New Wave Outpost Forum

Hi all:

Excited to share this with all of my fellow NWO peeps! Way back in 1983, Q-Feel released their only album - which I owned on vinyl and played so many times I wore it down. In 1989, Jive Records issued the album on CD for the first time, and I was stoked to finally own a clean copy of the album; however, whoever mastered the CD did a horrendous job, and to this day, this CD is the worst sounding CD in my entire collection. It sounds like the engineer turned on Dolby noise reduction to the MAX and compressed the entire thing! It sounds flat and lifeless.

Fast forward to a few months ago, I finally decided to dive back into the vinyl market and picked up a Professional Numark DJ turntable and start ripping my collection, as well as purchasing some vinyl I've been trying to find for years. I was able to track down an absolutely MINT copy of the Q-Feel album, and sure enough - the difference in quality between my LP rip and CD rip is night and day. The LP has amazing depth and warmth, and every track is just a pleasure to listen to. I used SoundForge to manually remove any little pops and ticks I could find, but I left the recording as natural as possible, with no digital enhancements, just a straight transfer from my LP through my PC, saving the files in FLAC format so that each track is lossless.

This album ranks as one of my top 20 from the 80's! Every track is awesome, but my favs would have to be: Heroes Never Die, Cross Talk, New Science and of course their only commercial hit, "Dancing In Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)", which ended #75 the Billboard Hot 100, back in 1989.

So here's a link to the FLAC version of my LP rip:
https://mega.nz/#!vMsTGYzL!5DxhAS3tnL_a ... GPbgEuoAm4

And so you can compare for yourself, here's a link to the FLAC RIP of my (long out of print) 1989 CD:
https://mega.nz/#!iU1SDJiQ!uEcouImDODvD ... 6AJl2rxPCs

I've been hoping for years that someone like Cherry Red Records would re-master this album, but it doesn't look like that day will ever come. So, hopefully you enjoy LP rip as much as I do until that day comes.



Here's some Q-Feel reference material:

Discogs:
http://www.discogs.com/Q-Feel-Q-Feel/master/98957

YouTube:
Heroes Never Die (HQ):


Dancing In Heaven - Live 1982:

Thanks crichert!
Your rip sounds much better than my cd rip . Cross talk starts with a "fade in" effect on the cd and clocks 3:40
regards

You're welcome AJWAVE!!

True, the CD has a much longer fade in, about an extra 4 seconds at the front, and then another 6 seconds at the end.

AJWAVE wrote:Thanks crichert!
Your rip sounds much better than my cd rip . Cross talk starts with a "fade in" effect on the cd and clocks 3:40
regards

Thank you!!!

Thanks for sharing this crichert.

The live video is from the qualifying heats of Eurovision 1982 (it wasn't chosen as our song) and Q-Feel didn't chart over here. Shame really as 'Dancing in Heaven' deserved to do something in its home country.

Thanks crichert! The LP is a noticeable improvement to whoever did a lazy CD mastering.

NIce lossless work. Thanks

Elvis

What a great Halloween surprise, thank you crichert!
This superb album really deserves the vinyl quality that you preserved so well!

Thank you very much, you did a great job! Those guys were really influenced by Ultravox so they're close to my heart - and it's nice to hear the LP just how it was intended to sound.

You're welcome ... happy to know that everyone is enjoying the LP. Many more to come in the near future.

Thank you, absolutely right - the CD didn't carry much weight behind it.