*** PREMIUM REMASTER! *** Jamie's Personal History With This Show: A super quick backstory about my personal history with this show from 2.17.1997 - Dave & Tim at the Paramount Theater in Colorado - and why I was so excited to tackle this particular remaster. I listened to this wonderful show about a hundred times when I was first discovering DMB live recordings and bootlegs in the late 90’s; I found this show on a bootleg CD at my local record store in Chicago in the late ‘90s (forgive me - I was too young, didn't know any better at that point in time, etc.) and was absolutely blown away by these performances, the setlist, Dave's rapport with the audience... all of it. I also found the Davespeak in this particular show to be hysterically funny and memorable. Overall, they were firing on all cylinders that night and it's an incredible show from their history! Source Notes: The soundboard source, which I've used to remaster this show, is missing the last 3 songs after "Dreamed I Killed God". (Trust me, we searched high and low, checked with every resource we have to see if we could find the last 3 songs of this show in the soundboard source format in someone’s archives, but if they were ever recorded in soundboard source at all, it seems as though they were never publicly traded.) Tripping Billies, Ants Marching, and Warehouse are the 3 songs that are not available in Soundboard quality, seemingly anywhere, as a result. Thankfully, a taper (Tim Settle) captured an audience recording of the show that includes those 3 songs, and I’ve done a warm, tasteful remastering of those 3 songs from the audience tape source, as well, so you can hear how the rest of the show went! (Side note: If anyone has or comes across the last 3 songs in soundboard format, please send us an email and we'll get in touch! I can master and process those last 3 songs to sound cohesive with the rest of the show and we'll update the link with those SBD versions if they are indeed out there!) Jamie's Mastering Notes:
Ok, now for the nitty gritty! And I’m SO excited to share this next part of the write-up with you because I think knowing the tremendous amount of hard work and love that was poured into this remaster will enhance your enjoyment of this particular show!! For starters, during the mastering process, I applied corrective dynamic EQ, light glue compression, sweetening EQ, subtle harmonic saturation, stereo spread to increase depth, mid/side reverb enhancement, and light limiting to address the transients while keeping the dynamics in tact. I genuinely think it sounds beautiful and I’m so proud of this remaster. I think you'll notice a MASSIVE improvement in the audio quality if you’re familiar with the original soundboard files!
Now... I reckon you would have enjoyed this remaster a lot even if that's all that was done, but we noticed lots of clicks, pops, and distracting noises occurring randomly throughout every song of the show in the original soundboard source recording. This show had emerged as a really special remaster to us and we felt it was truly a standout in the series of works that we’ve shared with the community up to this point, so Xcacel introduced me to his friend Matt (dmb41guy), who specializes in audio editing, to see if Matt could help to carefully remove some of the more distracting clicks, pops, glitches, etc. Well, Matt loved how this remaster sounded, too, told me he wanted to do it justice, and proceeded to go waaaaaaaay above and beyond; he dove in with a fine toothed-comb and did an unbelievable amount of detailed restoration work on these files. Matt was very careful not to alter the actual sound of the remaster, and did his best to deeply minimize, or even completely eradicate, any distracting source issues while keeping the sound quality in tact. All told, he easily spent 100+ hours going through this show and carefully cleaning up those distracting source issues so that my remaster could really sing!
To take it even further, Matt and I both spent the last few months listening to those edited and remastered files, swapping notes back and forth, giving each other opportunities to try our hands at attempting to even further improve on the really difficult spots that were still troubling; each of us trying to get it just right, sometimes spending several hours on just a 30 second stretch of music. On top of all the work we had already individually done over the summer and fall, we both added in probably an additional 30-40 hours over the last few months, communicating and fine-tuning these files cross-country. We consider this a "premium" remaster due to the extra special amount of time and attention that went into it!
Final Thoughts:
The microscopic level of detail here cannot be understated; simply put, people have NEVER heard the recording of this classic show with this level of clarity and detail. In many respects, we think it feels and sounds similar to a live release, and we treated it that way by putting in a ton of time, hard work, and passion so you can put on the show and just get swept away in it!
WE. CAN’T. WAIT. FOR. YOU. TO. HEAR. THIS!!! Put on some great headphones or crank up your favorite speakers and enjoy!
~ Jamie (djamieb)
Download Link:
"Remastered" Podcast:
Artwork
Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds
February 17, 1997
Paramount Theatre, Denver, CO Source: Digital Soundboard (Tracks 1-20), Taper: Unknown / Audience Tape (Tracks 21-23), Taper: Tim Settle
Mastered by Jamie (djamieb)
Restoration and Editing by Matt (dmb41guy) and Jamie (djamieb)
Intro
Lie in Our Graves
Dancing Nancies
Let You Down
Say Goodbye
Too Much
Two Step
Letting Go
So Much to Say
Jimi Thing »
What Will Become of Me
Proudest Monkey »
Satellite
Lover Lay Down
Leave Me Praying
The Song That Jane Likes [aborted when Dave breaks a string]
Crash Into Me
I'll Back You Up
Minarets »
Dreamed I Killed God
SUPPLEMENTAL AUDIENCE SOURCE FILES
Tripping Billies
Ants Marching
Warehouse SAMPLES:
There's a "samples" folder with a 5 different song clips, each about a minute in length, so you can hear a minute of the original source compared to the same minute from the remastered version side by side. You’ll hear a tremendous difference in the richness, depth, and punch of the music itself, and if you listen to the little clicks and pops in the original samples, you'll hear how the clicks and pops in those spots are deeply minimized or even gone altogether in the mastered version. We think, and hope, you’ll be blown away! :) BIG THANKS:
* My great friend Xcacel for his support, feedback, and for bringing Matt on board! And thank you for putting up with the absurdly unfair amount of messages in our remastering group thread about this show while Matt and I were fine-tuning it these past several months, lol! Love you, man! * Also, huge shout-out to Matt for not only doing a wonderful job with the editing as I mentioned above, but also inspiring me to step up my own editing game by setting the bar so high in terms of knowledge on editing, click and glitch removal, etc. I’ve gotten heaps better at all this stuff as a result of this project and have already started incorporating that skillset into other projects, as well. I appreciate you so much, dude! Truly a pleasure working on this with ya'!
Amazing show! My favorite version of Minarets>Dreamed I Killed God. Pretty sure it's the same one from The Lost Acoustics if my hearing is serving me right.
Appreciate all the work!
I've been looking forward to this remaster since you first mentioned it on the blog a few months ago! Thanks for all the hard work this is such a great show!
Wow, Jamie (and everyone else involved Xcacel, Matt, Tim Settle for the tape)
It would only be fair to hear this premium release as many times as you put in HOURS of work.
Your personal story reads great, breathes a moment of this time (90s). Thank you for the detailed (presumably it easily goes much deeper into the topic) account of the work on this special show. Just reading that makes you want to immerse yourself in music for two hours straight away. This enormous effort, these hundreds of hours (of your free time) cannot be valued highly enough and therefore (also for the hundredth time 😁) I would like to thank you, from a big fan. If it's not…
great job, guys, this one has a Luther College sound to it which I didn't think I'd get to hear again elsewhere, it's like a professional release :)