Neil Young Archives Vol. III Hi Res Downloads Are Problematic!

[Steve Bruzonsky]

Bad news. the hi res downloads of Neil Young Archives Vol III are very problematic. Not only are some download tracks misnumbered per the online published tracklist at Neil Young News: TRACKLIST: Neil Young Archives Vol. III + Comment of the Moment (thrasherswheat.org) but most and more significant a good number of the tracks are simply full of loud noise, not music, which if turned up too high might fry your tweeters. Inexcusable. They must have had someone high doing this.

Who do we contact at Reprise/Warner so they assign someone to fix these downloads. When I bought Neil Young Archives Vol. II I had no such issues.

I wasn't going to rip or listen to the actual CDs, so I guess I will need to rip them now and listen to see if the CDs are screwed up. Probably.

I haven't watched the blu rays yet so can't comment.

But obviously Reprise/Warners needs to examine each track ont he entire set and correct all issues.

 

[The Hoople]

Are you sure the loud noises and “not music” aren’t just the tracks off of Trans and Re-ac-tor?

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

Are you sure the loud noises and “not music” aren’t just the tracks off of Trans and Re-ac-tor?

Absolutely. There is no question. I have listened to several of the "17" albums so far and each one has this problem on multiple tracks. I am done listening for now, don't need to blow tweeters. I am a died in the wool Neil fan since the mid-seventies. I have all his albums and all his archives. I know his music. And over the years I've experienced this sort of noise with no music a few times - and I've had blown tweeters as a result.

 

[atrocity]

Absolutely. There is no question. I have listened to several of the "17" albums so far and each one has this problem on multiple tracks.

If you have the official FLAC software, what happens if you test the files?

flac -t *.flac

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

If you have the official FLAC software, what happens if you test the files?

flac -t *.flac

ROON chose a bar at the bottom with frequency response I never ever really paid attention to before. But when you click on a track, it shows you this frequency bar and in the areas of the track with this loud noise and no music you see the bar goes way up.

 

[atrocity]

ROON chose a bar at the bottom with frequency response I never ever really paid attention to before. But when you click on a track, it shows you this frequency bar and in the areas of the track with this loud noise and no music you see the bar goes way up.

You've mentioned that you've had this issue before, so it might be useful to start by determining if what's currently in your FLAC files (assuming they are in fact FLAC files) is what originally went into them or if the files somehow got corrupted during or after downloading.

flac -t *.flac will quickly answer the question:

flac 1.4.3
Copyright (C) 2000-2009  Josh Coalson, 2011-2023  Xiph.Org Foundation
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.  This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.  Type `flac' for details.

01 - Underground.flac: ok                  
02 - Silver.flac: ok                  
03 - Resurrection.flac: ok                  
04 - Leave It Alone.flac: ok                  
05 - Freaky Be Beautiful.flac: ok                  
06 - Gasoline.flac: ok                  
07 - Believe Me.flac: ok                  
08 - Tangerine.flac: ok                  
09 - Breathe.flac: ok                  
10 - Push.flac: ok                  
11 - Resurrection [live 1997-02-24].flac: ok                  
12 - Tangerine [remix].flac: ok

If you get any response other than "ok" it tells you that somehow the file is corrupt.

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

I have over 10,000 albums on my server, many of them, high resolution, and many of them ripped. The latest Neil Young archive volume three are the only problems I’ve had. I posted this as a warning for folks who download from the latest archives so they will play at low and value, when not blow their tweeter. Beyond that if you want more information, go ahead buy the album and download the high rest track yourself.

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

And I hardly need another program to tell me a track is corrupt when over a good part of the track all you hear loud noise and nothing else. I messaged customer service at Neil Young archives online about the problem

 

[Mark Anderson]

I just went thru my downloads and can confirm I had 3 tracks that has the static noise, similar to a DTS recording without decoding

11 Lotta Love (Live, March 11, 1976)
14 Cortez the Killer (Live, March 11, 1976)
111 Sugar Mountain (Live at the Boarding House)

I did another download of those tunes and no static.

 

[Petr Kropotkin]

I just went thru my downloads and can confirm I had 3 tracks that has the static noise, similar to a DTS recording without decoding

11 Lotta Love (Live, March 11, 1976)
14 Cortez the Killer (Live, March 11, 1976)
111 Sugar Mountain (Live at the Boarding House)

I did another download of those tunes and no static.

I can confirm the same thing. Those three tracks were bad when I downloaded all the tracks at once, but after I had checked all the files, I went back and downloaded those three separately, and they were good, no problems with any other tracks, just those three.

Btw, A song called "Back To the Boarding House" was listed as Track 3 on CD 9, but missing from the 24/192 downloads (the only one as far as I could see). Anyone else found this?

I have to agree that whoever did the downloads did a disgraceful job in "organising" (and I use the word loosely) the songs into folders. It took me a good two hours to sort the mess out so it matched the CD track listings. Very, very poor; yet so easy to do properly the first time before releasing them.

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

Back To The Boarding House apparently is simply "RAP" (talking).

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

A comment from the Steve Hoffman music forum where I also posted this.

You can download the corrupted tracks and get static noise and then 5 minutes later redownload and it's fine. It seems more to be a problem with transmission media. I think Neil/Warners have taken over Ora/XStream and they have ****ed it up.
It Never happened when the original guys (Frankie Tan) used to run it.

 

[Petr Kropotkin]

Back To The Boarding House apparently is simply "RAP" (talking).

Ah, OK, thanks.
Looks like another mess with users having to figure out which "Rap" matches which "Intro". I'll leave fixing that for another day.

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

Ah, OK, thanks.
Looks like another mess with users having to figure out which "Rap" matches which "Intro". I'll leave fixing that for another day.

The good news is that when you download the hi res, there's a title for each rap and with editing software you can see what the track # is from 1-222. In the NYA track listing thats on the website they list each talk track as Rap, but the download has a title for each rap track.

I just realized with ROON, as I click on each track, I can see it small frequency line at the bottom of the display, and when that line suddenly pops way up that's the dts like noise and its a bad track. I have 14 bad tracks to redownload.

Really inexcusable for all the money we paid for this.

 

[Dynamic Editor]

Ah, OK, thanks.
Looks like another mess with users having to figure out which "Rap" matches which "Intro". I'll leave fixing that for another day.

Neil Young rapping? Probably not as bad as his 80's output.

 

[Petr Kropotkin]

The good news is that when you download the hi res, there's a title for each rap and with editing software you can see what the track # is from 1-222. In the NYA track listing thats on the website they list each talk track as Rap, but the download has a title for each rap track.

I just realized with ROON, as I click on each track, I can see it small frequency line at the bottom of the display, and when that line suddenly pops way up that's the dts like noise and its a bad track. I have 14 bad tracks to redownload.

Really inexcusable for all the money we paid for this.

I used Audacity to check the files, only took a few seconds to see the wave forms of each one, and the dodgy ones were easy to spot, suddenly a large section brickwalled, and then back to normal. And yes, for the cost, and given the size of Neil's fan base, it's been a very shoddy roll out.

I figured out which "RAP" corresponded to which "INTRO", and Wiki also has a helpful guide matching them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Young_Archives_Volume_III:_1976–1987

 

[hi-res_edition]

I would like to know if those with the noise downloaded FLAC files or WAVE files. Also, I experienced lockups on download and ended up downloading the WAVE files without issue.

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

I would like to know if those with the noise downloaded FLAC files or WAVE files. Also, I experienced lockups on download and ended up downloading the WAVE files without issue.

I initially downloaded FLAC files having this problem. Then I re-downloaded everything in wAV same problem

 

[atrocity]

And I hardly need another program to tell me a track is corrupt when over a good part of the track all you hear loud noise and nothing else. I messaged customer service at Neil Young archives online about the problem

My point is that "corrupt" can mean "screwed up on the server side" or "damaged in transit." If the former (i.e., testing the bad FLACs results in "OK"), it's definitely an issue on their side. If the latter, at least you know it might be possible to re-download without issue.

I see weird stuff like this with the community radio station I do volunteer work for. A guy will upload a two hour show week after week and it will be fine. Then one day he uploads it and the files are completely trashed. He'll then re-upload exactly the same files and they'll be fine. Based on what others have said in this thread, it sounds like that may be the case here as well.

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

My point is that "corrupt" can mean "screwed up on the server side" or "damaged in transit." If the former (i.e., testing the bad FLACs results in "OK"), it's definitely an issue on their side. If the latter, at least you know it might be possible to re-download without issue.

I see weird stuff like this with the community radio station I do volunteer work for. A guy will upload a two hour show week after week and it will be fine. Then one day he uploads it and the files are completely trashed. He'll then re-upload exactly the same files and they'll be fine. Based on what others have said in this thread, it sounds like that may be the case here as well.

It does appear to be the case here. Fortunately, with extra hours work, I got it down!

Funny though I've downloaded so many tracks and albums in the past and never had this issue. And I've downloaded many albums from Neil Young Archives in the past with no issues. Obviously their quality control and download system has changed and isn't as good anymore? The days of Pono are gone!