Your Maiden blasphemy

Ruflux said:
All the master tracks you have online of basically every band are sourced from Guitar Hero or in this case Rock Band. Unfortunately this means they're merged in strange ways, have leveling issues with things like fill-in guitars, synths and vocals, the mix is usually odd since everything's been EQ'd wrong, and they're pretty poor quality resulting in audible high-end distortion thanks to lossy compression.
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I have the masters rip from GH/RB and the files are very good. I've worked with the tracks in audio projects and there is nothing wrong with them. Obviously your average Youtuber doesn't know how to mix audio. Not only that I have both "Hi-Fi" and monitoring audio systems where my ears can hear lossy, when you see peaks in the waveform you can pretty much be sure that these sources are OK.

Death Magnetic RIP from the same source sounds excellent, the album itself sucks compared to it.

There are some issues, mostly in modern production era, I believe on Wicker Man synths are throughout bass track or something like that. In Birch days they probably used 8 or 9 channels where guitars are doubled and you have drums lo-hi or something like that. It's easily bouncable to 5-ish track format these games require. Possibly they have a lot more tracks going on nowadays so when you auto-bounce something as Wicker Man to several instrument tracks only you get instruments where they don't belong. I assume.
 
Zare said:
^ people don't understand that Jason's bass isn't just "turned down" it's actually frequency jammed by Hetfield's guitar at times.
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Yeah. You can hear Jason's bass just fine (well, it's still a little low but it is there) during the clean guitar sections of the album. Most noticeably during To Live Is To Die.

Anyway, to stay on topic:
I don't like The Final Frontier (album) and rate it as the worst Maiden album. It is the only album I've not purchased a copy of. I've only occasionally listened to it on Spotify and think to myself "let's not do that again any time soon".
 
Zare said:
I have the masters rip from GH/RB and the files are very good. I've worked with the tracks in audio projects and there is nothing wrong with them. Obviously your average Youtuber doesn't know how to mix audio. Not only that I have both "Hi-Fi" and monitoring audio systems where my ears can hear lossy, when you see peaks in the waveform you can pretty much be sure that these sources are OK.

Death Magnetic RIP from the same source sounds excellent, the album itself sucks compared to it.

There are some issues, mostly in modern production era, I believe on Wicker Man synths are throughout bass track or something like that. In Birch days they probably used 8 or 9 channels where guitars are doubled and you have drums lo-hi or something like that. It's easily bouncable to 5-ish track format these games require. Possibly they have a lot more tracks going on nowadays so when you auto-bounce something as Wicker Man to several instrument tracks only you get instruments where they don't belong. I assume.
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Hmm, I dunno. I think I'll give on the point about compression since it's likely there's more than one rip around for any given song and some might've preserved the original's dynamics better, but there's definitely some issues with mixing. The drum stem of Wasted Years for example has some terrible EQ on it and the hi-hats sound super pronounced and it just doesn't work as a complete mix. Vocal tracks usually have a lot of reverb for some reason too. And call it what you will, but I don't think any sort of professional recording setup ever worked with all drums and cymbals in one single track, let alone with guitars in one track too (except when there's a solo or lead, then the rhythm disappears into the vocal track) since that's just too limiting.

Death Magnetic is actually a good example; the original stems as-is perfectly flat sound pretty meh and even leveling the four tracks still leaves volume spikes and overly quiet intros and a lack of proper dynamics. The semi-pros doing remixes of that album had access to the original stems from a source and those are the only ones I'd actually call good.
 
We can take this elsewhere but it is, at least for me, an interesting topic.

FLAC 24bit/96khz MarckIII release of DM was developed from GH tracks and it is a great listen IMO


As for Wasted Years, I've mentioned studio setup specifics having a role in separation of instruments over tracks, here I would simply presume that drums being recorded elsewhere is the caveat. Wasted Years being a single drum track with heavy reverb on : a drums reference tape Maiden probably had as they recorded drums in separate studio for SiT. So there would be channel tapes and downmix, game company got downmix. I certainly do have some with cymbal / drum separation, SSOASS era if I'm not mistaken. Also one interesting detail here :


Birch is working with a single 8 strip module of the desk. Considering he's an old school producer, there's an option that whole drumset was recorded to just a few tracks.
 
I dont know if this is so much blasphemy as i am sure some people agree with me on this regarding The Book of Souls (song, not album)

It is full-stop the best song on the album and a top 10 maiden song overall for me.

Everything after 5:48 when Nicko comes in with that drum line is pure magic and one of the best things Maiden has ever done. And Bruce's Vocals in the last half of the song are among his finest.

This is one of the rare songs for Maiden for me that sounds better on the album than live.
 
Murder of Rue Morgue said:
I don't necessarly agree with the top 10 part, but surely is a great piece of music. I wasn't expecting that in 2015, not gonna lie.
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obviously the top 10 is purely subjective, and is my opinion. Even today, when this song comes on either spotify or my ipod, i need to listen to it 3-4 times in a row before i listen to something else.

That is a rare piece of music that a band of their age and vintage don't put out anymore (Except for Rush ovecourse). As Clockwork Angels is one of their best works.
 
mitch cugnet said:
now THAT is blasphemy my friend!:goodbye:
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I'm sorry, mitch. For me the best Rush period is from A Farewell To Kings until Hold Your Fire. Presto, Roll The Bones are decent. Counterparts is amazing and Test For Echo is also good. Don't care for the albums that come afterwards.
 
To keep this on topic:

I prefer The X Factor over most of the reunion albums and the Di'Anno albums.
I've sold my copy of Eddie's Archive (first edition) some years ago.
I only have 1 Maiden live album left in my collection: Live After Death.
 
MindRuler said:
To keep this on topic:

I prefer The X Factor over most of the reunion albums and the Di'Anno albums.
I've sold my copy of Eddie's Archive (first edition) some years ago.
I only have 1 Maiden live album left in my collection: Live After Death.
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Out of interest, why did you great rid of the live albums and Eddies Archive? Choice or circumstances?
 
Ascendingthethrone said:
Out of interest, why did you great rid of the live albums and Eddies Archive? Choice or circumstances?
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Live albums: Too much of the same songs. And I decided to keep only "the" Maiden live album for me.
I got Eddie's Archive the day it came out and got pleasure for it for many years but didn't touch it the last couple of years so I sold it to someone that wanted it. The only thing I regret is that I didn't drink out of the Eddie shotglass. :facepalm:
 
MindRuler said:
Live albums: Too much of the same songs. And I decided to keep only "the" Maiden live album for me.
I got Eddie's Archive the day it came out and got pleasure for it for many years but didn't touch it the last couple of years so I sold it to someone that wanted it. The only thing I regret is that I didn't drink out of the Eddie shotglass. :facepalm:
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Fair enough. To be fair I would keep Rock in Rio if I had to get rid of the others. There is enough variety of there plus the performance is incredible. I do tire of hearing Trooper and 2MTM. The others I don’t mind having multiples of.
 
Black Bart said:
Too bad it is ruined by the unnecessary, rip-off riff. The rest is great, among my favourite moments on the album (especially the "into the valley of death, fear no evil" part).
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Going a bit off-topic here, but yeah, I agree about that. It's one of those things that could have possibly been avoided with a bit more ballsy producer or one or two extra runs with it during the sessions. And yes, unnecessary being the key word here. It's not that the song really stumbles or goes too off towards the end, it's just keeps going after it has already peaked and doesn't really deliver anything too exciting after that. Which, in the end, means that while it's still enjoyable, it's also very anticlimatic.

I've always found the "INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH, FEAR NO EVIL" part and the "OO-OO"s that follow very strong and striking section where the climax and peak of the song is. It's great how the song really builds up and holds itself tight to that point... And throwing in another cycle of choruses and ok but a bit used riffs and whatnot just feels... as said, unnecessary.

I love TBOS, but the case with Shadows of the Valley is just another in the long list of things that their approach at writing and recording tends to hurt.
 
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