survivor "the search is over"

my commercial 45 issued as scoti bros 04871 states a run time on the label as 4:13 but actually runs 4:10 and is identical to the version on the cd below

(S) (4:10) Scotti Bros. 75408 Greatest Hits   

Funny you should ask! I haven't done a direct head-to-
head comparison, but I have some older notes about this
song.

Your version off Time-Life's Sounds Of The Eighties
Vol. 12 1985-1986 (1995) is a differently EQ'd
digital clone of Priority's Eighties Greatest Rock
Hits Vol. 5 From The Heart (1992), which is a little
too loud and clips a bit. I don't think too highly of
most of those Priority collections. Some are thought to
have a Waring noise reduction process on them - don't
know if that would be the source of your noise or not. I
think that Madacy's Rock On 1985 Walking On
Sunshine (1998) also uses the Priority disc as its
source, but I'd need to confirm.

A better bet would be the Scotti Brothers Greatest
Hits (1993), which is quite a nice-sounding disc. I
use it as the source for all my Survivor tracks. There's
a digital clone (1 dB louder) on Time-Life's Guitar
Rock Vol. 27 Power Ballads (1999) and a differently
EQ'd digital clone on Time-Life's Body Talk Vol. 12 By
Candlelight (1997). Any of these should sound good.

I'd be very curious to know if the GH-based versions of
the song clear up the problem for you, or if they still
show the same noise.

I would recommend the 1993 Scotti Bros Greatest Hits disc over the original Vital Signs CD. There is no over-compression or clipping on Hits. The sound on my Vital Signs CD is very thin (it is an early Japan for US pressing, so perhaps the US pressings sounded better).

I got a copy of the disc tonight, and you guys are right: it looks GREAT in Adobe Audition.

Normally I put my audio files through both "centering" and phase correction... although I might not have been doing that when I made the original rip.

However, since I had problems with it before, I have done NOTHING to this file other than maximize it to 100% volume on the peaks.

You may be on to something about the phasing issues. Technically I have a phase corrector on my chain (Stereo Tool), but if the phase varries, it might be "fluttering" back and forth, creating that "gurgle."

It should play in the next day or two; I'll let you know how it goes!

FINALLY got to hear this song from start to finish on my stream; for the most part, the annoying gurgle seems to be gone, using the version from the greatest hits CD. I'm now wondering if the "Vital Signs" version might clean it up even further; I might try both copies and see what happens.

There was still a tiny bit of gurgle in the opening just as he's singing, "...I was always reaching..." but you had to be listening pretty close. Another tiny bit of gurgle as they're wrapping up the lyrics right at the end.

My suspicion now is that I've found a song that contains primary tones, harmonics and sub-harmonics at the same time that are just difficult for the mp3 codec to figure out what to keep and what to throw away.

...Maybe I should just increase my encoding rate! :)

Anyway, THANK YOU for everyone's help; sorry this response was so delayed. I think we've done about all we can do for now.

(Just for clarity, I want to specify that the "gurgle" comes from listening to my 96 kbps mp3 stream encoded with the latest version of LAME, after running through the multi-band compressor section of Stereo Tool (set extremely slow) and Sound Solution 1.31 set fairly aggressively [everything but the Stereo Expander, Clipper, & pre-emphesis are active]. This is followed by a look-ahead independent channel peak limiter which keeps peaks to -1.75 db into the encoder.)