A Mark In Time
Mark Knopfler Discussion => Mark Knopfler Discussion Forum => Topic started by: Fletch on May 27, 2025, 10:03:30 AM
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After all these years we now have the first tour (BBC), the legendary Phil Lynott concert at Rainbow (really is amazing!), Alchemy, On the Night and now an official BIA record (as others have stated the sound quality is fantastic, well done to all involved).
I first joined AMIT to ask 'where's Alchemy?' on DVD a hundred years ago.
Even the late-solo era is (kind of) covered by the USB releases.
Gotta feel pretty good about this last couple of years of DS releases. Of course, we can nitpick about a favourite bootleg but honestly this is a great era of sound quality releases, I'm very impressed.
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What's really missing is a quality live album from 1981.
The first version of TR, the last (and greatest) versions of WDYTYRG, DTTW, News, Lions and Angel of Mercy. The only version of Skateaway. All of this is sorely missing.
I suspect there is no hope, as Guy will only release a show which is available in multi-tracks for mixing. He refused to process Wembley 1985 for that reason... To my knowledge only Dortmund 80 (already released on the YT channel), Werchter 1981 (atrocious sound and quite incomplete) and Paris 18.06.1981 (very partially) were broadcasted. None of which seem to be available in multi-tracks....
Am I missing something ?
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I suspect there is no hope, as Guy will only release a show which is available in multi-tracks for mixing. He refused to process Wembley 1985 for that reason... To my knowledge only Dortmund 80 (already released on the YT channel), Werchter 1981 (atrocious sound and quite incomplete) and Paris 18.06.1981 (very partially) were broadcasted. None of which seem to be available in multi-tracks....
But was it common knowledge that the San Antonio multitracks existed? Maybe there's still some hope that somewhere something exists... ;D
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Also, AI can extract to multitrack now...
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I suspect there is no hope, as Guy will only release a show which is available in multi-tracks for mixing. He refused to process Wembley 1985 for that reason... To my knowledge only Dortmund 80 (already released on the YT channel), Werchter 1981 (atrocious sound and quite incomplete) and Paris 18.06.1981 (very partially) were broadcasted. None of which seem to be available in multi-tracks....
But was it common knowledge that the San Antonio multitracks existed? Maybe there's still some hope that somewhere something exists... ;D
Indeed, you're right !
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Also, AI can extract to multitrack now...
I don't think Guy will want to do that. He would have done it with Wembley 85, had he found this worthwile ....
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Also, AI can extract to multitrack now...
Not in the quality Guy is striving for (and we are used to). "AI" can do marvellous things but the track separation is only useful if you have no other choice or if audio quality is not top priority.
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Also, AI can extract to multitrack now...
Not in the quality Guy is striving for (and we are used to). "AI" can do marvellous things but the track separation is only useful if you have no other choice or if audio quality is not top priority.
They've done it with The Beatles but it's not good enough for Dire Straits? lolz.
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Also, AI can extract to multitrack now...
It usually sounds terrible though, phasey, unless you've got Peter Jackson technology to throw at it.
Even a lot of these older 70's and 80's albums recorded on tape are getting very hard to remix, as the tape is always in very bad condition.
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They've done it with The Beatles but it's not good enough for Dire Straits? lolz.
As above. The technology isn't there for an average album project. This was a Peter Jackson pet project and hours were spent as well as $$$.
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They've done it with The Beatles but it's not good enough for Dire Straits? lolz.
As above. The technology isn't there for an average album project. This was a Peter Jackson pet project and hours were spent as well as $$$.
That is only a question of time before technology will lower the costs to process it.
But will I be still alive and well enough to enjoy it when it will happen ?
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Also, AI can extract to multitrack now...
Not in the quality Guy is striving for (and we are used to). "AI" can do marvellous things but the track separation is only useful if you have no other choice or if audio quality is not top priority.
They've done it with The Beatles but it's not good enough for Dire Straits? lolz.
Yeah, right. *lolz*
You seem to be a real expert on AI ;D
They didn't have a whole produced song. It was a demo they separated John's voice and a few other bits from. Most parts were new recordings. AI is not that perfect, yet.
Separating tracks is a very demanding task even for a well trained AI. Especially if you just have a crappy demo on an old cassette tape.
Edit: I was talking about "Now And Then". For the "Get Back" documentary they had a four track imo and used AI mainly to get rid of the noise and hum - and the quality of separation for a documentary does not have to reach the standard for an studio record or live album.
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Also, AI can extract to multitrack now...
Even if it will be possible to isolate some tracks with AI in future, I don’t think many producers will be chomping at the bit to mix it and work for months on that, as it would inevitably be riddled with problems and anomalies that need resolving, and I think it could end up being quite a miserable job, trying to sort all those kind of things out, especially for a long player length project.
Excuse my ignorance but I thought that Wembley ’85 was recorded (multitrack, analogue/tape) but that it’s not known where those tapes are? The video footage is owned by the TV company, correct?
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Also, AI can extract to multitrack now...
Not in the quality Guy is striving for (and we are used to). "AI" can do marvellous things but the track separation is only useful if you have no other choice or if audio quality is not top priority.
They've done it with The Beatles but it's not good enough for Dire Straits? lolz.
Yeah, right. *lolz*
You seem to be a real expert on AI ;D
They didn't have a whole produced song. It was a demo they separated John's voice and a few other bits from. Most parts were new recordings. AI is not that perfect, yet.
Separating tracks is a very demanding task even for a well trained AI. Especially if you just have a crappy demo on an old cassette tape.
Edit: I was talking about "Now And Then". For the "Get Back" documentary they had a four track imo and used AI mainly to get rid of the noise and hum - and the quality of separation for a documentary does not have to reach the standard for an studio record or live album.
I wasn't actually talking about Now and Then, they have used AI to go back and create new stereo versions of the older tracks.
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I wasn't actually talking about Now and Then, they have used AI to go back and create new stereo versions of the older tracks.
Sorry if I come across as a smartass ;D
These tunes still don't have the sonic quality we are used to get from DS records - especially the newly remastered ones imho.
They are much better than the old 60's tapes - but if the '85 Wembley or Sydney recordings are on a decent master tape - they will proabably still better sounding than old records from the 60s.
So I still doubt AI would help very much in this specific case - but I might be wrong, of course.Maybe hum elimnation would work fairly well.
The most important thing about Jackson's software is that they had access to a huge archive of material - hours and hours of Beatles recordings, so they had optimal conditions under which they could train the system.
So called AI is nothing more than machine learning and pattern recognition. The better the input and the bigger the dataset - the better (probably) the outcome.
That's why many experts doubt that this specifically trained software would be as excellent with other artists' music.
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Well, sound quality is subjective, but for my money mobile live Dire Straits recordings made live for tv or radio broadcast are never going to sound better than Beatles recordings made in AbbeyRoad 20 years previously. They always sounded great sonically.
The Stones 60s records sound poor in comparison, but they have other qualities - kind of like the difference between listening to the album Sultans and the single.
Anyway, are you going to listen to the shitty sounding Industrial Disease they put out on the live box or Tunnel of Love from the BBC album and try to argue that all official live DS sounds amazing?!
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I wasn't actually talking about Now and Then, they have used AI to go back and create new stereo versions of the older tracks.
They're still using Peter Jackson's exclusive audio lab to do the processing.
It's not an issue of badly recorded drums or slightly trashy guitars on earlier Dire Straits live tapes.It's more the weird phasey audio you often get with software separated audio tracks.
The technology isn't there yet, until maybe the Peter Jackson tools become more widely available.
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Anyway, are you going to listen to the shitty sounding Industrial Disease they put out on the live box or Tunnel of Love from the BBC album and try to argue that all official live DS sounds amazing?!
These are just a few exceptions. Most of the recent official recordings sound great to me - thanks to Guy. I never said that ALL of them sound like that. The fact that you pick out these few songs as examples shows that we are used to a high standard.
But anyway, you have your opinion, I have mine.
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Just discovered that Thin Lizzy, after releasing a Deluxe Edition of Live and Dangerous with extra material, then in 2023 several years later released a SUPER Deluxe edition featuring all concerts used for the making of the album and a whopping 9hrs 55min of music. The completest in me would hope for something similar for Alchemy, BIA and OES tours.
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Sorry to be less enthusiastic, but with so much good music out there, they need a lot of "get-a-life-rs" to buy expensive products, that have already heard a gazillion times on bootlegs. I don't know what the numbers say with recent releases, but until technology makes it easy and cheap to transform lousy audio to wonderful natural sounding experiences, the mystic of poorly recorded bootlegs will remain intact.