I just picked up a copy of this CD, and I've found a short drop-out in the audio (2:07 into the fourth track, "Asylum"), and I was wondering if any of you have a copy of the same disk - I'd like to try to find out if the glitch is in this particular CD, or in the master tape itself.

So, to anyone who has a copy of this CD... do you hear the drop-out?

Thanks in advance!

~esa

I'm not sure to understand what you mean by "drop-out", but I certainly hear a distortion at that precise moment, both on a remastered edition and the MFSL edition. It's well known IIRC, and it must be on the original master.

Don't have the disc but I think I know these distorsions - mainly in vocals. Many of my CD's have them. These 'dropouts' drop even lower once you encode them with mp3 (even on aps). The added artifact sounds like a weird pitch change on the vocals. I've abxed many of these recently up to -aps but not -apx. I am planning to upload samples soon.

My copy of the regular CD have the same glitch at that exact moment

Thanks for the feedback...

It's good to know that I didn't buy a defective CD.

I think we can hear the editing made on the analogue tape.
At that time they didn't have a digital tool, so they had to do it with scissors and tape, creating some drop out and distortions…

Just in case it's of any interest, I can confirm that both my vinyl copies (standard release, and A&M "Audiophile" half-speed mastered version) have the same glitch. So it's obviously on the original mastertape, not just the digital transfer.


Agreed. The glitch sounds to me like a (fairly poorly done) analogue tape splice, resulting in dropout due to loss of tape-to-head contact.