New Petra Project

[George Harrison]

Hey, guys. I actually ran into John Elefante here in Nashville the other night and asked him if Petra was working on something "new" as I had read rumors online. He said, "No" and added that John Schlitt isn't "really into Petra" anymore. Sorry to burst your bubble. He referenced John's new solo album, the Jay Sekulow Band, and then gave me his autograph.

Not surprising. I didn't think it was very likely that Petra would release anything again. Hard to make enough money to justify it, even if the band members were interested.

[Diehardpetrafan:)]

Yes and that doesn't upset me. What does is that I won't ever see John Lawry : (

[Progfan]

I would be happy if they re-released all of the back catalogue as deluxe remastered editions. Give us some rare tracks, alternate versions, live material. Do a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project.

[Mountain Man]

I would be happy if they re-released all of the back catalogue as deluxe remastered editions. Give us some rare tracks, alternate versions, live material. Do a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project.

Remastering is fine if it's done right, but too many remasters today compress the heck out of the audio and use what people call the "smiley face EQ", the result being a product with overly boosted high and low frequencies and no dynamic range. Basically, if you've ever listened to an album that sounds obnoxiously loud even after you've turned the volume down, that's what I'm talking about. Frankly, the original Petra CD releases sound great and don't need to be remastered.

A new remix, on the other hand, using original studio tapes to reassemble the albums from scratch and give them new clarity could be interesting, but to my knowledge, Petra's tapes were never stored properly and disintegrated many years ago, so a Beatles-like remix isn't possible. (To explain the reference, Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin, has been remixing Beatles albums using the original studio recordings, and the results have been stunning. The albums sound like they could have been recorded yesterday. Of course, the Beatles material was carefully archived by Abby Road Studios, and meticulous notes were taken during production, so it has been possible for Giles to use the exact same studio takes his father used decades ago when mixing the original albums. Petra wasn't so lucky.)

As for rare tracks and alternate versions, they don't exist in the Petra catalog. I asked Bob Hartman about this years ago, and he basically said that Petra couldn't afford to complete a song without selling it, so anything that was recorded and mixed has been released. They didn't have the luxury like bands like U2 who would record and mix two dozen tracks and then pick and choose what to release on an album.

[Diehardpetrafan:)]

That's good information for thinking logically, dude!

[Progfan]

The CDs of albums that were recorded during the era of CDs do sound acceptable, but there is still room for improvement. The overall volume on BTTS and TMW CDs is incredibly low compared to albums that came later. And no, I’m not advocating for making new editions with no dynamics to compete in the loudness wars. The discs just simply don’t sound as good as they could. The CDs of some earlier albums like MPTY sound even worse. Surprisingly, the NSD material on that double CD with WWT sounds pretty good with more clarity than I would have expected. I really wish CAJU would get a nice remaster, although the Wounded Bird editions of those early albums are pretty good. I was definitely disappointed with the remastered editions of MPTY and TMW that came out several years ago. What happened there? I agree that it would be an absolute dream to get remixes of the albums. I’m not familiar with the Beatles remixes, but Genesis did it with their entire catalog with great success, and Yes has done some of theirs as well. All great stuff. I’m not sure what to think about the lack of bonus material. It seems like there would at least be some live versions in good quality recordings that we haven’t heard. I’m sure somebody was probably running tape at more concerts than has been revealed. Even a recording straight from the FOH that could be cleaned up to sound decent would be interesting to hear.

[brent]

The production masters for some of this stuff no longer exist, so remasters are copies of copies DATs or CDs in some cases.

Louie told me there WERE some other shows that were recorded and he had copies of them. There was a show the night before the show used for CITAS. He said they played better that night, but for some reason, there was no video for it, so they didn't use it. What he had was a static shot with audio. Back before they all became sociable again, he threatened (jokingly) to release it for free on the net.

[Mountain Man]

The overall volume on BTTS and TMW CDs is incredibly low compared to albums that came later

So turn up the volume! The early Petra albums sound great when played loud.

[Diehardpetrafan:)]

Yes!!!!!!!

[Mountain Man]

Speaking of remixes/remasters, I've heard it suggested that the late 80s through early 90s was the golden age for CD mastering, because CD technology had pretty much been perfected by that point, and mixing engineers figured out how to make CDs sound like really clean vinyl. It was only when the company suits realized you could make CDs "louder" that things started to go downhill, and the problem remains today with a lot of stuff that is overly compressed, including reissues and remasters. It's why audiophiles tend to prefer older CDs rather than the latest and (not so) greatest. I do a lot of internet searching to check opinions before buying albums these days because it's hard to know exactly what you're going to get. I no longer assume that the newest remaster is always the best. But then there are strange cases like the Van Halen 2015 remasters, where the CD and 96khz high res versions are so artificially loud they will crush your eardrums while the 192khz high res versions are essentially flat transfers of the studio masters and sound phenomenal.

[Progfan]

The overall volume on BTTS and TMW CDs is incredibly low compared to albums that came later

So turn up the volume! The early Petra albums sound great when played loud.

Doesn’t work when playing the CDs on shuffle, because you have to ride the volume for the really loud ones. Sonically, the early CDs are just not that great.

[George Harrison]

The overall volume on BTTS and TMW CDs is incredibly low compared to albums that came later

So turn up the volume! The early Petra albums sound great when played loud.

Doesn’t work when playing the CDs on shuffle, because you have to ride the volume for the really loud ones. Sonically, the early CDs are just not that great.

I don't think TMW are BTTS sonically as good as other albums like NOTW or WUC or JK anyway. That's more the production though

[Mountain Man]

The overall volume on BTTS and TMW CDs is incredibly low compared to albums that came later

So turn up the volume! The early Petra albums sound great when played loud.

Doesn’t work when playing the CDs on shuffle, because you have to ride the volume for the really loud ones. Sonically, the early CDs are just not that great.

Do you have an old school CD changer? Or are you talking about playing ripped files on a digital audio player? Assuming it's the latter, that's why ReplayGain was invented, to even out the volume disparity between different tracks.

[Diehardpetrafan:)]

I use my CD's on a player and who cares about changing volume? Is it that big of a deal to move your finger? BTTS is my favorite album and BTTS-OF are definitely my favorites!

[Mountain Man]

I use my CD's on a player and who cares about changing volume? Is it that big of a deal to move your finger? BTTS is my favorite album and BTTS-OF are definitely my favorites!

On digital audio players, it's common for people to click "shuffle" and listen to random tracks from their entire music collection which can make differences in volume a problem, especially if a quiet track is followed immediately by a loud one and you get startled out of your seat because the volume is now too high. ReplayGain adds a non-destructive tag to audio files that gives you the option of playing all tracks at the same relative volume which solves the problem. Personally, I'm old school and listen to complete albums in their proper order, so volume differences between albums doesn't bother me.