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What is this?

Guermantes

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@matthewacbroad I had hearing like yours in my early twenties (had it confirmed by university tests) but age has taken its toll. Now I can't hear those artifacts even if I isolate them and turn the gain right up :(. Take care of those ears, they are gold!
 

Blumlein 88

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I also don't find it on the other Boston albums. I don't have them all.
 
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Okay, earlier you filtered out everything below 20 khz. You can also change speed in audacity. I can hear it if I slow it to half speed. Even better at 1/3 speed. @matthewacbroad that you can hear this is insanely good hearing. Maybe we have a hiresolution test listener for the forum. :)

I've got old ears so I couldn't hear it without slowing it down. Slowed down it almost sounds like tape catching and then letting go like a high speed scrape flutter. But scrape flutter normally isn't found at this frequency.
@matthewacbroad I had hearing like yours in my early twenties (had it confirmed by university tests) but age has taken its toll. Now I can't hear those artifacts even if I isolate them and turn the gain right up :(. Take care of those ears, they are gold!

28 yrs, born in 1990.

"Rock & Roll Band" artifacts lowest is 20Khz so my guess is "ultrasonic intermodulation" being my dac @ 24-bit 96khz at that time, setting 48Khz it's not there anymore.

The highest identifiable pitch is 18Khz, 16Khz is loud w/ max volume and resting my ears in between

Track 7 can hear it in some parts and it's most detailed on that screenshot ^
 

Guermantes

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Slowed down it almost sounds like tape catching and then letting go like a high speed scrape flutter. But scrape flutter normally isn't found at this frequency.

I also wonder if it is a product of a tape machine transport. It seems there were elements transferred from demo recordings so there may have been a less-than-professionally-maintained machine at some stage.
 
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I also wonder if it is a product of a tape machine transport. It seems there were elements transferred from demo recordings so there may have been a less-than-professionally-maintained machine at some stage.

I've got old ears so I couldn't hear it without slowing it down. Slowed down it almost sounds like tape catching and then letting go like a high speed scrape flutter. But scrape flutter normally isn't found at this frequency.

can scrape flutter be upsampled?
 

Blumlein 88

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28 yrs, born in 1990.

"Rock & Roll Band" artifacts lowest is 20Khz so my guess is "ultrasonic intermodulation" being my dac @ 24-bit 96khz at that time, setting 48Khz it's not there anymore.

The highest identifiable pitch is 18Khz, 16Khz is loud w/ max volume and resting my ears in between

Track 7 can hear it in some parts and it's most detailed on that screenshot ^

1990, I remember it well. Some of the memories are good ones too. Of course I was alive when Boston first released their albums before anyone had heard of CD. For what it is worth I still have a car which I purchased the year Boston's Boston was released. I owned the album on 8 track as well just to play in that car. So I have an 8 track and car almost a generation older than you are. Even at your age that is exceptional hearing. Care for it well.
 

Blumlein 88

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can scrape flutter be upsampled?

Well certainly it could be, but I don't think that is what is happening here. The original Epic CD was transferred with Sony 16 bit converters. Yet this artifact is in the oldest CD and in the high resolution remaster. Seems it is likely in the original two track master.
 
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1990, I remember it well. Some of the memories are good ones too. Of course I was alive when Boston first released their albums before anyone had heard of CD. For what it is worth I still have a car which I purchased the year Boston's Boston was released. I owned the album on 8 track as well just to play in that car. So I have an 8 track and car almost a generation older than you are. Even at your age that is exceptional hearing. Care for it well.

my early childhood was with abusive parents before adoption so TV was my only getaway at that time. I grew up listening to grunge and MTV (yes 1990's MTV was the best) would spend hours watching. Early 2000's in grade 7 (last year of elementary school, 12-13yrs) we use to download mp3's from "kazaa" on the win98 (not se, original) computers.

What spark my interest of audio was learning CRT NTSC outputs 15734Khz from the flyback transformer, growing up with CRT's i always heard that tone even out of the room so it got me wondering what's my limit!

I'm jealous of that generation so much more freedom! analog - googless world
 

Guermantes

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Yep, the 15625 Hz tone from PAL TVs used to drive me crazy sometimes. Quite often that tone crops up in commercial releases as CRT monitors were used for visual feedback in studio and concert hall recordings.

Here it is in David Sylvian's "When Poets Dreamed of Angels":
Sylvian - When Poets.jpg
 

Blumlein 88

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my early childhood was with abusive parents before adoption so TV was my only getaway at that time. I grew up listening to grunge and MTV (yes 1990's MTV was the best) would spend hours watching. Early 2000's in grade 7 (last year of elementary school, 12-13yrs) we use to download mp3's from "kazaa" on the win98 (not se, original) computers.

What spark my interest of audio was learning CRT NTSC outputs 15734Khz from the flyback transformer, growing up with CRT's i always heard that tone even out of the room so it got me wondering what's my limit!

I'm jealous of that generation so much more freedom! analog - googless world
Everything is better now than then. Well except for sperm counts.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/17/17841518/low-sperm-count-semen-male-fertility
 

Blumlein 88

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Looks like the same effect. Starting the tape maybe the bias wasn't up to frequency and takes a short time to get to the proper frequency. I think all those blips were the same at about .61 seconds. They probably are from edits or punch ins. The bias was operating out of whack and caused these at each punch in or stop start. Maybe someone with more knowledge about tape bias could identify what causes this.

Good find on that video.
 

Blumlein 88

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I could post it over at gearslutz on the mastering subforum where perhaps some mastering people who worked with tape recognize the issue or you could post there. If you want me to just say so. I post there now and again.
 
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I could post it over at gearslutz on the mastering subforum where perhaps some mastering people who worked with tape recognize the issue or you could post there. If you want me to just say so. I post there now and again.
You can, please! It will be interesting if this is it.
 
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"started by John B, Nov 5, 2003. "
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/recording-bostons-more-than-a-feeling.23961/

"Scholz's Scully 12-track had a linear-restoration circuit built in, which could restore the uppermost transient lost in the analog circuitry. It seemed to Boylan that some of the sharpness of Scholz's genius came from his own conflict with analog and digital audio technology. "Tom knew what digital technology was capable of," Boylan recalls. "The first Eventide sampler was out then, though it had a terrible sampling rate. But Tom would then invent analog devices to do what the digital boxes were trying to do. His first doubler was actually an analog bucket-brigade device."

"It was a tug-of-war in the beginning," says Boylan. "I want to make sure any Joe Blow can hear the vocals, and Tom is pushing the guitars up in the mix unceasingly. I was also trying to get the backbeat back into the track; I put a gate on the snare to get the hi-hat out of there and give the snare more punch. Meanwhile, Tom loves nothing more than the crash of cymbals and loud guitars."

Boylan concedes that "More Than a Feeling" is a heavily compressed recording, but notes that its squash came not electronically but rather from what he calls "manual compression." "We were pushing everything on the board to the edge," he says. "The interesting thing is that Tom had decided he wanted it to fade in with the acoustic guitars, and that kind of fools radio station compressors into thinking it's a quiet song, so they don't latch on to it right away."
 
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