Has anyone checked out this supposed duffy upload?

[Riverbed0666]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfqCxEk6fHY

I've been listening to this and doing some A/B listening with the Duffy excerpt from the old BOC website. To me at least, this sounds sooooooooo much like the original excerpt that I don't know how you could cover it this well. I'm a bit of an amateur music producer, and I can't imagine being able to get something this close.

Of course, there is the issue of the track length not matching the 2:18 length on bocpages (don't recall original source for that). The song does fade out right at the 2:18 mark and then the outro starts. I've noticed that the guitars on this outro sound pretty close to A10 from R35TT, particularly the guitar in the background that's playing a chord and holding it. You can hear a guitar in the background of A10 that's playing chords and holding them. To me, they sound like they were recorded/processed in the same way.

It does beg the question, if this uploader had Duffy, why didn't they upload anything else off Acid Memories? Why does this recording have the weird outro? I'm somewhat in the camp of the unleaked albums not being real, but the tracks mentioned in them being real. I wonder if this could have come off an older compilation tape that somehow isn't leaked yet?

I'll have to think for a bit about how I could prove this really does match the excerpt we've had. It's late at night and I'm starting to ramble.

Any thoughts? Do we have any proof for or against that I can look at?

[luminousdusk]

This came up not long ago in another thread, It's definitely a cover to me, I can hear a few subtle differences, one being a sort of DC pop with a delay on it in the background isn't there in the cover and the single synth note at about 11 seconds in the original clip sounds quite different.

Don't see it being that difficult to recreate a couple of synth keys, It would take some time to get that close, But then again if your faking BoC tracks you've got some time on your hands

[Riverbed0666]

It's a bit hard to tell with the EHX sample being so low quality. Has anyone ever tried to clean up the audio from it before? I don't think much can be done because it sounds like it came from a tape and then got compressed heavily to get uploaded.

Still wracking my brain trying to think of there's any way to prove legitimatcy outside of the band themselves confirming it's real. Or the person who made it coming forward.

I guess I could see this being a good recreation but dang it's really well done.

[luminousdusk]

It is well done I agree. Best listening on headphones and doing some A/B comparisons to hear the differences.

I'm not saying I know it's definitely not them but we must have had a hundred fake tracks over the years and it is surprising the lengths some people go to and never come forward to claim responsibility.. And why would they if it's a hoax

If only the creator of the cover listened to the original with headphones and added the delayed pops, Added some more noise, filtered it and tweaked that single synth key slightly.. So close!

[Riverbed0666]

Yeah, I'm sadly familiar with all the fakes and mislabelings we've had over the years. I definitely hear these differences you mention. Though now I'm wondering how many of these differences are due to the low quality of the EHX sample vs this recording being a fake.

As it stands, I could see the noise, delayed pops, and missing high end being introduced from .rm file compression or the EHX sample coming from a low quality tape, or being a several-generations-old tape copy. I'm running on the assumption that the master duffy recording would have been on tape, but much higher quality akin to OTV1/OTV2. Perhaps the cosmic crofter didn't have access to a decent copy?

Anyway, something like the synths being at different pitches could point towards this being a fake, unless the pitch difference was also introduced from a poor quality tape.

Do we know anything about where the cosmic crofter got the samples on the EHX website? I don't think he ever talked about that. Does anyone know if the original .rm files are still in existence somewhere? I'm still curious about cleaning up the original EHX sample if possible. I suppose I can't add back things that were lost during compression/upload, but I'd love to poke at it still.

At the end of the day, I guess it's comparing two audio recordings that we have basically no background info on. Sometimes even the best internet detectives get cold cases

[breachtones]

A guy with the right gear and knowledge could remake Duffy pretty well. It's drumless, which is what separates almost every BOC fake from real BOC. The percussion is never right on a BOC fake.
That being said, this is an amazing reimagination of the short 30-second clip and I would not be surprised in the slightest if this is practically what Acid Memories sounded like.

[Negamuse]

The tape speed movement seems a bit clean and heavy handed to be real. It's a brilliant imagining of what that song could be though, I'll absolutely give it that.

Like these things are always not real and that's the biggest thing against it really, they've done a brilliant job getting the sound.

[Riverbed0666]

Good point about the drums. It's unusual for a BOC to be this long and complex and also not have any drums

[niski]

It's a bit hard to tell with the EHX sample being so low quality. Has anyone ever tried to clean up the audio from it before? I don't think much can be done because it sounds like it came from a tape and then got compressed heavily to get uploaded.

Still wracking my brain trying to think of there's any way to prove legitimatcy outside of the band themselves confirming it's real. Or the person who made it coming forward.

I guess I could see this being a good recreation but dang it's really well done.

here's my cleanup of the duffy sample from a few years ago: https://vocaroo.com/1edn55oPFInK

[2020k]

cover

[dana]

cover

And... how do you know this?

[outhudd]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfqCxEk6fHY
To me at least, this sounds sooooooooo much like the original excerpt that I don't know how you could cover it this well.

Remember, for the past year, AI tools have been able to take an excerpt and 'extend' it, both forwards and backwards in time.

So someone doesn't even need to re-create/cover the original part any more, if someone wanted to make a convincing fake.

[Twentington]

All I can say is I enjoyed listening and enjoyed the guitar interlude at the end, very nice

[Riverbed0666]

Kind of beating a dead horse here, but I was looking at this song under spectrogram earlier and doing some comparisons. I'm not an expert, but I have some background in music production so I'll point out the things I thought were weird

This is the original duffy sample:
Duffy Original Snippet

Note that this original clip is pretty poor quality, there's a ton of upper frequencies missing, it's quiet and there's also a weird thumping noise in the background. I personally think it sounds like someone held up a mic to a loudspeaker to record this, and then it was compressed heavily during the upload to be able to fit on the website. My only real evidence is that's what it sounds like to me

And this is the song from the OP:
Duffy Full Version Maybe


Right out of the gate, I think it's really weird in the "full version" that you can see all the noise/tape hiss but it hits a wall and is cutoff completely at about 12KHz. I would expect that tape noise would be present basically in all frequencies. You can see this is the case with two other BOC songs:

Kiteracer 2:
Kiteracer 2

And R35TT A01 with the noise reduction removed (from this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbVbTD_1dGk):
R35TT A01 (Noise Reduction Removal)

In the two songs above, notice how the noise extends all the way up to about 19/20kHZ? That's in line with what I would expect from a normal tape recording.

So my question is, does anyone know if the fact that the noise gets cutoff around 12kHZ is indicative of a VST plugin being used? That would definitely point to this being a fake.

I lined up the two duffys based on that louder synth note that comes in at about 0:19 in the "full version". I then zoomed in on the upper frequencies of the drone sound that starts at the beginning of the "full version" (the wooooowwwoooowwoooowwwwoooowww noise) (great description). What stood out to me is that even though I think I lined up these two songs in time pretty good, the drone noise seems to be out of phase between the two songs. I would expect that if this was genuine, they would be in phase.

I tried to place a yellow marker to point this out. The peaks and valleys don't line up between the two duffys:
Peak with Yellow Marker

So my other question is, does anyone know if that kind of mismatch could be the result of tapes being copied over and over or any other degradations? Maybe someone holding up a mic to a loudspeaker to record the original duffy clip? I don't really know. Seeing how big the difference is, it makes me think that this "full version" could have been someone faking the song but not being able to get the LFO (or whatever mod) for that noise to line up with the original duffy sample exactly. I think it would be odd if this type of difference arose from tapes aging or being copied or some other physical recording medium weirdness.

I hope all that rambling made sense Let me know if it doesn't!

[luminousdusk]

Well every single tape machine unless tuned precisely will play tapes at different speeds, The add wow and flutter, mechanical wear and so on.

But the obvious fact some sounds are missing from the full version that are on the original is a straight giveaway

[niski]

hard cutoff at 12khz must mean encoded with a lossy format most likely mp3/mp4 (audio layer still mp3) either by youtube whilst processing the video or the uploader when they put it together into a video

[Flory]

Okay, to the credit of who ever created this track is very knowledgeable on BOC style and adhering to the existing snippit. Two things get to me nonetheless. One being the style of fade, practically no overlap unlike any other private BOC out there as well as a seemingly perfect fade in triangle like shape when looking at the fade in of the next song through Audacity in wavelength form.
Second would be that it's uploaded on some no name YouTube channel that only uploaded the one video on the same day the channel was created. Not buying it. Even the JC video on YouTube had some actual legitimacy with some visuals.

[outhudd]

"not buying it" has proved to be the correct response to these kinds of uploads and claims for I don't know how many years now.

[Negamuse]

hard cutoff at 12khz must mean encoded with a lossy format most likely mp3/mp4 (audio layer still mp3) either by youtube whilst processing the video or the uploader when they put it together into a video

Weren't the original uploaded snippets uploaded as RealAudio files? Something lossy as heck anyway iirc to make it low bandwidth for the ancient website. Makes sense they'd be hammered at high frequencies.

A full track if it were real ought to be ripped from a source that didn't have that kind of compression so yeah that's another strike against it being real

[cabal rose tv]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfqCxEk6fHY
To me at least, this sounds sooooooooo much like the original excerpt that I don't know how you could cover it this well.

Remember, for the past year, AI tools have been able to take an excerpt and 'extend' it, both forwards and backwards in time.

So someone doesn't even need to re-create/cover the original part any more, if someone wanted to make a convincing fake.

Maybe BOC knew this would happen, and thats why they've made those fake albums, and gave us snippets, titles, covers, etc., so when the time comes, we could use AI, to create those albums ourselves

Waiting for "wouldn't you want to be free" AI cover!