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1994-03-26 Blaisdell Arena, Honolulu, HI, USA/Source 2

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< 1994-03-26 Blaisdell Arena, Honolulu, HI, USA
Revision as of 14:41, 7 January 2024 by DMLiveWiki (talk | contribs) (Created page with "== Notes == This is Jon's personal listening copy of the excellent Honolulu soundboard recording. He copied the original master DAT across two DATs and added crowd noise taken from a couple minutes toward the end of the concert to the song intros and at other spots in songs where a crowd response would be expected for more of a "live" feel to the sound. Personally, the added crowd noise is not my cup of tea as I'm so used to hearing the unedited soundboard version, and...")
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Notes

This is Jon's personal listening copy of the excellent Honolulu soundboard recording. He copied the original master DAT across two DATs and added crowd noise taken from a couple minutes toward the end of the concert to the song intros and at other spots in songs where a crowd response would be expected for more of a "live" feel to the sound.

Personally, the added crowd noise is not my cup of tea as I'm so used to hearing the unedited soundboard version, and I also feel that the crowd noise is a bit too loud in general, particularly during most of the song intros. However, unlike the "fake" crowd noise which is commonly found on Westwood One live releases (such as the myriad Depeche Mode Basel 1984 Westwood One promos), the crowd noise in this recording was added to appropriate points in the songs, and generally it was tastefully done. Please don't give Jon too much hassle for adding the crowd noise: he made this copy as a personal listening copy and did not expect that these tapes would be important literally 30 years later. I would like to thank Jon for his generosity with sending these tapes for preservation and for sharing his memories about this concert.

Overall, sound quality of the music is significantly improved over the other available versions of this recording, which are sourced from commercial bootlegs and have significant and harsh sounding equalization applied, and also seem to have some sort of lossy compression such as MiniDisc in their lineage. On this version, there is plenty of dynamic range, no harsh EQ, and frequency response goes right up to 20khz as expected, so it is truly lossless.

The incomplete "Halo" is not present on this copy; it was likely intentionally left off by Jon due to the fact that it is incomplete, or possibly due to time constraints of the first 60-minute tape. A bit of audience noise and Dave's utterances between I Feel You and Personal Jesus are not present due to tape change and the associated fades. This copy of the recording is the only version to not miss the first note of Somebody. Dave's "thank you very much, good night" after A Question Of Time is not present on this tape copy. auCDtectTaskManager's results are inconclusive, but I believe the strong 20khz tone is confusing its CDDA detection algorithm.

Jon remembers having seen Daryl Bamonte playing keyboards behind the curtain near the exit (I think that would have been the exit of the stage). Daryl was practicing to take over for Andrew Fletcher who decided to discontinue touring with the band for the remainder of the Exotic tour after the Honolulu concerts. Some more information can be found on this concert's main wiki page.

Jon also remembers seeing Martin's daughter, Viva, on stage for the soundcheck. According to the BONG Magazine issue #20 from April 1994, Viva also appeared on stage during A Question Of Time at this concert (quote from the magazine is also on the concert's main wiki page). Dave jokingly announces to the audience that "we have a new member" after the first chorus of the song.

In reference to the band's backing tapes, Jon also mentioned: "When we were setting up, [Depeche Mode's] crew brought in 2 24 track machines. I said, 'are you recording the show', they said 'no, this IS the show'".

Furthermore, Jon disputes that Louis Leal is the taper of this concert and does not believe that Louis was involved with creating this recording. Considering that Jon was able to provide a wealth of detail about the lineage of this recording, I believe him completely.

Jon said the prior night's concert in Honolulu was recorded, however "microphone input" was accidentally used on the Denon portable DAT recorder. This caused significant distortion because the input signal was overloaded, and due to the unlistenable quality of the resulting recording, the DAT tape was recorded over for the second night. Jon is not sure why the second night's master tape is incomplete, with "Rush" missing and "Halo" starting about halfway through.

Please also see Source 1, which is more complete and which does not have any additional crowd noise added, but has generally worse sound for the reasons described earlier above.

I am still working on tracking down the original master DAT for proper preservation of this fantastic recording. Even though Jon was responsible for originally recording this, he is not currently in possession of the master tape and only had this altered DAT copy. Stay tuned.

Listen

You can listen to this entire recording below.

Track list

  1. [5:26] Play Behind The Wheel
  2. [4:43] Play Everything Counts
  3. [6:28] Play World In My Eyes
  4. [6:31] Play Walking In My Shoes
  5. [5:21] Play Stripped
  6. [3:57] Play Condemnation (*)
  7. [4:42] Play A Question Of Lust (*)
  8. [4:48] Play I Want You Now (*)
  9. [6:40] Play In Your Room
  10. [5:00] Play Never Let Me Down Again
  11. [7:18] Play I Feel You
  12. [5:46] Play Personal Jesus
  13. [4:11] Play Somebody (*)
  14. [6:59] Play Enjoy The Silence
  15. [5:09] Play Policy Of Truth
  16. [4:27] Play A Question Of Time
  • Total time: 1:27:26

Lineage

The source DATs.
  • Yamaha PM3000 mixing desk -> 2 return lines which were ran through the main snake to stage right, under the stage -> XLR to RCA adapters then an RCA to 3.5mm mini-jack adapter -> Denon portable DAT deck (unknown model) sitting on top of amplifier racks -> probably a TDK DAT -> 2x Ampex 467 R-60 60-minute "Mastering Audio Cassette" DAT tapes - digital clone, with crowd noise from the concert added in certain spots -> Sony SDT-9000 SCSI DDS tape drive -> WaveDAT software -> WAV (16/48) -> in Audacity 3.4.2: DC offset removed, normalized to -0.1dB, a bit of crossfades added between encore gaps, manual click removal where required, track splits -> FLAC level 8 (16/48)
  • Taper: Jon
  • Generation: 1st gen DAT clone
  • Photo of DATs, ticket stub scan (thanks to Falko Nauert), concert poster photo, and auCDtectTaskManager log included

Download

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