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James Horner's THE LAND BEFORE TIME (1988) - NEW Intrada 2020


Jay

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1 minute ago, publicist said:

 

But really, you must understand that you cannot correct such errors when they are inherent in the tape. That's not something that occurs during a modern remix of clean source material.

 

It's not something that usually happens, but it's not impossible during a modern remix. But yeah. Considering the source was the 3 track tape, I assume there wasn't anything to be done.

2 minutes ago, Holko said:

Now I'll see if it can be fixed quickly.

 

Lol. I'm actually pulling out the film right now to see if the relevant section is remotely clean.

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UPDATE: The error is present in the film too. Again, if it is an error, which it certainly sounds to be. 47:55. 

 

11 minutes ago, publicist said:

To take something out of a different film mix seems a cure worse than the disease. Why not let it be as lovely anomaly? You get used to it.

 

I mean sure. That's fine. But sometimes adding in a segment from the film mix isn't that big of a deal, especially if it can fix up an error that isn't supposed to be there.

 

It doesn't matter though. The error is present in the recent Blu-Ray and honestly has probably always been there. It shall stay as is.

 

Again, my goal wasn't to tear down the release in any way. Just pointing out something that caught my attention on a first listen. I really can't complain.

 

It's a simple presentation, everything is there, it sounds great, and we finally have the missing 15 minutes of music! I'm beyond thrilled. As far as that new 15 minutes: I love it, especially that fun woozy brass in Journey of the Dinosaurs. To play Devil's Advocate: I can see why it may have been removed from the initial OST, it does add some moments that may feel a bit repetitive in the overall picture of things.

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10 minutes ago, TSMefford said:

Again, my goal wasn't to tear down the release in any way. Just pointing out something that caught my attention on a first listen. I really can't complain.

 

It's not something you can't do (the fix) but over the years, i heard so many 'fixes' by amateur audio editors that were fucking horrible, so my personal take is to take it easy. The illusion of perfection remains an illusion, anyway. The catch with mistakes as this is that you can't really unhear them: once you fix it you will always know when the cue is on. So whenever i hear the often glaring segue problems in ESB (lp edit) or the channel dropout in Secret of NIMH's long action cue, i just smile.

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15 minutes ago, publicist said:

 

It's not something you can't do (the fix) but over the years, i heard so many 'fixes' by amateur audio editors that were fucking horrible, so my personal take is to take it easy. The illusion of perfection remains an illusion, anyway. The catch with mistakes as this is that you can't really unhear them: once you fix it you will always know when the cue is on. So whenever i hear the often glaring segue problems in ESB (lp edit) or the channel dropout in Secret of NIMH's long action cue, i just smile.


Oh I understand the apprehension to these fixes. I’ve been doing audio work professionally for many years, including music editing work, so I get it. I cringe at those things too. There’s tons of bad edits out there, but I’ve heard some good ones too. When I “fix” something, even as small as something like this, I pay it as much attention as I do in my professional work when I go through that process. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but if the edit isn’t possible to do good enough that I can eventually fool myself, then I won’t even try it. But I can do good edits when it’s possible to do so. It’s my job.
 

Regardless, I hear what your saying. I do find, for me personally, that even after I’ve worked with it and know the edit, it does eventually blend away for me. I still keep the error versions around, and honestly, with a few exceptions, I end up coming back around to the official releases when I listen most of the time. I have my edits, but they’re mostly for educational purposes or, yes, that twinge of perfectionism in me to just have whatever version.
 

For me, if the error isn’t supposed to there, then I prefer to have the cue the way it was originally intended / recorded and used in the film sans error. But there are some cases where these things just happen and are even in the film. Sorcerers Stone comes to mind. And now this one too.
 

In that case, if there is no version without the error that ever existed, then it’s just a part of the music now. Long way of saying, I hate bad edits too, and I see where you’re coming from. I just disagree depending on the context. Lol.

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Would you mind putting up another excerpt for when in "The Great Migration" the horn line sounds different than on the OST? Thanks.

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2 hours ago, TSMefford said:

For convenience, here's the segment I'm referring to. Listen to just after the peak of the cymbal roll:

 

...is the audio quality in this clip accurate to the album, or heavily compressed? Like, 96kbps mp3 compressed? Because that clip sounds really unnatural.

 

What's with the hiss? It's like the treble was dialed up 200%.

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I'm glad someone else noticed The Great Migration.  I know the old album too well, and immediately it felt different.  

 

 

Booklet says masters are directly from 3 track stereo film mixes, recorded at 16/48.  Guess no analog.  I'm wondering if The Great Migration film take is different than the album take?  that would explain it.  

 

 

And again this release is great, so not a criticism as much as an observation.  

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6 hours ago, crumbs said:

 

...is the audio quality in this clip accurate to the album, or heavily compressed? Like, 96kbps mp3 compressed? Because that clip sounds really unnatural.

 

What's with the hiss? It's like the treble was dialed up 200%.


It’s probably the website/clip compressing it. The album doesn’t sound anywhere in the ballpark of 96kbps mp3. It sounds great.

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2 minutes ago, TSMefford said:


It’s probably the website/clip compressing it. The album doesn’t sound anywhere in the ballpark of 96kbps mp3. It sounds great.

 

Okay, that's reassuring. That excerpt just sounds really off to me, full of artificial/digital hiss or something.

 

I know next to nothing about the score, so will be a nice discovery the next time I place an order through Intrada (whenever they have stock of Monsignor, Alien and Jaws again).

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2 hours ago, publicist said:

Ah, from a time when composers could still model their stuff on Prokoviev and Bartok instead of Hans Zimmer.


Now that we can certainly agree on!

 

56 minutes ago, Demondm810 said:

Turned the movie on, horn is like the original album. Definitely something off on this release. 


Ive got more time today, I’ll try and see if I can do a proper deep comparison between the two.

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In listening to The Great Migration on the original album, right as the horn solo comes in at 1:55 there sounds like there's possibly an edit there (really only audible on headphones). Perhaps the horn solo only is from a different take and edited into what what Horner thought was otherwise the best take of the cue? The rest of the cue sounds essentially the same as far as the mix and performance is concerned between the two albums.

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1 hour ago, Colonial Marine said:

In listening to The Great Migration on the original album, right as the horn solo comes in at 1:55 there sounds like there's possibly an edit there (really only audible on headphones). Perhaps the horn solo only is from a different take and edited into what what Horner thought was otherwise the best take of the cue? The rest of the cue sounds essentially the same as far as the mix and performance is concerned between the two albums.

 

That's the most logical explanation, nice job!

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Do I smell a repressing? ;)

 

Listening to the whole CD right now, and it otherwise does sound amazing!

 

EDIT: LOL! When loading the CD-Text from the CD itself, the 7th track reads:

 

Quote

James Horner / The Rescue / Discovery Of The Great Scott Valley

 

LOL!

 

back to the future great scott GIF

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9 hours ago, scallenger said:

EDIT: LOL! When loading the CD-Text from the CD itself, the 7th track reads:

 

LOL!

 

I just came here to post about this very thing. Pretty funny. :lol:

 

Edit to add: I give Doug Fake and Intrada a decent amount of flack when it comes to mastering, but I think this album sounds great. Very much enjoying it.

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1 minute ago, The Big Man said:

 

Holy shit, so glad I skipped this. These labels, they ruin everything. 

I'd like someone else to confirm what I'm seeing:

(rough estimate of times)
Track 1 - [1:17]
Track 2 - [8:18 / 8:45 / 9:20 / 9:40 / 10:04] 
Track 4 - [2:54 / 7:10]
Track 5 - [3:03]
Track 6 - [3:02 / 3:12 / 4:55]
Track 7 - [4:30-4:40 / 8:02 / 8:28-8:30 / 9:27 / 10:35]
Track 8 - [4:53-4:55]

Track 3 and Track 9 didn't show as clipping although they are pushed RIGHT to the limit.

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My copy just arrived. Ripping now. Kinda alarmed to read about this clipping though :(

 

Edit: Listening to track one and not hearing any issues. It sounds fantastic to me so far!

 

Just on track 2, where things get really intense towards the end. No clipping as far as I can hear. I'm not using any EQ and everything sounds great. It gets very loud but I don't feel like anything is being lost.

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My parcel with this seems to be stuck in some Mail limbo at Jamica, NY since last 4 days. It should have left JFK by now! Must be the elections day off for the USPS post office.

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1 minute ago, Amer said:

My parcel with this seems to be stuck in some Mail limbo at Jamica, NY since last 4 days. It should have left JFK by now! Must be the elections day off for the USPS post office.

 

Mine was sat at Heathrow from Thursday - Sunday (some sort of quaranteen maybe?). I thought I was going to receive it in record time when I got the notification on Thursday to say it was in the UK. Still not bad though to have it 7 days after ordering.

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hmm It doesn't look to me like anything was done past boosting it up cause it still registers as clipping in audacity. If it were limited wouldn't it not show?

It just looks like they boosted it up. This caused the clipping but nothing was done to prevent that or to preserve those peaks. It just clips. Distortion wise I don't hear much but I don't get why you couldn't just normalize it a little. It seems lazy to me to boost it and clip it... 

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I've finally gotten to finish this new album. The two new cues are pretty uneventful IMO. Horner and or the album producer seem to have done a good job of picking the highlights the first time around.

 

 

37 minutes ago, GoodMusician said:

hmm It doesn't look to me like anything was done past boosting it up. This caused the clipping but nothing was done to prevent that or to preserve those peaks. It just clips. Distortion wise I don't hear much but I don't get why you couldn't just normalize it a little. It seems lazy to me to boost it and clip it... 

 

There's the Intrada I know. Audacity definitely shows clipping in several tracks. I only noticed it in the first one, but honesly, it still sounds ok. There's hiss of course, but the whole thing sounds clearer than on the OST. I am surprised Doug didn't add more/any compression to this though, especially after all the fans indicated a clear preference for that on The Rocketeer.

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Just heard from Intrada, @Colonial Marinewas right!!

 

The film take of The Great Migration is the same take as the MCA album, however for that short horn section, James Horner did manually splice in a few seconds from a different take for the album. That is kind of unusual for James, as he generally preferred using single takes. We kept the film take; I don't know if that was the right choice or not.”

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Well, I have been meaning to get ProTools afterall. Not because I don't know how to master my own compositions/CD's mind you, but because it is such an industry standard. 

There may be no discernable distortion, but I really don't like the idea of boosting something and limiting it. I get wanting to add volume of course--and the dynamics of the pieces vary greatly--but honestly some minor normalization could have protected the peaks.

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Does that mean the film version of Sharptooth and the Earthquake (with the additional brass) will remain unreleased just because Horner didn't use the film take on the OST?

 

There's over 6 minutes of available space on the disc, bit surprised the film version (with brass) wasn't included as a bonus track? Only needs to be the excerpt of the cue with different sections.

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7 hours ago, Roger said:

 

There's no clipping on this release. You can't really expect precision from a consumer level, free product like Audacity...at least not compared to professional grade tools like ProTools. As is evident to the people who say they can't hear any clipping -- that's because there isn't. You can't believe your eyes!

 

On the horn issue, it appears that Horner did chose an insert from an earlier take that was never documented.  Since this is obviously what Horner preferred and what folks are saying they prefer, we have no issue making the change.  Stay tuned. 

 

Does this mean we will get a replacement disc? Or will we have to buy it again? 

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11 hours ago, MedigoScan said:

I wonder if the only reason those edits were made was to make sharptooth less intimidating.

Woulnt you mean toothless?

 

I thought that was LLL's territory.... :P

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Ah, I understand now!

 

The 6 track referred to the entire film audio - music, sound effects, and dialogue - not a special 6-track mix of the music only.  Sorry for misunderstanding initially!

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4 hours ago, Roger said:

 

We'll have a spindle for those that want a replacement. Outside of a few comments here, after having nearly sold out the first run, very few have noticed or cared about the difference, interestingly. But we're adjusting it anyway!

 

The release is glorious as is; but that you folks would go the extra mile and make this adjustment is just amazing. Thank you for all the hard work you do! 

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