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reminiscing2004

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Posts posted by reminiscing2004

  1. Posted

    1 hour ago, platy said:

    The only Japanese artists to come to London are Miyavi and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu... sigh.... 

    + Mouse on the Keys + Lite last year ^^, but I feel u. Part of me wants to go, but then I realize I probably don't want to see 2018 miyavi.

     

    i hope the EP's are a refreshing return to glory

  3. Posted

    Generally, I'm not much of a person to binge single tracks, as my tendency is to listen to albums. However, according to my iTunes, my top 5 played VK tracks are 

     

    1. DELUHI - s[K]ape:goat  (103 plays)

    2. Versailles - Princess (64 plays)

    3. Versailles - ASCENDEAD MASTER (58 plays)

    4. the GazettE - 未成年 (44 plays)

    5. Rentrer en Soi - LAST SCENE (36 plays)

     

    Seems pretty accurate! These are all total classics for me, though if my library playcount included my listening pre-2011, I'm almost positive Aristocrat's Symphony, The Revenant Choir, and HYBRID TRUTH would be on this list

    maryeon and Dillinger reacted to this

  8. Posted

    On 9/14/2017 at 12:27 PM, inertia said:

    Some of the male fans at Versailles lives were pretty rough, and when they got heated up during the concert it was scary for us female fans. It’s not fun when a guy that weighs 50% more than you takes a running flying dive right into you. You’d think it would be common sense to go easy when you’re jumping against someone who’s a lot smaller

     

    On 9/14/2017 at 3:11 PM, Komorebi said:

    As much as I feel sorry for japanese guys not being able to fully enjoy the scene there, I was extremely grateful for being able to stand in saizen AND breathe at the same time. Being pushed around and covered by other people's sweat while being squashed by dudes who are trying to push to the front is NOT an enjoyable experience.

     

    I found this thread really interesting to read through and see everyone's take on this topic. I'm replying to these quotes because it spotlights just how different the desires in a live concert experience are from male and female fans. Despite what some people (like the above quoted) consider to be normal and expect everyone would want from a concert, I'm here to say that the things Inertia and Komo mentioned as being bad are exactly what I want from a great live experience.

     

    Not all male fans are like this, but I think this is a really common mindset for men. It's why a bunch of dudes who have never met each other can pile up in a cramped hot space and push the shit out of each other for a couple hours and leave with a big smile on their face, excited for the next time. I can't tell you how many times I've like shook someone's hand after a show or shared some acknowledging eye contact and nod with someone while leaving a venue after a night of moshing. The bond you have with those people is absurdly strong after the night. And why? It sounds silly, but its because you all got crushed, hit, pushed, soaked in sweat (if not yours, from someone else), and gave every ounce of energy you had while listening to some of your favorite music. It's simply cathartic.

     

    It's not really a matter of lacking courtesy (or atleast not intentionally). The rough nature of a lot of predominantly male lives is because there's an unspoken agreement that most people WANT that kind of atmosphere (though obviously a lot of female fans want something different). I can guarantee you I'm always the skinniest/lightest dude in the pit. It's hilarious how little control I have and how far I will fly when pushed, but I wouldn't have it any other way. The best concert experiences for me always end sweaty, bruised, unable to speak, and feeling like I've just ran a marathon. When you find a show where everyone is on this same level, prepared to use up all of their spirit to making this experience count, you have something crazy magical. And a strong sense of unity comes from having been through that together with other people who were looking for the same thing. 

    zaa_zaa, Tanishi and r... reacted to this

  9. Posted

    On 11/29/2017 at 1:48 AM, Chell said:

     Got myself for my birthday Nightmare - Animalism Tour DVD

     

    Please tell me how the Nightmare DVD is once you've watched it. It's been on my list to check out for like a decade now... Awesome era of the band

  12. Posted · Edited by reminiscing2004

    Interesting discussion. First off, I think you might be exaggerating the change of his vocals, as you see it. Even looking it at the live clips you cited, let alone all of the other recordings from 2002 to this point, I don't think there was ever some drastic 'switch' where he got better. (I don't think he was ever 'bad' as many people believe.) You could maybe argue that about his screams, but I'm mainly addressing the clean singing voice.

     

    Also, something really key to consider (especially with live performances) is the circumstances of the sound setup at the venue. As a vocalist, you are desperately depending on monitors, either on the floor in front of you on via in-ear headphones, to allow you to hear yourself. Standing on stage with the band, you often can't hear the sound of your own voice. This makes your performances at shows vary a lot based on how the venue can accommodate this. Most small venues will have sparse to nil monitoring options. Even in higher budget tours where you have monitoring equipment, you are presented with a new problem: bigger venues have even louder sound systems. Even among same size venues, the acoustics differs wildly, so the live sound team is facing a new set of challenges every show. And on top of that, the house guy doing the mix might put you too low on X night at X venue, and do the opposite at Y venue on Y night. My whole point is that for Ruki, or any vocalist in a loud band, each show will not be a level playing ground for their performance. It's very plausible that at one concert he could hear himself fantastic, while at the other he had insufficient monitoring or was in a crazy reflective room that drowned everything out.

     

    Additionally, the idea that someone can improve very suddenly at a discipline is generally a fantasy, imo. Even if you are practicing something for 6 hours a day, progress is usually steady, but diminishes over time. For instance, imagine there are two people who practice singing for 6 hours a day. One of them only started singing yesterday and the other one has been professionally singing for 3 years. The newbie will make a considerable amount more overall improvement than the veteran in a month's time. This is what makes it so difficult to be in the highest echelon of skill in a certain field. If it takes 100 hours to become 'okay' at something, it might take 1000 to become good, and 10,000 to become very good.

    platy and hotcocoa reacted to this

  15. Posted · Edited by reminiscing2004

    Musically, this is probably a bit soft(?) for my usual tastes, but I really really love the sound of the recording so I thought I'd mention it.

     

    This is free from so many of the recording/mixing techniques commonly expected with 2010's VK that I generally just find uninteresting and emotionally flat. I really liked this song because the drums sounded natural and roomy. They aren't triggering synthetic feeling kick and snare samples and it hasn't been compressed to shit. The mix in general just sounds super pleasant, in part because it hasn't been squashed in a number of ways for teh loudness!!! Production wise, I find this waaaay more similar to how late 90s emo and post-rock sounded then anything visual kei in the last decade and I really love that.

     

    It's really cool to see a band going in this direction with their recordings. Because it's something most people don't really consider, most bands just feel pressure to bandwagon on the trend of what everyone else's records sound like and hire the same engineers because its safe and lazy.

     

    I like the falsetto vocals and the instrumental breaks, so I'm excited to see what else this band can do. And as mentioned, I hope their recordings continue to glisten with beauty...

    emmny and Mihenno reacted to this

  16. Posted · Edited by reminiscing2004

    wowowowowowowowoow. this is super fascinating, especially since i think a lot of the members have been quite inactive. i always wished kaworu joined a new band, but its been 10 years of inactivity.

     

    rip teru, tho he probably couldnt justify the stress of relearning a bunch of tunes on top of the ridiculous amount of complex guitar work already stored in his mind from his two main bands.

     

    edit: nvmnd, teru said on twitter hes not playing because hes touring with versailles in south america

     

    pls share ur aikaryu rips old fans that have been revived from their vk slumber because of this post

    sakuran, suji, JukaForever and 1 other reacted to this

  19. Posted

    when i saw versailles earlier this year, hizaki forgot his first of like five solos when they played Silent Knight. maybe forgot isn't the right word, but his muscle memory got sort of lost after a phrase or two and his left hand was out of position, and he just kept playing to save face through it, the entire time staring out deeply into the audience, as he tends to do during many of his solos. like it was bad, out of key notes and then a really nervously improvised 'oh shit' recovery part after for fifteen seconds or so. it was the only part of the entire show where the musicianship was less than perfect from any of the members.

     

    but anyway, while it was happening and he was staring into the audience, he locked eyes with me for like a second or two as soon as he seemed to start messing up and it was a very profound moment for some reason. it was just like a "oh shit, hizaki's not a god, but hizaki is actually a human being like me that makes mistakes" moment. psychologically as if i  watched an idol die in front of me

     

    felt as if i had like successfully walked through a wall or something akin in mental weirdness.

    Laurence02, cvltic, suji and 3 others reacted to this

  20. Posted

    Sooo confused trying to make sense of what the hell's going on here. Repress of the 1st edition of 痛絶 is pretty cool? and i guess im curious about a 痛絶 remaster, because I would say there is some potential to do a better post-processing job on it this time around.

     

    However, I'm extremely suspicious that the remaster of 葬ラ謳 will show any improvement.... It's just a really great sounding album already. This is all intriguing news nonetheless, as a fan of pre-2005 ムック.

    qotka and clow_eriol reacted to this

  21. Posted

    i feel like the funniest part of the whole make western VK a THING thing, is just that this wouldn't have to be a discussion at all if there were actually any western vk bands that were good

    Gesu reacted to this

  22. Posted

    You don't suck! Just keep practicing, sing all the time, and you will find improvement! Based on what serox said, I was worried it would sound worse, but when I watched the video, I found you were hitting most of the notes, which is what really matters imo. No one starts out with a crazy interesting starting voice the first note they sing, you basically do just this, practice, practice, practice, and the sky is the limit.

     

    As for practical advice, I would say feel free to try singing the lowest parts of the songs that may be difficult an octave higher. If you are interested in lowering your vocal range, you can obviously just keep practicing trying to hit those low notes and you will find they become easier over time. However, for the time being, it might be useful to sing them an octave higher when they are very difficult. I am a male and so MOST of my vocal heroes (even that are male) have atleast like 6 or 7 high notes above me that I can't hit. So, what I've grown used to doing is try to sing as much as possible at the same note, but then when there is a crazy high part I just bring it an octave down and it allows me to continue singing with full strength and actually sound good. And then I tend to find that if I sing for an hour or so, two or three higher notes will open up that I may not have been able to hit when I started that day. And then you just kind of slowly push yourself over time to keep hitting the absolute highest (or lowest) note you can. Since I've started singing I've definitely extended my range like this.

     

    Anyway, hopefully there is SOME sort of hopeful advice from this, but you are good and have a lot of potential. Don't give up if it means a lot to you. Also, not sure what your living situation is, but you might find singing LOUDer will give you some more expression with the voice.

  24. Posted

    On 3/25/2017 at 7:01 PM, Tokage said:

    I've been playing a lot of TF2 again for some reason. Say what you want bout the game now that it's gone F2P, but I still find myself having fun just fine 

     

    Must have been a while since you last played, I think it went free to play like 6 years ago ahahah

  25. Posted

    Of course Hi-Res sounds better than a 256kbps mp3. A 320kbps mp3 will sound better too, and a 44.1/16 file will too as @YuyoDrifthas mentioned. The real question should be does a Hi-res 24/96 file sound better than a cd quality 16/44.1 lossless rip. You're putting Hi-Res against a straw man to make yourself feel better about it, or you just don't actually realize how silly this is.

     

    The fact that you made this thread after I pointed out how foolish you were in the Gazette thread (1 2 3) as some sort of attempt to prove yourself right (?) just further shows how little of your obsession with this is confounded in actual understanding.

     

    Because you still don't seem to get it in the other thread, here is all the things wrong with your reply to me there @Aeolus:

    >"And yes, depending on the vinyl they are the same"

     @Naaaaani tried to help you out – it doesn't matter what quality digital source you burn to vinyl, it doesn't quantize the information into steps like digital has to. You just can't physically write into a vinyl like that. Go read about the difference between digital and analogue. I don't see how can you be any semblance of an audiophile and not understand this basic distinction.

     

    >"never said anything about mp3 haha."

    Exactly the problem. Throughout your whole initial post you say what I have = 24 / 96, and what everyone else is itunes/cd quality (44/16). You were making no distinction between a 256kbps mp3 (variable bit depth as inherent to mp3 codec) and an actual 16 bit 44.1khz CD rip: two very different things. In that thread you were comparing your files to Himi like they were "CD quality", even calling them "16/44.1". I tried to point that problems in saying that, because while the sample rate is maintained the bit depth is severely reduced in an mp3 from a 16 bit lossless file. And yet again, you run off and make THIS thread where you are again seeming to confuse an iTunes store quality mp3 and a lossless CD rip (??).

     

    >"I'm not saying i can here 50khz, all I said was that I can hear a noticeable difference between the itunes store quality and Hi-Res,"

    Ahh, I think I'm starting to understand that you either didn't read my initial post it all, or gave it 0 energy to understand, or maybe tried and still don't. But I don't think you tried at all really. The whole point of what I'm saying, what Yuuyo and Shmilly is saying, is that there is an argument to be had over a 44.1 or 48k 16 bit lossless WAV/ALAC/FLAC etc etc file  being superior to even a high quality 320 kbps mp3 encode, HOWEVER !!!! believing that the extra 24 or 32 bit audio or 96k (when you yourself admit your DAC can't play it back) is what makes it sound better is bullshit, petty semantics at best. How do you not understand this is what people are saying? Many things will be better than a itunes store quality mp3 that aren't a 24 bit 96k HI RES PLACEBO. If you seemed to have even the slightest knowledge on these subjects, I would respect and consider your insistence on the additional fidelity compared to a CD quality lossless codec – but you don't have that, so I think I should give up explaining any of this.

     

    >"I can say I like this version of 絲, I'm not much of a fan of pre-NIL. (*gasp* I'm gonna get a lot of hate for this huh?)"

    Again, your completely missing the point. When I referenced just how shit the first 15 seconds of Ito sound compared to the original, it has nothing to do with "the GazettE" changing and everything to do with how fucking awful the Guitar tone and mixing/mastering sound. It's the same exact riff!!! That's why I pointed it out. It's literally just to do with the engineering and the reason I emphasized it was that its so PAINFULLY obvious how much better the recording and frequency balance is on the original guitar tone. It doesn't matter whether your a fan of pre-NIL or post-NIL. Play the two intros side by side to a panel of industry professionals and they'd tell you the same story.

     

    Regarding what was said in the thread, YuyoDrift's overall point is good, but also said some things I want to clarify.

     

    >"8bit (Think Video Game Music), 16bit (FLAC Quality), and 24bit (HD, Hi-Res, SACD)"

    The whole 8bit = video game music or chiptune quality is largely a myth and just poor understanding of the system. As I sort of went into in my initial reply to Aeolus , mp3's function outside of the domain of bit depth in the traditional sense, and are very often far below 8 bits!! Furthermore, a 16 bit audio file can be reduced in bit depth by processes that will make the file compression 100% transparently. And finally, as @Shmillyintelligently gathered, there is no audible difference between 16 bit and 24 bit of the same sample rate. Which leads me to:

     

    >It is intended for Audio Engineers, who use low-pass filtering for master recording and/or editing (kinda like a graphic designer/photo editor using RAW formatted images)."

    The RAW analogy doesn't make any sense as the systems can't really be compared. The whole point of 24 bit audio as a superior tool in the studio is you have a wider signal to noise ratio (144 db vs 96 db of a 16 bit file). On playback, what you're hearing in this release is slammed through a limiter at 0db the whole time anyway. The argument for 24 bit playback could only be made if you were listening to incredible dynamic music, something that had passages at like -50db, which is something you don't find in any music period these days. Also, low-pass filtering has 0 to do with why people use 24 bit.

     

     

    Komorebi, Axius, ghost and 2 others reacted to this
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