[GhostOfMe]

I live in the UK but went to Helsinki to see Tarot at Tuska last week. The show was fantastic and it was great to finally see the band live.

While I was in Helsinki I managed to track down Follow Me Into Madness on LP. I'd managed to pick up the Spell of Iron on LP on eBay a while ago and was glad to finally complete the set.

After getting back home to the UK and having a listen I couldn't help but notice that the vinyl albums were much faster than their counterparts on the remastered re-releases, especially Follow Me Into Madness.

To me it sounds like the CDs are playing around the equivalent of 33rpm instead of the full 33 1/3.

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed this and if there is any reason for the rather noticeable difference in the speed of the tracks.

Were the vinyls cut at the wrong speed? Were the CDs slowed down intentionally or accidentally? I did notice that the slower vocals sound more in line with how Marco's voice is today.

Cheers for any information.

[Zachary Hietala]

There's no difference between my vinyls and Cd's, so something wrong with yours?
We never did any speed changes for remasters.
Vinyls are from eighties and use the same mastertape we used for first CD versions and remasters later.
Zac

[GhostOfMe]

Hi Zac, thanks for the personal reply.

That's certainly interesting. I'll have to have another listen to both the CDs and my LPs again and double check. It seems odd that the problem would be with my LPs as I got them from two completely different sources. And I've checked with other LPs too and they seem to be playing at the correct speeds.

I noticed that there is no speed marked on either of the LPs, I assume they are to be played at 33 1/3?

Either way both LP and CD sound great and the speed difference between them doesn't subtract from the enjoyment of listening to them, I was just curious to know if there was any reason for it, if I'm not just imagining it all that is.

Like I said, I'll have another check and post my findings, maybe I was just imagining it.

Btw, great performance at Tuska, Zac!

[Rick Deckard]

Interesting. I'm curious from the audio engineering angle about the decisions of the vinyl mastering. Could you record a sample from the vinyl to a digital format and compare the cd to the recorded one? I would guess that a subtle changes can compensate the limitations of the vinyl format. Say by running the master tape a bit faster when cutting could make it possible to extend the grooves and increase the volume level of the disc. Also the high-end roll-off of the last tracks could be potentially decreaced because of a shorter running time of a side. Just a simple cutting decisions I would say Came to my mind that one interesting example could be to compare the running speed of Maidens 'Live after death' on vnl and cd. I remember that a vinyl side run about 25 mins and what I've understood that less than a 20 mins of program material will show a great deal of quality loss in vinyl. So I would bet that the cutting has been done at a bit higher speed in there i.e. vinyl=faster, cd=slower=at right (master tape) speed.

[Zachary Hietala]

Normal album should be 33 1/3.
Some differences of the lenght of the songs depends how much almost empty space are put beginning/end of the songs for the remastered versions.
Vinyl carving tech is kinda bad and most of the times when the song is fadeout, you can hear too much scratch/hum/what ever nois and now we can put all the long fadeouts on the CD.
Some times we do bit mixing for the remasterd albums and cutting of some long parts, if they don't sound good, but being left on original.
We even used double bass tracks of few remastered albums. Marco didn't have distorted bass on To Live Forever and no clean bass on Stigmata, so we put them on.
Aka. We can call the remixed/remastered, he he!
Zac

[Rick Deckard]

Hee, hee. twisted Zac TLF definitely kicks ass with a distrorted bass. One of my faw albums btw. with a definitely most ultimate song Tears Of Steel!

But, running speeds ... I used to get mental about the running speed of a films. The ntsc/USA versions would always run a bit longer than the pal/European ones. Then I learned about the film to video transfer and the ntsc, with a duplicated sub pictures, would always be more or less run the same speed than the original 24 frames/sec film version (google 4 details). The pal on the other hand would always be transfered 1:1 from film frame to video frame and run at 25 frames/sec i.e. faster than the film vesion (the master). So actually if you were an European and total purist, you would get the ntsc version because the small, almost non existing, difference between the actual film and the video version. The poin beeing that the faster running speed (with pal) would always mean a upshift of a key e.x. in music. Other thing was at the now gone laser disc age. The ld:s used to have a limited storage space (30/60 mins per side. That lead to the fact that films was speed up if they couldn't fit to a disc. Also I heard that the same thing was done when a tv-versions of a films was released. Say if you have a 1,5 or 2 hours slot at tv, you would need certain % of time for the comercials. At least the us networks was really picky for the time slots and money, so some films was speed up to include a films + the commercials to a stardard time slots.

[GhostOfMe]

Hi, sorry I've not replied in ages.

I've had many more listens to both the LPs and CDs and I think that the slight differences in the mix of the LPs (mainly the drums) is tricking my mind into thinking the tracks are faster.

Thanks for all the info though Zac and there's been some interesting discussions about speedup. I live in the UK and knew about the framerate difference in films but had never considered its impact on the sound of the film so cheers for that thought Rick.

Either way both LP and CD are excellent quality : D

[GhostOfMe]

On a somewhat related note;

With the resurgence of vinyl in the metal scene do you think Tarot will ever release more albums in LP format?

[Zachary Hietala]