anybody intrigued by the early CD issues of the RCA years might find this interesting. it attempts to inform potential buyers by comparing the two, sometimes three masters available. i've tried to keep things simple and key points in the document link to mp3 samples (you'll need to run your mouse over the text to find them). the file is around 50MB due to the number of images.
NB: only Golden Years from the RCA CDs uses the same master for each territory, all others have different masterings.

Wow Shooky thank you a lot of work. But well spent for us collectors.

---admin---
Rest of post considered off topic and continued here.

An excellent piece of work indeed Matt. I didn't have any comments when reading the draft. In fact, you noticed a few bits and pieces of songs that I hadn't discovered for myself yet.

Pardon my ignorance, but how should we interpret the different masters? Are these all copies (of copies) of the master tape or are they different "interpretations" (equalisation, etc) by the persons who prepared the final versions?

Thank you very much ! it absolutely fantastic !

Matt the article is excellent - both in content and presentation. I think you make the salient point that these CDs were prepared from LP masters very clearly. Well done and thankyou.

It's interesting and easy to tell how some pressings change the relative loudness of tracks on the same album, which indicates that in some cases each track is individually adjusted, losing the original relationship that was on the LP, and presumably the master tape.

thanks for the positive comments. i don't consider myself an authority on the RCA CDs, just an obsessive who loves to spot differences between pressings - a side-effect of being a vinyl collector i expect.

i don't subscribe to the theory that the RCAs are inferior to later issues because they didn't use "the master tape", because that's an oft-misunderstood term but i don't want to get into another lengthy mastering post. tapes from every record label get misfiled and incorrectly labelled, and only the most diligent engineers and specialist labels bother to track down every tape in the hope of finding the true master. even today, different tapes are being used (e.g. Universal Japan's current SACD series of Rolling Stones '70s albums use flat transfers of the UK master tapes with no limiting, despite the recent [horrible] remastering done of the same catalogue worldwide), and it becomes irrelevant once numerous filters have impacted on the sound. you only have to listen to the "analogue master" of the current remaster of Station To Station vs the new vinyl cut to know that a little EQ can make a big difference.

we know that Ryko used "incorrect" tapes for the Young Americans album, sub-par sources for some of their bonus tracks, and other anomalies (i'm sure Station To Station has been altered on the Ryko too). we know that the ziggy 30th anniversary took liberties by editing out a few key elements and reversed the channels. other mastering tricks like noise reduction and select band filtering all impact on the sound of "the master tape", and in that respect the RCAs are probably the least tampered with. BUT, as the differences between the editions shows, sometimes the tapes used are very distinct from each other. whether this is how the tapes sounded due to the playback equipment or decisions made by engineers "on the fly", we'll probably never know. as i mention in the pdf, the japan-sourced discs tend to have more audible hiss between tracks and are generally brightner, which is in keeping with japanese vinyl cuts, while the german discs invariably fade the hiss to silence between tracks and have a warmer EQ. by the way, tape hiss is not in itself an indicator of a copy or dub. excessive hiss usually is, or is a bi-product of the high-end being boosted. what is clear is that very little, if any, digital repair was done to these tapes, which from an audiophile point of view is a plus, because it means one less round of processing. as can be heard on even the earliest vinyl pressings, some of these tapes have had their problems since the beginning.

there are mistakes on the RCAs and fans won't be happy with some titles. but pick wisely and you can assemble a great sounding RCA catalogue. they don't come cheap but then neither do mint original first pressing LPs.

I've been saying on my blog that I'll make observations of all the RCA CDs.
But no need to do so.
Shooky, you really made a great job!
Many thanks!
I appreciate your efforts.

My god, this is a serious piece of work, worthy of much wider circulation and publication. This really is a long overdue analysis of what i'm sure most of us consider the most important stage of the most significant individual career in modern music.

In short, thanks.

I've had a quick look though and will have a much closer look later but i do have a couple of questions. I know your preference was to not get into another long mastering discussion but i'm curious about a process that i kind of get but have never fully understood.

There are examples across all the discs but i've picked a handful of obvious examples from Diamond Dogs which you have noted bears the most marked difference.

So basically, the question is the same, what might have caused the following differences and is it possible to ever decide which is 'correct'?

1) Why is the last minute or so of (the track) Diamond Dogs level with the rest of the track on JPN but lower on WG?
2) Right channel of WG Rebel Rebel rises in volume but stays level on JPN.
3) Right channel of WG 1984 intro significantly quieter.
4) Left channel of WG Chant finishes with a peak which is missing from JPN.

I guess the answer could be a simple as "someone decided that sounded better" but how is this not essentially remixing?

And given that these were done pre cooledit pro etc, what techniques would be used for this sort of manipulation of volume levels of specific sections of tracks?

Christian

I suspect that this is a question that many might ask, though I think also that Matt covered this by saying:



The rise in volume during a track could be a simple as the engineer raising the master fader whilst the track is being mastered, or more complex by running a computer program (available circa 1984/5) that has some gain. Personally, I'd emphasise the "we'll probably never know" part of Matt's statement.

One point of reference that could be done is comparing these graphs with ones for the LPs. I can do this for most of the RCA LP's ( US and UK first press), but not until much later this year, or 2013. If someone else wishes to take up the task, it will be important for consistencies sake that the same turntable/tonearm/cartridge/stylus is used for each LP, and preferably a very high quality one at that.

This is a phenomenal piece of work. How long did it take you to put this together? It must have been ages. It is tremendously appreciated! What a pleasure to read.

Graham

Brilliant work. What a labour of love it must have been.
This is the sort of article that I always love to read. The attention to detail is staggering.
Thanks so much for doing it, and sharing all your hard work with us.
Cheers,
Richard

thanks again. it's something i started many months ago but didn't manage to see through. a recent series of posts on the hoffman forum about the RCAs inspired me to revisit the project and finalise it. needless to say, despite my intention to keep it free of bias, points i've highlighted are things my ears picked up and i fully expect others to have their own take on things.

a belated word of thanks to alan (beckenham) who provided invaluable assistance in helping me track down (and indeed become aware of) pressings i didn't have when i started the project, and putting up with dozens if not hundreds of emails while i got my head around the whole thing. he also provided the cover scan and audio for the RPCD-104 Fame and Fashion disc and the audio for the R32P-1038 Young Americans.

i've just spotted a typo on the Space Oddity page ("...the opening 14 seconds of
the WG.") and a double space on page 1, which i'll amend, but please highlight others and/or elements i've overlooked so this can be improved over time.

not easy to answer christian's questions as we don't know which tapes were used and how much of the final sound is down to the tape or the decisions made by the engineers. i would expect that the significant rolling off of high end information on the WG edition of Diamond Dogs is impacting on the waveforms. cymbals and percussive attack will have been compromised by this with the fast hi-hat in the right channel of 1984 being one example of this and could explain the differences there. lots of cymbal splashes at the end of the title track too. it's much harder to explain why Teenage Wildlife on Scary Monsters has such different waveforms considering these two masters are so similar on other tracks. perhaps some built in limiters/compressors were introduced here and there but it's really outside my scope to do more than speculate.

An interesting read and significant contribution, thank you shooky.
Regrettably I have only 5 of the 17 RCA CD’s; they are Japan for US pressed.
I have been lucky enough to buy these relatively inexpensively from used shops
in very nice sounding condition.

Two of the shop owners have told me they are quite aware of the high prices
that can be achieved for these but refuse to engage in that type of gouging of dedicated
music fans. The other shop owners I frequent do not know that they can fetch top dollar, well I have not told them at least.

My ...Ziggy Stardust... RCA PCD must have been cherished by its previous owner who put together additions to the booklet in the form of cut out and pasted pictures and lyrics. I will keep looking for the remainder of the PCD’s that I lack, though I admit it is very slow going...