Loverboy - Lovin’ Every Minute Of It

A fine Mutt Lange tune! (Just written by him, not produced by him.)

First, the mastering specifics:

My go-to version has always been from the Loverboy collection Big Ones (1989), which is mastered very nicely and has a great overview of the band's output. The same analog transfer is used on:

• Priority's Eighties Greatest Rock Hits Vol. 3 Arena Rock (1992) - the original mastering of this disc is fine, but the rerelease introduces a one-sample offset between left and right channels; avoid
• Time-Life's 2-CD Rock Dreams (1993) - digitally exactly 0.1 dB louder
• Time-Life's Sounds Of The Eighties Vol. 17 The Mid-'80s Take Two (1996) - differently-EQ'd digital clone
• Madacy's Rock On 1985 Vol. 2 (2005) - differently-EQ'd digital clone with additional compression/limiting

There are two outliers:

• Sony's weird low-budget Hits Of 1985 (1999) is not based on Big Ones, but is likely based on Columbia's release of the parent album Lovin' Every Minute Of It, based on my experience with the Hits series. Mastering is good, without any extra compression/limiting or noise reduction.
• Swaitek's promo 50-CD The A List Disc 29 (1994) has noise reduction. I strongly suspect that this is based on a TM Century mastering of the song. Avoid.

Now, as for that hum...

Back in the '80s, I noticed that very same high-frequency whine on a few songs. "Sledgehammer" and the guitar solo in ABC's "How To Be A Millionaire" spring to mind, but I'm sure there were others. I was never able to pin down what it was until relatively recently. The frequency you noted corresponds to the line frequency for 60 Hz video (525 lines times 60 Hz divided by two = 15750 lines/second). The simple explanation for why it's in the audio is that someone had a TV or computer monitor on in the studio or the control room, and the mikes picked it up. I can't hear that high frequency any more, because I'm old!

If you want to see the effects of the high-frequency whine, open the song in Audacity, click on the box immediately to the right of the "X" at the left side of the screen, select Spectrogram, right-click on the frequency scale and select Zoom To Fit, and note the horizontal stripe at 15.75 kHz.

All of the CD I noted above have the high-frequency whine; it's baked right into the mix of the song. While it's possible to filter it out with a narrow notch filter, I haven't run into any masterings that actually do that. (Same for "Sledgehammer" and "How To Be A Millionaire.") Notch filters that narrow would likely cause phase artifacts in the high-frequencies that could screw up the soundstage, and it's probably not worth it.

Can you take a look at your track from The 80s in Audacity, and see if the high-frequency whine shows up?

Edited by crapfromthepast

I can confirm that Gene's file from "The 80s: Loverboy" is mastered a little too loud (clips a bit in the loud portions), but is nowhere near maximized. So it could be much worse.

I can also confirm that the high-frequency whine is present in this file, too. It shows up bright and clear in the Audacity spectrogram view. I don't think we'll find a version of the song that doesn't have the whine.