ABBA Dancing Queen Difference in 2.07 Edit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1kBxImBNXA&fmt=18 for STEREO SOUND.
I uploaded this video as a response to the fantastic video by the YouTuber MarkPMus, in where he discussed anomalies in the 1992 remaster of Dancing Queen, remastered by Michael B. Tretow as part of the ABBA Gold Album. Here I have juxtaposed the original 1984 CD release of Dancing Queen to the 2005 Complete Studio Recordings (CSR) box set remastered by Henrik Jonsson, which is a clone of the 2006 Deluxe release of Arrival. The 1984 CD version has either a minor tape dropout or a bad edit around 2.07, that connects the 2nd chorus to the 2nd verse. You can hear that Jonsson tried to "repar' the sustained queen by editing in a different part of the song. The resulting "improvement", in my opinion, sounds much worse than the 1984 CD version, and sounds like that the girls can't sing in tune! I also think that the CSR master has a bit of distortion, and quite noticeably compressed.

A very interesting discussion on the audiophile aspects of Arrival reissues can be found here

http://www.abbaplaza.com/pages-english/album-audiophile.asp?IdAlbum=4

Category:

Music

Tags:

• ABBA
• Dancing
• Queen
• Difference
• in
• 2.07
• Edit
• 1976
• 1984
• 2005
• 2007
• Michael
• B.
• Tretow
• Henrik
• Jonsson
• pop
• rock
• mixing
• error
• bad
• edit
• tape
• drop-out
• drop
• out
• dropout
• repair
• audiophile

[MarkPMus]

Also I note you have the deluxe edition of Arrival. Does the DVD use PAL or NTSC. I would only buy it for the DVD clips, you see, and the one I've seen on Amazon UK seems to only be NTSC and so could not watch in UK player?

[mozpiano2]

The DVD I have from Australia is in the NTSC format, but may DVD players can now play both types.

[MarkPMus]

I don't think the edits themselves make the songs poor quality. They couldn't help those, and the vinyl editions are much more cleverly concealed, because of the greater headroom. Although you say some of the newer mixes use noise reduction, the hiss is still much more than the vinyl. The people behind many of today's albums and remixes are too commercially driven - let's make it LOUD! - and they are the culprits. You can FEEL the beat of the vinyls, cos there's much more headroom.

[mozpiano2]

Well I know these edits don't make the songs sound bad, this video is only an comparison between the 1984 Polydor CD version and the 2005 CSR remaster. I was referring to the 2005 CSR as being the inferior edit. In theory, CDs surpass LPs in audio quality, and have a much bigger dynamic range than LPs, but in practice audio mastering nowdays is horrible, making LPs sound 10000X better than CDs. At least engineers in classical music don't compress the sound!

[MarkPMus]

The "fade out" of voices (at 8 secs in this video) sounds like 2 "queens" joined together, and is still definitely audible in the newer mix. The bass is also uncomfortably loud and compressed in newer version, judging by this vid. But YT uses Flash, which is poor sound quality anyway, if the comparison of my video originals to the uploads is owt to go by!

[mozpiano2]

Well this remaster was only moderately compressed compared to the 1997 and 2001 versions! They also feature heavy noise reduction, which smother the sound. I wish there would be an audiophile release of the ABBA albums, I a sick of listening to ABBA in such poor quality.

[craneywatch]

@mozpiano2 the same goes with me my friend. I spent big money for ABBA and still didn't get good audio quality records.

[craneywatch]

I has never been able to find a good records of ABBA in the stores. And darn how I am upset about that:((((

[MarkPMus]

I think in my DQ anomalies video that this is a response to I made it clear that I had listened to and heard the 2:00-2:12 passage on the vinyl, One4. At the time I was ignorant of the many remasters that exist, but I IMHO the "fixes" sound worse than the actual "problem". I'd go further than my earlier post and say that vinyl is inherently so much more involving than CD that I am normally focusing on music, not flaws! Hence I use CD's for the anomalies vids where I purposefully seek flaws!!!!!!

[One4JW]

The piece of song that was so uncleverly pieced over the part you are talking about is taken from the end of the song. I've done it myself with my digital editing software. It wasn't very clever for them to do it. It was designed to hide a piece of the song that had tape drag from the original recordings. It is audible all the way back to the original LP, cassette and 8-track from 1976. It wasn't until the Astley remasters that it was concealed.

[ferdinandhudson]

All European DVD players are able to play NTSC as well as the usual PAL. Universal are known for releasing a number of music related DVDs in NTSC format and have them multi-region encoded.