Guns N‘ Roses - Appetite For Destruction Locked N’ Loaded Edition

[edisonbaggins]

Funny how dispersed vocals bother some listeners, but not others.
In contrast, vocals in the center bother some listeners, but not others.

It's been beaten to death, but for shits and giggles: the vocals for Appetite and TotD sound fine on my system...

 

[dobyblue]

Funny how dispersed vocals bother some listeners, but not others.
In contrast, vocals in the center bother some listeners, but not others.

It's been beaten to death, but for shits and giggles: the vocals for Appetite and TotD sound fine on my system...

For those who might read the final sentence and think I was saying the two albums have the same issue, I'll just clarify that for me the issues with TOTD are completely different to Appetite; for example, I think Wooden Jesus sounds absolutely fab (similar to 1988 Move to the City Acoustic) and I return to it regularly, but Times of Trouble where the DOUBLED lead vocal is mixed like you would a harmony (Rocket Man for example) throughout the rears predominantly? I mean, that just seems like a real "what were you thinking?" moment to me where no-one else was asked "what do you think of this" before sending it to the label. I get it, the market is really small so maybe they just think "as long as it's surround, we'll appease that tiny market" but as you point out, there are some mixes we can get very close consensus on being 10/10 fab, brilliant, thrill-a-minute material and others we can be very divided upon.

Anything on TOTD with a single tracked vocal to me sounds excellent, I really enjoy the mix of the instruments, it's solely the tracks where there's a doubled vocal OR a duet...Hunger Strike sounds gimmicky with how much Eddie's co-lead vocal comes in the rear of the mix. If Chris' vocal had been centred and Eddie's mixed solely in the Front L&R, to me that would have been fine. Or both in the centre. Or both in just the front. Obviously the theme is, not in the rear! haha.

Do you enjoy the FF mixes equally the same as the ES mixes as far as vocals go?

I don't think this has anything to do with systems, just personal preferences. I'm just stating mine and why I would rate this no higher than a 7.

 

[edisonbaggins]

Do you enjoy the FF mixes equally the same as the ES mixes as far as vocals go?

I don't think this has anything to do with systems, just personal preferences. I'm just stating mine and why I would rate this no higher than a 7.

I need to A/B some of the ELS songs with the FF to say for sure. That will be a fun experiment.

As far as system vs. preference goes, I think that can be true and probably often is.
I'd just throw out the caveat that with lead vocals in the surrounds, the engineer is taking the chance that certain listeners either have their surrounds over- or under-emphasized, compared to the original studio monitoring setup.
Backing vocals tend to have a volume discrepancy of 3 to 6 db or so, from lead vocals, so I think differences in calibration are not going to be noticed with backing vocals in the surrounds very often. But when the volumes should match, I think more listeners are going to notice. On my system, for Hunger Stike, Vedder and Cornell sound more or less equal in presence and I find the mixing choice kinda cool. I can understand how it can easily sound wonky though and it was a risky choice. That's just my understanding of things though and I'm open to others' theories!

Now, that only speaks to the criticism I've read about HS where the listeners have stated the vocal presence of the two singers sounds mismatched. I wouldn't like that either. At all. But, if there are listeners for whom the two parts are balanced and they just don't dig that Vedder is rearward and Cornell up front, that's cool.

IIRC, I have a Monster disc full of duets where the star singer (Ray Charles?) is panned up front like 30% left and all the guest singers are panned up front like 30% right. Now, that's an odd choice, but kinda makes sense spatially. Two singers dueting might not want to stand right on top of each other, but might sort of face each other from opposite sides of the mic, you know?

 

[sjcorne]

...but Times of Trouble where the DOUBLED lead vocal is mixed like you would a harmony (Rocket Man for example) throughout the rears predominantly? I mean, that just seems like a real "what were you thinking?" moment to me where no-one else was asked "what do you think of this" before sending it to the label.

Doesn't Steven Wilson do just that in most of his mixes? Almost all the Tulls, the ELP self-titled, and Marillion's Misplaced Childhood have double-tracked vocals isolated in the rear channels.

Personally I'm a fan of it, but to each his own.

 

[Perp]

Besides me, anyone else order the Deluxe Edition directly off their Website when it was priced at $40.00? Ordered mine on July 15th and still waiting for a shipping confirmation.

 

[Marplot]

I got mine, it took 3 days to get the notice and then 2 more I had it. I ordered mine the day before you; bet there are a ton to process in that 48 h period.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I ordered two. One on 6/28 and a second one on 7/12. I just received the 2nd one yesterday.

$40-10% = $36 each plus tax. shipped free.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Besides me, anyone else order the Deluxe Edition directly off their Website when it was priced at $40.00? Ordered mine on July 15th and still waiting for a shipping confirmation.

I had to email them twice with my 2nd shipment to finally get an order and a ship confirmation

 

[haikubass]

Ordered on 7/11, got shipment notice on the same day. Arrived 7/20, but I won't lay my hands on the package until next week as the customs have decided to evaluate the mix first.

 

[dobyblue]

Doesn't Steven Wilson do just that in most of his mixes? Almost all the Tulls, the ELP self-titled, and Marillion's Misplaced Childhood have double-tracked vocals isolated in the rear channels.

Personally I'm a fan of it, but to each his own.

I'm afraid the only one of those I have is the first ELP DVD-Audio and I bought it just for Lucky Man which is the only track I've listened to, the main vocal is very centred so perhaps it's not double-tracked. I listen to a lot of Steven's solo stuff, I guess he doesn't double-track much because I haven't noticed that effect in any of the songs I listen regularly to nor in Porcupine Tree stuff.

I find it shatters the image. I guess the only analogy I can think of is, if I was watching a movie and someone said a line and they were directly on the middle of the screen and the voice came from the centre and the rears. In my mind, and how I used to hear things when doing a lot of LSD in the early 90s, the vocals anchor the front of the image and everything spreads out from there. And again, just personal pref. I wish I liked the alternate configs as much!

 

[Snood]

Besides me, anyone else order the Deluxe Edition directly off their Website when it was priced at $40.00? Ordered mine on July 15th and still waiting for a shipping confirmation.

Ordered early on....got shipping notice next day think and deliver 4 or 5 days later......call them if you can.

 

[atlantasteve]

Besides me, anyone else order the Deluxe Edition directly off their Website when it was priced at $40.00? Ordered mine on July 15th and still waiting for a shipping confirmation.

Got mine yesterday. Listening to it now. Blown away!

 

[edisonbaggins]

It's back up to $100 on the band's site!
The Locked n' Loaded set is only $500 though.

https://gnrmerch.com/collections/music

 

[sperezmore]

Got mine in 3 days after ordered from their website. Awesome package and Surround Mix

total paid = $38.34

Great!!!

Regards,

 

[jefe1]

My box came pretty fast after I ordered it. I can do without all the paraphernalia although the book photographs are nice. Im enjoying this music more than I thought I would just know a few of the songs and I did see them live back in the day...

 

[splinter7]

Besides me, anyone else order the Deluxe Edition directly off their Website when it was priced at $40.00? Ordered mine on July 15th and still waiting for a shipping confirmation.

I ordered on the same day and have yet to receive a shipping confirmation. Reached out to them yesterday and I got the following response:

Hi there, Thanks for reaching out to us! As noted in the product description, this item is a pre-order item and will be shipping 3-4 weeks after the order date. Once it ships, you'll receive an email containing tracking information on your order. Feel free to contact us if you have any other questions! Thanks for your patience & support, Rupert + uMusic Customer Care

Kind of funny. A pre-order on a product already available.

 

[antoine555]

I ordered on the same day and have yet to receive a shipping confirmation. Reached out to them yesterday and I got the following response:

Hi there, Thanks for reaching out to us! As noted in the product description, this item is a pre-order item and will be shipping 3-4 weeks after the order date. Once it ships, you'll receive an email containing tracking information on your order. Feel free to contact us if you have any other questions! Thanks for your patience & support, Rupert + uMusic Customer Care

Kind of funny. A pre-order on a product already available.

It's waiting to be built in Chinese Democracy

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I ordered on the same day and have yet to receive a shipping confirmation. Reached out to them yesterday and I got the following response:

Hi there, Thanks for reaching out to us! As noted in the product description, this item is a pre-order item and will be shipping 3-4 weeks after the order date. Once it ships, you'll receive an email containing tracking information on your order. Feel free to contact us if you have any other questions! Thanks for your patience & support, Rupert + uMusic Customer Care

Kind of funny. A pre-order on a product already available.

They must have had some kind of screw up during that week 7/11-7/16 when the availability kept was changing. The same think happened to me. No order confirmation and no ship confirmation. I emailed them several times and pointed it out to them. The first time they said they resent the order confirmation, but I still didn't get it. I emailed them a second time and finally did get it. A few days later I got the ship confirmation, and a few days after that I received it.

Did you get an order confirmation? If not I would contact them again.

 

[edisonbaggins]

Locked n' Loaded set has dropped to $399!

 

[Perp]

I ordered on the same day and have yet to receive a shipping confirmation. Reached out to them yesterday and I got the following response:

Hi there, Thanks for reaching out to us! As noted in the product description, this item is a pre-order item and will be shipping 3-4 weeks after the order date. Once it ships, you'll receive an email containing tracking information on your order. Feel free to contact us if you have any other questions! Thanks for your patience & support, Rupert + uMusic Customer Care

Kind of funny. A pre-order on a product already available.

Wow! I did not see that statement anywhere on the page when I ordered it.