Revisiting Queens of the Stone Age today and realizing that there are a couple of recordings that are currently separate but seem like they should be merged. The only difference is that on the album, Songs for the Deaf, they have fake radio station interludes added as an intro/outro, respectively. Otherwise, they sound like the same recordings and mixes and the songs themselves are the same length. Is the addition of an unrelated intro/outro enough to consider recordings separate? The guidelines only mention additional silence or fades in/out.
Okay, thanks. The only reason I wasn’t sure is because in neither case is the intro/outro part of the song itself—it’s not an additional instrumental part or something like that. It’s unrelated to the song but adds to the vibe/concept of the album as a whole, and similar intros/outros are added throughout the album.
Just for reference, is there a recording guideline that mentions something like this more clearly than the one I linked?
The “Recording” goes from the first second to the last of what you hear. If one Recording is [ intro / song / outro ] and another is just [ song ] then you have two Recordings. If one starts with crowd noise, and the other doesn’t then they would be different.
One exception is if a Recording is faded out early. If the song is faded out a few seconds before the end then it is often treated as the same. Or padded with extra silence. This is treated as “mastering”. A bit of common sense is then applied. If a 3 minute song is 30 seconds shorter then it usually still is two recordings.
A simple test for yourself is - would you notice the difference if you swapped the two Recordings around? If you listed to album “A” with the Recording from album “B” would you notice?