybe a week.) However, these are copies that exist no-where else because of the crazy heroic means used in the DolbyA compatible decoder to extract everything in the recording. Demo location: spaces.hightail.com/space/xghqJodgrjJohn |
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Post by chelseacharger on Aug 31, 2018 17:51:05 GMT
A couple of mashups. ABBA vs Van Halen with 'Super Jumper'. Possibly not the one Frida's wearing though. 
This is such an obvious mashup to attempt and it works really well. AZZA.
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Post by jsdyson on Sept 26, 2018 5:25:54 GMT
I have a 'gift' for ABBA lovers -- almost remix of some of the old songs. Much smoother that normal -- clearer in some cases, more defined. Perhaps too much ambience, but I'll probably update it again in the next few days. NOTHING is in the recording that wasn't already in it -- no synthesis of ANYTHING. Used the latest version of the DolbyA compatible decoder -- it is heading to AES and into the hands of some big recording engineers!!! Also, what I have posted does give an alternative sound to the old ABBA -- and again, NOTHING ARTIFICIAL IN THE EXAMPLES: spaces.hightail.com/space/xghqJodgrj |
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Post by jsdyson on Sept 27, 2018 6:05:31 GMT
At the same location as before -- also repeated below, I have reposted the examples -- they are much less 3d processed -- pretty mellow, and as clear/clean/full as I have ever heard ABBA from a CD. The full bandwidth and lowest distortion possible in this rendition. Not all of my collection is DolbyA encoded, so it is hard to get really good sound for everything. I also did minimal EQ, so you can do what you want with EQ. (Nothing hyped.) spaces.hightail.com/space/xghqJodgrj |
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