Queen
Tokyo, Japan
Nippon Budokan
April 14, 1979


This is one of the best Queen audience tapes of the 70s. An excellent comparison to the Live Killers album, which was recorded on the European leg of the same tour supporting the Jazz album.

Tarantura tends to crush their recordings with compression prior to pressing them to silvers, but Stark has done an excellent job in restoring the sound back to its vibrant self.


AUD > ? > Bootleg Race (Tarantura silver cd) --> Flac > WAV > Har-bal 1.5 > Wavelab 5.01b > Flac (level 8)


Notes by Stark:


**As always, I have restored/remastered this FOR MY OWN USE. I hope the community sees it as enough of an upgrade to want it, but if you don't like it, please don't download it.**

Firstly, this recording has been crushed by compression, and it's impossible to undo. However, by correcting the equalisation I have minimised the effect and significantly increased the peak-to-average ratio (dynamic range).

Secondly, each track has been individually normalised by Tarantura, resulting in, for example, Love Of My Life being the same volume as Sheer Heart Attack. This normalisation also causes the raising of background noise (i.e. tape hiss and crowd noise) on quieter tracks, so I have manually matched the transitions between tracks so the volume no longer jumps when a new song starts.

As for the sound, the bulk of the equalisation was done with Har-Bal. I then applied high- and low-pass filters (essentially sophisticated bass and treble controls) with a Waves VEQ4 equaliser and brought it back up to level (-0.2dB) with a Waves L3 limiter in Wavelab.

I have re-tracked the songs so there now less tracks, corrected the balance between left and right channels and applied new smoother fades to disc beginnings and ends. All tracks were converted to 24 bits prior to processing (increased dynamic range/lower noise floor versus 16 bit). NO new compression was applied. And...no denoisers!


Disc 1

01 - We Will Rock You
02 - Let Me Entertain You
03 - Somebody To Love
04 - If You Can't Beat Them
05 - Death On Two Legs
06 - Killer Queen
07 - Bicycle Race
08 - I'm In Love With My Car
09 - Get Down, Make Love
10 - You're My Best Friend
11 - Now I'm Here
12 - Don't Stop Me Now
13 - Spread Your Wings
14 - Dreamer's Ball
15 - Love Of My Life
16 - '39

Disc 2

01 - It's Late
02 - Brighton Rock
03 - Keep Yourself Alive
04 - Bohemian Rhapsody
05 - Tie Your Mother Down
06 - Sheer Heart Attack
07 - We Will Rock You
08 - We Are The Champions
09 - God Save The Queen
10 - Announcement


Don't sell. Just enjoy, and keep it lossless!