Loveless Remaster Actually Sound Better?

Like MJ's it has a pretty serious pressing defect, ie. the first track skips like a wee lass in a playground.

Perhaps I could solve the problem if I got hold of some... outboard gear and took it to the middle of a large reservoir.

Huh. Cuz all versions of "Isn't Anything" I've heard, vinyl especially, have sounded criminally quiet... which is extremely frustrating knowing that much of the music on that record gives you the impression it's the most monstrous sounding rock imaginable... "Feed Me With your Kiss", "You Never Should", etc.

I keep thinking about taking each track on this album and adding new bass and drums to it. But I guess I'm almost as lazy as Kevin?

I know I have it on minidisc. I haven't seen it for some time though.

OK, the 2CD 'remaster' is out soon, maybe even now.

Someone post here:
1) What exactly is the difference between CD1 and CD2 (One's a remaster, and one's a remaster of the analogue original)

2) Which sounds better/different and how?

Speaking of the reissues, is this listing on Amazon.co.uk the same as that Japanese one that was linked somewhere here last year? If the box includes everything (I really want 'You Made Me Realise' on CD) then I'd be well worth the wait and the extra bucks.

http://www.about--depression.info/Images/DepressionBlues.gif

the remaster was pushed back to the end of june

"You made me realise" is already on Cd.

Um, hasn't it been deleted for years?

I suppose. Is it that hard to get hold of?

Amazon resellers have it starting from 50 quid sterling. I love it and all, but I don't love it that much.

FIFTY QUID?

I don't even love my copy that much.....

.. ebay's 'completed' sales has it gone for £42 on a 'buy it now' (i.e. first bidder got it), and £26 for the 12" version.

Im hoping this remaster will sort out the flabby, lifeless bass frequencies on the original release, but I'm gussing we'll just get something with shitty brick-wall limiting turned up to the max.

I'd love to be proved wrong though.

why 2 discs

are there nerd fights over which version is better

There will be.

There will be.

Next month, isn't it?

I wouldn't hope for new stuff, if even a re-release takes two years, and 8 months of delay.

There is an alleged leak up on What.cd. I haven’t given it much of a listen. But both versions mearly sounded louder on the brief comparison I made – if anything the bass was even more dull and muddy, and seeing as that was my biggest problem with the original vinyl and CD versions I stopped listening to it.

It could be a fake, but if it’s legit It is extremely disappointing

I will add I was extremely impressed with the Isn’t Anything remaster job. That was A++

Take a look here for the leak:

http://www.mybloodyvalentine.net/smf/index.php?topic=1245.0

There's a FLAC version on page 4.

The Isn't Anything remaster, off brief exposure, seems better; fuller, louder, more bottom end, bit without squashing things.

Some people have had these for a few months... ;)

I wrote about this on another MBV thread. It's subtle, it's louder, it's not overcompressed. See if you can tell the difference between mastered-from-analogue-tape and mastered-from-DAT (if this release still sports both versions).

I'm not convinced the version of Loveless I've just d/l'd is actually a remaster, but I'm at work listening on shitty satellites. Noticable difference with IA but this could well be the same.

it can be found anywhere at this point
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=site%3Ablogspot.com+loveless+remastered&spell=1

See if you can tell the difference between mastered-from-analogue-tape and mastered-from-DAT (if this release still sports both versions).

i can yet i can't, like its not nearly enough of a difference to even warrant releasing both. so why? what was their reasoning?

I'm not an audiophile, but I think I'm pretty tuned in to sound-staging, clarity (of whatever the intended sound, even a hazy, reverb-drenched sound), dynamic range, etc. And I guess 'Loveless' is the record most praised for its sonic appeal that I just absolutely don't get. It's always sounded so muddled, muffled (but not in a good Sly Stone kind of way), far-away, thin, and narrow to me that I haven't, in 15 years or so I've never been able to stand listening to it enough to really form an opinion on the quality of the music. I remember liking one track enough to want to put it on a mix tape when I was 14, but even then deciding to cut it because set next to seemingly anything else but a Galaxie 500 song (and even then) it just sounded so weak and shallow.

I'm not trying to troll or be a heretic. I want to hear what it's all about, but it just sounds like a mid-80s 4AD record with all the bass pulled and the reverb quadrupled. Anyone ever read anything that provides insight into why it's considered such a sonic masterpiece? What are other records that people who love this one in terms of sound-design also love?

As the previously prolific band were unusually quiet, the UK music press began to speculate. Melody Maker calculated that the total recording cost had come close to £250,000; however, McGee, Green, and Shields dispute this. Shields argued that that estimated cost (and Creation's near-bankruptcy) was a myth exaggerated by McGee because the Creation owner "thought it would be cool." According to Shields, "The amount we spent nobody knows because we never counted. But we worked it out ourselves just by working out how much the studios cost and how much all the engineers cost. 160 thousand pounds was the most we could come to as the actual money that was spent."[16] In Green's opinion, the Melody Maker's estimate erred on the low side, by £20,000. He said, "Once you'd even got it recorded and mixed, the very act of compiling, EQ-ing, etcetera took weeks on its own."[15] In a December 1991 interview, Shields said that most of the money claimed to have been spent on the album was simply "money to live on" over three years, with the album itself only costing "a few thousand". He also claimed that the album represented only four months work over two years.[17] Shields later said that most of the money spent was the band's own money, and that "Creation probably spent fifteen to twenty thousand pounds of their own money on it, and that's it.

Any of these numbers--ouch. This makes me feel even more there's apparently an incredible thing going on here (or at least attempted) that my ears are just not programmed to receive. . .

If you are listening to a download that is 222MB in size, you are listening to a fake.

Read My Magpie Eyes or hit the index for the MBV juicy bits at a shop, Soundslike. The time-suck of recording Loveless is detailed (from predominately outside perspectives). Lots of perch-knocking re: Shields in that book, probably deserved in terms of the headaches he caused his backers.

Mike McGonigal's book on the album contains a lot of rebuttal to those general accounts via Shields himself -- truth doubtless is somewhere in between.

I've never spoken about it, but I think in large part Mike got taken for a ride on the good ship Shields there.

If you are listening to a download that is 222MB in size, you are listening to a fake.

― cee-oh-tee-tee, Wednesday, January 21, 2009 11:01 AM

how do u know? fake megabytes?

The recent torrent posted on What.CD is a fake. It is not the remastered 2-CD edition of Loveless - it is the original CD run through mild DSP on someone's computer and uploaded to acquire seed ratio with trackers. Believe it or not, this is a lucrative proposition for some kids.

haha.
no.
seem to have read somewhere tis same bloke who messed up the recent duran remasters, but i can't be 100% certain.

the worst remastering/ mastering job i can think of is the Blur StarShaped DVD which is *legendarily* screwed beyond words. it's the only genuinely unlistenable DVD or CD
i've ever owned.

I believe that was mastered from a VHS copy.

Anyways, I played CD1, it has the 'full fade' on Soon, which makes it a mislabel.

Mind you, the "CD1" and 2 markings are tiny so hey.

Hey what's this? Got a good beat to it.

So, I gave them a listen and I don't think they really fixed the problems with Loveless and Isn't anything. I had heard people say before that Loveless on vinyl sounded amazing and the CD sounded like crap. I have always thought the recording was too tinny and not wide/full enough.

I thought the same thing about Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy, but I think the remaster fixed this album and now it sounds great. I thought Sterelolab's Peng! remaster fixed that album up as much as possible, but the Loveless remaster doesn't do the trick -- in fact, it kind of goes in the other direction. Now, a lot of the vocals sound so separated from the noisy drone that it looses the effect of being behind a wall of sound.

Yo, what Peng! remaster???

ha i just checked the mbv forum for the first time in a lil while: the thing that makes me laugh is how GREEDY everyone is. like there is the perpetual state of still-flickering optimism riding on whispers or occasional kevin shields interviews, but on top of that people are all trying to put DATES on it. like possibly November??. i guess if it really is almost finished then WE COULD HAVE IT LIKE STRAIGHT AWAY? also atm there is a post in which people are enthused by rumours about, 1., deadlines, i guess forgetting the grey sunlightened pencil deadline of 1994 on the wall of a now demolished studio, &, 2., that after recording is finished there would only, "only", ~only~, only be mixing to do. i mean it could be out in october if he just has to scribble mix my new album off his checklist. i am really not different from these people but the similarities between mbv fans & doomsday cults are so marginal.

Peng remaster?

Discogs says reissue is 2008, but I can't see any mention of a remaster.