DIGITAL Guns N‘ Roses - Appetite For Destruction Mix Fix

[sjcorne]

Almost three years too late, but I think I solved the mystery of the missing kick drum in "My Michelle". While listening to the front channels in isolation, I noticed a 'fake stereo' type of effect with the kick drum and lead vocal not properly centering in my head. Zooming in further revealed a slight timing different between the front channels.

Using Pro Tools' "tab-to-transient" editing mode, I was able to determine that the front right channel is delayed by 11 milliseconds. If you can make that edit, the kick drum, bass guitar, and vocals will suddenly snap into focus in the center.

Before:

After:

 

[skherbeck]

Almost three years too late, but I think I solved the mystery of the missing kick drum in "My Michelle". While listening to the front channels in isolation, I noticed a 'fake stereo' type of effect with the kick drum and lead vocal not properly centering in my head. Zooming in further revealed a slight timing different between the front channels.

View attachment 63872

Using Pro Tools' "tab-to-transient" editing mode, I was able to determine that the front right channel is delayed by 11 milliseconds. If you can make that edit, the kick drum, bass guitar, and vocals will suddenly snap into focus in the center.

Before:
View attachment 63874

After:
View attachment 63873

This is great! I'm not really sure what I'm looking at, though... can you explain these pics? (I don't have Pro Tools)

 

[sjcorne]

This is great! I'm not really sure what I'm looking at, though... can you explain these pics? (I don't have Pro Tools)

It's the very beginning of the song, zoomed in about as far as I could go. You can do the same thing in Audacity:

 

[MrSmithers]

Almost three years too late, but I think I solved the mystery of the missing kick drum in "My Michelle". While listening to the front channels in isolation, I noticed a 'fake stereo' type of effect with the kick drum and lead vocal not properly centering in my head. Zooming in further revealed a slight timing different between the front channels.

View attachment 63872

Using Pro Tools' "tab-to-transient" editing mode, I was able to determine that the front right channel is delayed by 11 milliseconds. If you can make that edit, the kick drum, bass guitar, and vocals will suddenly snap into focus in the center.

Before:
View attachment 63874

After:
View attachment 63873

Thanks for the heads up on this. The drums really pop now! Sounds so much better! The drums are quite tinny on the original by comparison. Ha the lyrics make me chuckle on this song...

I've been gorging on GN'R last few days, after the thinking that Use Your Illusion might be getting a SW Atmos mix... Great stuff man...

 

[The56Kid]

Almost three years too late, but I think I solved the mystery of the missing kick drum in "My Michelle". While listening to the front channels in isolation, I noticed a 'fake stereo' type of effect with the kick drum and lead vocal not properly centering in my head. Zooming in further revealed a slight timing different between the front channels.

View attachment 63872

Using Pro Tools' "tab-to-transient" editing mode, I was able to determine that the front right channel is delayed by 11 milliseconds. If you can make that edit, the kick drum, bass guitar, and vocals will suddenly snap into focus in the center.

Before:
View attachment 63874

After:
View attachment 63873

Awesome detective work, Jonathan! When this was first released, I recall @edisonbaggins stating that both My Michelle and Paradise City suffered from an anemic bottom end and it sure seemed he was right. Does PC also exhibit this fixable front channel misalignment?

 

[timothyemerson]

Here's what I've done in Audacity:

1. Zoomed right in on the My Michelle 5.1 FLAC until I could see from 0 - 0.011 in the scale
2. Selected from 0 - 0.011 in the front right channel
3. Edit | Cut
4. The front right channel squiggly lines now look in line with the left front channel squiggly lines

This 11ms edit still doesn't compare to the other Appetite for Destruction tracks that aren't lacking in kick drum though, so I'm guessing there's still something amiss with My Michelle.

Can anyone confirm if my steps 1-4 above will give the required result or have I messed something up?

 

[sjcorne]

When this was first released, I recall @edisonbaggins stating that both My Michelle and Paradise City suffered from an anemic bottom end and it sure seemed he was right. Does PC also exhibit this fixable front channel misalignment?

There doesn't appear to be any issue with "Paradise City", but the center channel in "Think About You" is offset by 2 ms.

Before:

After:

Can anyone confirm if my steps 1-4 above will give the required result or have I messed something up?

Looks correct to me. Did you notice any improvement in bass/kick presence?

 

[timothyemerson]

There doesn't appear to be any issue with "Paradise City", but the center channel in "Think About You" is offset by 2 ms.

Before:
View attachment 63923

After:
View attachment 63922



Looks correct to me. Did you notice any improvement in bass/kick presence?

Cool. I've deleted part of the centre on Think About You too so that the centre squiggles match up with the front left and right squiggles. On both tracks, I'm not hearing any significant improvement in kick drum though which makes me think there's something else missing or I've done something wrong in Audacity. Not to worry though. It sure is an interesting find and thanks for posting the details!

 

[LennonCobain]

@sjcorne - thanks for providing the necessary timing adjustments. I've edited both files accordingly and the songs sound much better.

 

[fthesoundguy]

Wow. This might be the worst quality control thing I've seen so far. I can see the LFE being off and people not really knowing it, but when your LR is out of phase with each other by 11ms, that should have been caught by someone... It would take 5 seconds to look at the waveform and know its messed up. Is this the only song with issues?

Nice catch!

 

[edisonbaggins]

Almost three years too late, but I think I solved the mystery of the missing kick drum in "My Michelle". While listening to the front channels in isolation, I noticed a 'fake stereo' type of effect with the kick drum and lead vocal not properly centering in my head. Zooming in further revealed a slight timing different between the front channels.

View attachment 63872

Using Pro Tools' "tab-to-transient" editing mode, I was able to determine that the front right channel is delayed by 11 milliseconds. If you can make that edit, the kick drum, bass guitar, and vocals will suddenly snap into focus in the center.

Before:
View attachment 63874

After:
View attachment 63873

Does it then rock as hard as the rest of the album?
What about Think About You?

 

[sjcorne]

Is this the only song with issues?

"Think About You" has a similar issue with the center channel being offset by 2 ms. Not as drastic an issue, but making the adjustment gives a bit more bass presence.

Another thing I'll say about this disc is that the mastering is a bit suspect--it seems to suffer from a 'smiley-face' EQ curve, at least compared to the original '87 CD. I love the 5.1 mix, but I just can't blast it without the cymbals getting irritating.

 

[AXington]

Sad, though pretty indicative of how much GnR cares about their back catalog or their fans. AXL is a singular talent, but also a singular self absorbed douche.

It's been forever since I've used a proper DAW to do any editing and I was terrible at it then... But I'll have to try to do this to my rip. Thanks for the tip.

 

[sjcorne]

Sad, though pretty indicative of how much GnR cares about their back catalog or their fans.

It's unfortunate that this happened, but look at it this way--the band (or more likely, their management) cared enough to have a 5.1 mix of the album done by one of the best guys in the business, which is more than I can say for most acts.

 

[AXington]

It's unfortunate that this happened, but look at it this way--the band (or more likely, their management) cared enough to have a 5.1 mix of the album done by one of the best guys in the business, which is more than I can say for most acts.

Right, and that's awesome. But as I understand it, usually the band has to sign off on the final mix and master. So it kind of seems like somebody wanted to get that done, but then when it made it to Axl or whoever approved it, they just said "yeah, whatever, sounds okay" without really paying attention. And of course that's speculation, and my knee jerk was that they'd just do it as a cash grab, but I'm not too sure how profitable these actually are. So maybe I'm completely wrong.

I guess it's probably unfair to assume that. And maybe Axl's reputation kind of nudged me a bit towards that assumption.

But either way, some of the songs do sound phenomenal to me. I'm excited to try this fix out when I get the chance.

 

[ubertrout]

Is this easily doable in Audacity? I'm curious to try this but don't have Pro Tools or anything like that.

 

[AXington]

Is this easily doable in Audacity? I'm curious to try this but don't have Pro Tools or anything like that.

I used to use Reaper which has a free trial and is more capable than Audacity. Krystal is another one. But that was probably 10 years ago, so no idea if they're still around/supported

 

[HomerJAU]

If you have Windows the Music Media Helper (free) has a new Channel Delay tool that fixes this issue. You just need to select the file and enter the delay fix and it’s done in a couple of seconds or so. (Read the PDF docs about this tool first). MMH can be downloaded from the Multichannel Media Player sub-forum here on QQ)

 

[ubertrout]

If you have Windows the Music Media Helper (free) has a new Channel Delay tool that fixes this issue. You just need to select the file and enter the delay fix and it’s done in a couple of seconds or so. (Read the PDF docs about this tool first). MMH can be downloaded from the Multichannel Media Player sub-forum here on QQ)

So, I've downloaded the latest version; It looks like I can't delay the FR by -11 ms, so instead I'd delay all the other channels by 11 ms?

 

[HomerJAU]

So, I've downloaded the latest version; It looks like I can't delay the FR by -11 ms, so instead I'd delay all the other channels by 11 ms?

Correct. The file is read sequentially so can’t actually bring any channel forward in time, it can only create a delay so if you have one channel that is delayed you can only correct by delaying all other channels by 11ms, leaving the original delayed channel set to 0.