1993-07-31 Crystal Palace Sports Ground, London, England, UK/Source 1

Notes

Artwork created for the 2023 rebroadcast.

This superb soundboard-quality audio was originally mixed for broadcast by Steve Lyon, who also mixed the 'Devotional' film soundtrack. The rework itself utilizes from a recent rebroadcast of ten songs on November 11th, 2023, with individuals with a UK IP address having access to a higher quality M4A 320kbps audio stream, which is the source used for this rework.

Notably, Stripped, Condemnation, Judas, and I Feel You were cut from the rebroadcast. Furthermore, approximately ten seconds during Enjoy The Silence where Dave addresses the audience, saying "well let's fuckin' hear you!", was cut presumably due to strong language. A flaw near the end of Personal Jesus was crudely edited by inserting a bar from the album version.

To address these gaps, this rework utilizes an FM rebroadcast DAT master generously provided by gadget242. Though this master suffers from occasional loud bursts of static, the affected areas were patched using the prior rework's audio sourced from silver CD bootlegs. The flaw during Personal Jesus was skillfully patched using audio recreated by Bias. Additionally, about 25 seconds at the beginning of Higher Love were patched using a direct stream capture from an earlier digital satellite rebroadcast by Stealth71.

Minor equalization was applied to reduce the artificially boosted bass of the recent BBC Radio 2 rebroadcast stream. The rework also features edits to smooth audience noise transitions between songs and to fix a minor volume flaw at the beginning of Personal Jesus, present in all broadcast versions.

Despite the inherent lossiness of this stream, modern audio codecs have contributed to a notable improvement in both frequency response, extending up to 20kHz, and overall clarity. This stands in stark contrast to previous versions sourced from FM broadcasts. Some songs were broadcast via digital satellite within the past decade, but were encoded with the outdated MP2 codec, with a meager frequency response that barely reached 17kHz at best, accompanied with audible lossy compression artifacts.

This source arguably represents the closest approximation to a "pre-FM" recording of this particular concert. The auCDtectTaskManager log, while inconclusive for the majority of the audio, also struggles in determining the losslessness of the FM rebroadcast tracks, possibly attributable to the 19kHz FM pilot tone. Nonetheless, great care was taken during the creation of this rework to guarantee the absence of transcodes and unnecessary resampling.

Both a reworked version of the FM rebroadcast DAT master, which corrects static issues where possible and patches out all DJ chatter, and a raw version will be available in the near future for those who would prefer a true lossless recording.

It is noteworthy that this broadcast recording has been heavily overdubbed with the same set of Dave Gahan vocals which were recorded for overdubs of the 'Devotional' soundtrack, which was recorded at the 1993-07-29 Stade Couvert Régional, Liévin, France concert. Naturally, things like Dave's banter and shouts from Crystal Palace were retained, as well as the occasional vocal which didn't appear on the 'Devotional' soundtrack such as the first chorus vocal of Stripped. Personally, after learning this fact, I listen to this recording as well as the 'Devotional' soundtrack far less frequently than I used to, because of their inauthenticity.

Audio examples of the overdubs, as well as some average quality audience recordings from this concert that you can compare to, can be found on the main page for this concert if you are interested in further detail about this fact.

As of now, the songs "World In My Eyes," "Behind The Wheel," "One Caress," "Mercy In You," and "Fly On The Windscreen" from this concert have not been broadcast. It is unknown whether these tracks were prepared for broadcast by Steve Lyon.

Listen

NOTE: This audio has been re-encoded from its original format (M4A 320kbps) in order to allow streaming. Quality may be noticeably diminished compared to the original files which you can download below.

You can listen to this entire recording below.

Track list

The DAT's inlay card.

1. [6:55] Play Higher Love
2. [5:04] Play Policy Of Truth
3. [6:33] Play Walking In My Shoes
4. [4:37] Play Halo
5. [5:00] Play Stripped
6. [3:48] Play Condemnation
7. [5:08] Play Judas (*)
8. [7:11] Play I Feel You
9. [4:51] Play Never Let Me Down Again
10. [4:39] Play Rush
11. [6:41] Play In Your Room
12. [5:45] Play Personal Jesus
13. [6:42] Play Enjoy The Silence
14. [5:12] Play Everything Counts

• Total time: 1:18:06

Lineage

The FM rebroadcast DAT master.

• Lineage (rework by DMLiveWiki): in Audacity 3.4.1: slight EQ to lessen artificially boosted bass of the BBC Radio 2 rebroadcast audio, 4 missing songs merged using the FM rebroadcast DAT master, patching out static noises where needed using the prior rework, iZotope RX 10 De-click where required, other small audio patches merged in, normalized to -0.1dB and any DC offset removed -> WAV (16/48) tracks -> FLAC level 8 (16/48)
• Lineage (Source 1 - BBC Radio 2 rebroadcast audio): BBC Sounds higher bitrate UK-specific webstream -> direct capture using yt-dlp -> M4A 320kbps 48khz
  • Capture: DMRobo via VPN

• Lineage (Source 2 - FM rebroadcast DAT master): unknown FM tuner -> unknown DAT deck recording at 16/48 -> Maxell DM 120 DAT -> Seagate CTD-8000 SCSI DAT drive -> dat2wav v1.3b software -> WAV (16/48)
  • Taper: gadget242
  • Transfer: DMLiveWiki

• Lineage (Source 3 - digital satellite rebroadcast - used for 25 seconds of Higher Love): Digital satellite (DVB-S) broadcast -> Humax Foxsat HDR -> PC -> MP2 (160kbps 48khz)
  • Taper: Stealth71
• DAT photo & inlay scan, BBC Radio 2 artwork, and auCDtectTaskManager log included

Download

• Download ZIP - FLAC 16-bit 48KHz - 595.86MB