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Bump.

(don't know why I did that, other than to continue the trend of all BRT posters bumping this topic.

)

Originally posted by haytrainBump.

(don't know why I did that, other than to continue the trend of all BRT posters bumping this topic. )

Hmmm...I'm thinking the words "shephard" and "sheep" lol...

haytrain

17 years

Originally posted by WojBhoy[..]
Hmmm...I'm thinking the words "shephard" and "sheep" lol...

Exactly

haytrain

17 years

1992-08-16 - Washington DC - RFK Stadium

Sound:

This is a strange one. It's got it's good, and it's got it's bad, that's for sure. To start off, the good is the balance of the instruments in the mix. Everything sounds pretty clear to my ears, and no member of the band is too loud or too soft. The bad part of the sound is fairly obvious: there's no crowd whatsoever. I'm not sure why someone would go out of their way to eliminate the crowd noise like they did. There were also some weird blips throughout the show, and in some songs, Bono seemed to be a maxed out, causing some minor distortion (Bad comes to mind.) If there would have been "normal" crowd noise, I would have rated the sound a bit higher, but as it is, I can only say it's an average sound quality. Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Performance:

Another aspect of the show that has both good and bad. The first seven songs (Zoo Station - UTEOTW) were on fire. I personally didn't have anything to complain about, and everything seemed to be nailed dead on by all members of the band. That all changed once they started New Years Day and sloppy mistakes just kept adding up after that. This is about as inconsistant as I've seen U2 (not counting the atrocity that happened when they opened Popmart in Vegas. Yikes

.). I don't know if they just got lost and forgot where in the song they were, or the fact that the band was just coming off a month and a half break, but some of the songs are outright sloppy. So, what started off as an amazing show was mired by some surprising mistakes by a usually focused band. Rating: 3 out of 5.

Sidenote: "Bad" seemed to have problems with the synthesizer track cutting out unexpectedly, and it made me wonder if someone's playing along live with the band under the stage (thought I saw someone hanging out under the stage at a keyboard during a special feature on the Boston DVD?) or if it's all pre-programed and the band has to play along with a pre-recorded arrangement.

Show Highlights:

"Zoo Station" through "UTEOTW" - Everything nailed perfectly. Zoo Station was especially good.
"Ultraviolet" - Brilliant
Edge's solo in "With or Without You" - Need I say more?

Show Lowlights:
Surprising mistakes by the band during "New Years Day," "Bad," "Pride," and "Desire."
No crowd noise makes it feel like this isn't even a real show.
I absolutely hate the "acoustic set" of Angel of Harlem and ISHFWILF. A complete waste of setlist space, if you ask me.

Overall:

There's some really good tracks on here, but some other tracks are ruined by some technical glitches and uncharacteristic mistakes by the band. Worth a listen, but not staying on my hard drive.

Rating: 6 out of 10

germcevoy

17 years

have to disagree about the sound rating there Jeremy. It's a soundboard and not a broadcast so naturally there is no crowd noise. It hasn't been dubbed out, the crowd noise just doesn't make it through the soundboard. Taking this into effect i'll be giving the audio at keast a 4.5

djrlewis

17 years

Originally posted by germcevoyhave to disagree about the sound rating there Jeremy. It's a soundboard and not a broadcast so naturally there is no crowd noise. It hasn't been dubbed out, the crowd noise just doesn't make it through the soundboard. Taking this into effect i'll be giving the audio at keast a 4.5

Have to say I disagree about nearly all of it in fact! We'll see. You've prompted me to have another listen Jeremy. Review on hold....

drewhiggins

17 years

1992-08-16 - Washington, District of Columbia - Robert F. Kennedy Stadium

I was in the middle of writing a fantastic review and Firefox crashed. So here's a little shorter one...

Sound

The original source of which I had (I may have ripped it from a DVD) had lots of distortion and hissing, even when filtered with some audio editing software. To be fair, I compared both that and this new upgrade and I will say the upgrade sounded more refined to my hearing. But no audience left me wondering whether they enjoyed it or not. Going by how good the Zooropa Tour was, I'd say more did than not....

From Where The Streets Have No Name to Love Is Blindness, it still had hissing and distortion, but not as audible. Maybe the soundboard couldn't handle it properly, maybe the original lossless encode was poor to begin with and was never filtered and EQed as it should have been.

Luckily, the performances were top notch in that section, so it didn't stop me from listening. The bass, guitar, drums and vocals here are more than audible at all times with no stretched tape effects, and I doubt you'll find a better soundboard from the Zooropa Tour in 1992 sans crowd. Again as I said in a previous review, I'm amazed how these tapes continue to circulate in such high-quality, because surely they'd be worn out by now.

Performance

Almost north of brilliant. What can you say about a band that decides to open their show with six songs from one album? You can just sit back, listen in awe and say to yourself; "Well, they're certainly a bunch of confident guys, aren't they". And they are.

You get a brilliant Shine Like Stars snippet and an awesome guitar solo by Edge for Love Is Blindness. But the performance did have a downside (as 99.91% of them do), and I feel the same way as Jeremy - the acoustic set of Angel of Harlem and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. What a piss-weak effort. Hopefully it's never played like that again. Ever. And because I didn't like it, I'm gonna take one-and-a-half points from my total rating. But Bad and Sunday Bloody Sunday. One word...wow. Not since the Joshua Tree Tour (and even Lovetown) had I heard anything from U2 so very amazing and inspiring from the opening riff to the last drumbeat.

The mistakes on New Year's Day, Bad, Pride and Desire I actually thought brought a new kind of element, just like The Fly in U2:3D; to those songs. A shot in the arm to give them life, because you can't be 100% perfect all the time - even one of the best guitarists in the world can't be perfect.

Rating: 8.5/10

haytrain

17 years

Originally posted by germcevoyhave to disagree about the sound rating there Jeremy. It's a soundboard and not a broadcast so naturally there is no crowd noise. It hasn't been dubbed out, the crowd noise just doesn't make it through the soundboard. Taking this into effect i'll be giving the audio at keast a 4.5

Are you sure it hasn't been dubbed out? The times when you could hear the crowd, it sounded very tinny and metallic to my ears, like it had been messed with or edited in some way. In fact, it sounded exactly like those backing tracks where they go in and remove portions of the track (usually Edge's guitar).

germcevoy

17 years

1992-08-16 - Washington, District of Columbia - Robert F. Kennedy Stadium

Sound

Before the upgrade this show wasn't worth the listen but the newer version rocked my socks. Barring the lack of crowd noise (it is a proper soundboard afterall) I couldn't fault it. The crowd were there, they could be heard in the distance but they just aren't picked up because thats just how soundboards work unfortunately. All the instruments were excellent (Larry's Drums at the start of The Fly, Adam's Bass throughout etc). Bono's vocals were there crystal clear to.

Against absolute perfection (Zooropa Dublin) it might not be there but it's a completely different type of recording and for me it comes in just behind Popmart Miami as the best 'proper' soundboard i've ever heard. You can ramble about the audience but until we find an audience source and do a matrix then we may do without. There was that slight electronic, metallic intefernce throughout but thats caused by the remastering process.

Score against perfection : 8/10
Score as soundboard : 10/10
Overall : 9/10 (so 4.5 on the bootleg page)

Performance

Darn excellent I thought. Again I really could not fault it. It may have sounded flat most of the the time but the lack of crowd noise was to blame for that. Up until New Year's Day it is flawless I felt. The Fly was really strong and the usual Zoo Station, Mysterious Ways, One and End Of The World all flew by without a hitch. New Year's Day did sound a little iffy but it was only the 3rd or 4th performance in over 2 years so it was bound to be a little shaky. Without the crowd noise the acoustic set went down like a lead balloon. I'm sure they chanted along but when you can't hear them it just don't sound good. ISHFWILF was almost lovely (but listen to 1993-05-11 Rotterdam to hear what difference a crowd makes).

Satellite Of Love is the worst live song ever performed by U2. It's just shit and nowhere near as good as their studio effort (that I love). RTSS through Streets was awesome as ever.

ZooTV Desire has never pulled any strings for me (and never will). Ultraviolet was top top drawer (not quite with Milan and Dublin) and With Or Without You was pretty flawless (though I still can't fathom it's status as the 'best version ever').

Rating : 7.5/10

Overall

Going into this show I was expecting a massacre but after a complete run through I was very pleasantly surprised by it. Sure there were nerves present but thats got to be better than egos being flaunted. Great show, great recording, essential.

germcevoy

17 years

Originally posted by haytrain[..]

Are you sure it hasn't been dubbed out? The times when you could hear the crowd, it sounded very tinny and metallic to my ears, like it had been messed with or edited in some way. In fact, it sounded exactly like those backing tracks where they go in and remove portions of the track (usually Edge's guitar).

See my review. It's caused by the remastering process and not by attempts to remove the audience noise.

haytrain

17 years

Originally posted by germcevoy[..]

See my review. It's caused by the remastering process and not by attempts to remove the audience noise.

I find that odd. I would think that re-mastering would get rid of sounds like that....

MWSAH

17 years

Originally posted by haytrain[..]

I find that odd. I would think that re-mastering would get rid of sounds like that....

If the original soundbaoard source doesn't have much audience noise, than remastering can't change that. All you can do is remove some hiss, hoping that the audience is somewhat more prominent. And with removing hiss, you will have to be careful, because dehissing is a audience-killer if you do it wrong.

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