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Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones


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On 6/26/2022 at 1:45 PM, gafuller said:

Not to take away from the sound quality chat, but while it was relevant I wanted to drop what I think would’ve been a better track list idea:

Everybody

Into the Groove 

Open Your Heart

Express Yourself

Vogue 12” Edit

Deeper & Deeper

Secret 

Ray of Light

Music 

Hollywood

Hung Up

Give It 2 Me

Celebration

Girl Gone Wild Justin Cognito

Living for Love 

Medellin Robbie Revera Vocal Mix

IDSIF 

New Dance Song

In a perfect world, Ma would’ve headlines this whole project with a new dance single and I would’ve included it as the last song. I also thoigh a few of the songs could’ve had a different remix used (I jsut adore the Robbie Revera mix of Medellin). Celebration should’ve been chosen for this standard version too. Like a Prayer is out of place surrounded by being happy dance mixes so I’d swap it for Open Uour Heart to represent the True Blue era. 

I also noticed they've included 4 tracks from each decade which I assume was deliberate.

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On 6/26/2022 at 11:53 AM, thegoldencalf said:

I hear a huge difference between the Spotify tracks and the HD lossless digital ones. But I’m not sure how much of that is the quality or the mastering.

Do you have Spotify Premium? Highest Spotify Premium quality is Ogg Vorbis 320kbit/s (desktop, mobile, and tablet) or AAC 256kbit/s (web player). Free Spotify is much lower. Source 1 Source 2

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6 minutes ago, Roy said:

I'm just waiting for Spotify HiFi to drop so that I could finally listen in crispy, spicy lossless quality.

I wonder if they will dabble on surround sound too...

Apple truly f***d Spotify when they released Lossless and Spatial Audio quality for the same price last year. I’m sure Spotify HiFi was planned for a higher price but now they don’t know how to market it when the main competitor is not charging more for it.

Let’s see.

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7 minutes ago, Prayer said:

Apple truly f***d Spotify when they released Lossless and Spatial Audio quality for the same price last year. I’m sure Spotify HiFi was planned for a higher price but now they don’t know how to market it when the main competitor is not charging more for it.

Let’s see.

Unfortunately, we don't have TIDAL here. We have Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer.

Is Deezer good?

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1 minute ago, Roy said:

Unfortunately, we don't have TIDAL here. We have Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer.

Is Deezer good?

I have no idea, never used Deezer, sorry.

TIDAL wasn't bad when I used it, in fact the app was quite similar to Spotify (back then at least).

Apple Music is probably my fave for the quality but I'm an Apple guy and I still buy digital music on iTunes, so it's all integrated anyway.

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39 minutes ago, Prayer said:

TIDAL wasn't bad when I used it, in fact the app was quite similar to Spotify (back then at least).

I love TIDAL. And you can play Hi-Res files with the appropriate hardware (*). But I've found a couple of Madonna tracks with the bass a little distorted (for example the Celebration Remix from the original Deluxe Celebration release). Maybe is caused by the MQA encoding. But as I've said I only found a couple of tracks with this problem. The rest sounds fantastic.

(*) For example: https://www.amazon.es/M500-ES9038PRO-Amplificador-Auriculares-Plateado/dp/B07X3BWJ59

https://www.mqa.co.uk/playback-devices

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8 minutes ago, Fabiolous said:

I've tried both Apple Music and Deezer and they are far inferior to Spotify in terms of interface and features. When Spotify upgrades to lossless there's gonna be no competition 

But I wonder, in terms of lossless quality, what do Apple Music, Deezer and TIDAL differ on this?

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1 hour ago, Roy said:

But I wonder, in terms of lossless quality, what do Apple Music, Deezer and TIDAL differ on this?

TIDAL compress the original "master files" to CD quality. So you need a special decoder to "uncompress" the files. If you don't have the hardware, at least you can play the files at CD quality, and if you can download the files from TIDAL, you can make "CD-MQA"  discs and play them normally (theoretically with the right hardware you can listen these CD-MQA in Hi-Res).

Example: Open Your Heart from True Blue album (both graphics are from the same file)

TIDAL Compressed CD-Quality (upsampled from 44100 Hz to 88200 Hz to notice the difference in the graphic)

1OobaBg.png

TIDAL Uncompressed Hi-Res Quality (88200 Hz) (The same file but uncompressed).

JPIiaOv.png

Examples of CD-MQA: https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=cd-mqa&crid=3JBH1HMW1VONX&sprefix=cd-mqa%2Caps%2C244&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Qobuz for example, sells the original "master files" without any compression. 

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1 hour ago, Aiwa08 said:

TIDAL compress the original "master files" to CD quality. So you need a special decoder to "uncompress" the files. If you don't have the hardware, at least you can play the files at CD quality, and if you can download the files from TIDAL, you can make "CD-MQA"  discs and play them normally (theoretically with the right hardware you can listen these CD-MQA in Hi-Res).

Examples of CD-MQA: https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=cd-mqa&crid=3JBH1HMW1VONX&sprefix=cd-mqa%2Caps%2C244&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Qobuz for example, sells the original "master files" without any compression. 

Maybe that's the reason of bass distortion that you mentioned on some tracks, like the "Celebration" remix on the "Celebration" compilation? On that conversion from the highest quality audio to CD quality something happens.

I've realized the "Apple Digital Master" on Apple Music & iTunes can also be hit or miss on that regard. For example: "Finally Enough Love" on iTunes was updated to Apple Digital Master on the Standard edition, while the Deluxe 50-track edition remains non Apple Digital Master. Well, if you preview now "Into The Groove" and "Deeper" on iTunes on both editions, you'll notice a little distortion (very subtle) on the Standard tracks, both now Apple Digital Master, but non on the Deluxe. This also happens with "MDNA" - the edition now available, another Apple Digital Master, sounds worse than the original pre-order Deluxe edition, non Apple Digital Master.

I'd like to know why is that.

Sorry to get so technical on this thread everyone! Maybe we should create another one for these kind of stuff. :cute:

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4 minutes ago, Prayer said:

Maybe that's the reason of bass distortion that you mentioned on some tracks, like the "Celebration" remix on the "Celebration" compilation? On that conversion from the highest quality audio to CD quality.

I've realized the "Apple Digital Master" on Apple Music & iTunes can also be hit or miss on that regard. For example: "Finally Enough Love" on iTunes was updated to Apple Digital Master on the Standard edition, while the Deluxe 50-track edition remains non Apple Digital Master. Well, if you preview now "Into The Groove" and "Deeper" on iTunes on both editions, you'll notice a little distortion (very subtle) on the Standard tracks, both now Apple Digital Master, but non on the Deluxe. This also happens with "MDNA" - the edition now available, another Apple Digital Master, sounds worse than the original pre-order Deluxe edition, non Apple Digital Master.

I'd like to know why is that.

Sorry to get so technical on this thread anyone! Maybe we should create another one for these kind of stuff. :cute:

Huh... if it's mastered for Apple Music, shouldn't it sound good?

Also, yeah. We must make a separate thread on this. XD

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1 hour ago, Aiwa08 said:

TIDAL compress the original "master files" to CD quality. So you need a special decoder to "uncompress" the files. If you don't have the hardware, at least you can play the files at CD quality, and if you can download the files from TIDAL, you can make "CD-MQA"  discs and play them normally (theoretically with the right hardware you can listen these CD-MQA in Hi-Res).

So the best way to listen to the highest resolution files would be to buy them from Qobuz or to download the files from TIDAL? However I need special hardware to listen to them? Like, special headphones or something?

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17 minutes ago, Fabiolous said:

So the best way to listen to the highest resolution files would be to buy them from Qobuz or to download the files from TIDAL? However I need special hardware to listen to them? Like, special headphones or something?

The best way is to buy the files from Qobuz. Hi-Res files uncompressed and you don't need any special hardware (of course your stereo system, Cell phones, tablets, etc, etc, etc must be able to play files at 88200 Hz, 96000 Hz or 192000 Hz)

For example in my PC:

Untitled.thumb.jpg.d9c3c06b53bf9b16f6f1063e499d314f.jpg

On TIDAL the "Hi-Res" frequencies are "hidden/compressed" in the FLAC file with CD-quality. You need special hardware/software to obtain the uncompressed Hi-Res audio. 

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ALBUM REVIEW

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/madonna-finally-enough-love/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_social-type=owned&mbid=social_twitter&utm_brand=p4k

By Ben Cardew

6,5

The dance-pop icon selects her favorites remixes from a back catalog stuffed with club reworks, but her picks offer a curiously distorted look back at her history on the dancefloor.

Few pop superstars have borrowed as much from club music as Madonna. Her decades at the top of the charts have been bolstered by a canny ability to co-opt contemporary dance sounds without scaring off the mainstream. Finally Enough Love is supposed to represent the singer’s own favorites from her extensive remix catalog. It’s an intriguing premise, promising a candid look at what this musical magpie makes of her excursions into club culture. Sadly, the compilation’s selling point also turns out to be its Achilles’ heel, with Madonna making what can only be seen as some pretty weird selections from her remix archive. (This first edition of the album has been whittled down to 16 tracks; a bounteous 50-track companion, Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones, titled in reference to the singer’s 50 Billboard chart-toppers, follows in August.)

Toward the start of her career, Madonna worked with a small number of remixers from her inner circle, like John “Jellybean” Benitez, who was the resident DJ at the Fun House club in New York where Madonna used to dance. As demand for remixers grew, she called on an increasing number of producers from further afield, and many of them, frankly, were not particularly worthy of the honor. These lesser names are over-represented on the second half of the album, which trails off dramatically.

It’s heartening, in a way, that Madonna has thrown in a load of her Y2K-era remixes simply because she likes them. But Eddie Amador’s leaden and infuriatingly sexless “Club 5 Edit” of Hard Candy’s “Give It 2 Me” probably isn’t even Eddie Amador’s favorite late-period Madonna remix, while the jubilant and cheeky “Music” deserves so much better than Washington, D.C. duo Deep Dish’s dull-as-Deep-Dishwater “Dot Com Radio Edit.” The fact that workaday Israeli DJ and producer Offer Nissim appears twice across the album’s 16 tracks, while the Pet Shop Boys’ fantastically chiseled take on “Sorry” only turns up on 50 Number Ones, is a cultural facelift akin to Cecilia Gimenez’ scandalous attempts to clear up the Ecce Homo fresco.

At their worst, there is something rote and functional about the mid-to-late-period remixes that dominate the second half of Finally Enough Love, as if Madonna needed something to get played in the fashionable New York clubs from which she emerged, and didn’t care all that much about how she did it. The fact that Madonna ostensibly cherishes these songs enough to pick them out of the business-house bin of history isn’t enough to rescue them from ignominy.

The other baffling call on Finally Enough Love is the decision to include remix edits rather than the full remixes themselves, when often the whole point of the remakes was to create extended jams that would work for dancefloors and DJs alike. The version of “Into the Groove” included on Finally Enough Love, for example, is the “You Can Dance Remix Edit,” a truncated take on the magnificent eight-minute-plus remodel that Benitez and True Blue producer Patrick Leonard created for You Can Dance, Madonna’s 1987 remix album; the decision is akin to buying a dog that loves to swim, then locking it in the laundry room.

The “You Can Dance Remix Edit” of “Into the Groove” (which this compilation makes available digitally for the first time) is glorious even in its truncation, with instrumental effects, stuttering vocals, and occasional rhythmic flourishes offering a sparkling alternative flavor to one of Madonna’s most iconic hits. But it invites damning comparison with Madonna’s previous work. You Can Dance was an essential Madonna release for the way it showed how a huge pop act could live in parallel to the club underground; Finally Enough Love feels more like a collection of footnotes. (In the case of 50 Number Ones, a very long and tangled set of footnotes.)

Questionable curatorial choices aside, there is plenty of incredible music on Finally Enough Love. “Everybody,” “Into the Groove,” “Like a Prayer,” and “Express Yourself” may appear as rather stingy remix edits, but they are still “Everybody,” “Into the Groove,” “Like a Prayer,” and “Express Yourself”—four of the best singles of the 1980s, and near-perfect examples of how club culture can be directed toward the mainstream without sacrificing its sass or vigor. Shep Pettibone’s canny, percussion-heavy remix of “Express Yourself,” meanwhile, goes a long way to explaining why he was the remixer of choice for ’80s pop megastars, capable of teasing out a club groove with a few well-placed tweaks while maintaining the integrity of the original song.

Shuffling forward in time, David Morales’ “David’s Radio Edit” of “Deeper and Deeper” and Junior Vasquez’s “Junior’s Luscious Single Mix” of “Secret” are scintillating examples of the early-1990s New York house sound: all tough, swung beats, perky keyboard lines, and perfectly coiled tension. And Stuart Price’s raucous “SDP Extended Vocal Edit” of “Hung Up” (a song he produced in the first place) is a wonderful example of how 2000s Madonna connected with the European dance underground on her fantastic 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor.

Sadly, it’s not quite enough. Finally Enough Love is good when it should be spectacular; frustrating when it could be fantastic, a mixed bag where we deserved solid gold. You could accept the odd strange song selection, maybe, but Finally Enough Love makes the erstwhile Queen of Pop feel inexcusably boring at times—which is the one thing Madonna at her prime would never countenance.

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EYE ROLL.

I know critics have an important role in culture, but this reads like "It doesn't have the remixes I like".

Or, if you've read a lot of film reviews lately, "The other baffling call on Finally Enough Love is the decision to include remix edits rather than the full remixes themselves" reads like the ever more present "They didn't make the movie I wanted to see".

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Mmm, baffled by remix edits but complains the 50 track version is too long. How long would it be with full, extended mixes. 

He talks as though she has no musical talent and just steals the work of others i.e. calling her a 'musical magpie'. Funnily enough he's stolen that phrase from the Ed Sheeran court case, making him a literary magpie. 

What a bitter old queen. 

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I do agree that the track list chosen for the Standard and their remixes chosen don’t offer the most. And yet I respect why chose certain ones. I’m thinking Like a Prayer and Girl Gone Wild’s remixes sound awesome when surrounded by the remixes in the 50 track list. But when parred down, not so much. What I love here in this chaos? The fact it’s making me revisit her other remixes to decided what I think would sound better even though that means nothing in terms of what’s getting released. In the end, mixes she chose are very Madonna and if we aren’t having a minor meltdown, was it even a Madonna compilation? Hahahaah

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