Finally getting around to fixing the mastering mistakes on my copy of The Jeff Beck Group's Rough and Ready quadraphonic mix on SACD, listening as I go.
This is another of my old dear faves, and was also the very first quad release I heard back in the day, as a teenage audio nerd hanging out at the local Team Electronics outlet. I couldn't afford a quad setup then (I could barely manage 2 speakers, never mind 4!), so the kid in me was excited to hear of the release of this and several other Beck quad mixes on SACD from Sony Music a couple of years ago.
Unfortunately, this title has some problems. First off, for some reason they added a center channel to the original 4-channel mix. This is really a head-scratcher, since as it turns out, this center channel is just a mono mix of the other 4 channels! This alone would make it pointless, but there's more:
Once I'd ripped the SACD to FLAC and loaded it into Audacity, I discovered that this concocted center channel had a distinctively hollow, comb-filtered sound, as if one of the individual channels in the mix had been time-delayed. Sure enough, it turns out that the left front channel was behind the others by just over 1 mS (and this error had of course occurred upstream from the center-channel mixdown).
The cure for this mess was to delay all the other channels (RF, LR, RR, LFE) by the same amount, to line them up with the LF. Then, I just deleted the flawed, useless fake center channel. It's no longer needed anyway. A 1 mS delay doesn't sound like much, but I was surprised by, for example, how much it was able to blur the front L-R stereo image, particularly the "phantom" center. With the delay corrected, the phantom center is back in tight focus. Even the front-to-rear relationship is noticeably more well-defined.
Last but not least, the first 2 tracks on the quad release were mastered at the wrong speed - 2 different wrong speeds to boot! After timing them against the same tracks on the stereo release, it was necessary to slow the first by about 3%, and the second by about 6%! (That one was particularly annoying, causing not only a 1/2 step in musical pitch but an obvious giddy-up in the tempo.)
Anyway, long story short: Now playing, Rough and Ready by The Jeff Beck Group, in all its original, funky '70s quadraphonic glory.
This is another of my old dear faves, and was also the very first quad release I heard back in the day, as a teenage audio nerd hanging out at the local Team Electronics outlet. I couldn't afford a quad setup then (I could barely manage 2 speakers, never mind 4!), so the kid in me was excited to hear of the release of this and several other Beck quad mixes on SACD from Sony Music a couple of years ago.
Unfortunately, this title has some problems. First off, for some reason they added a center channel to the original 4-channel mix. This is really a head-scratcher, since as it turns out, this center channel is just a mono mix of the other 4 channels! This alone would make it pointless, but there's more:
Once I'd ripped the SACD to FLAC and loaded it into Audacity, I discovered that this concocted center channel had a distinctively hollow, comb-filtered sound, as if one of the individual channels in the mix had been time-delayed. Sure enough, it turns out that the left front channel was behind the others by just over 1 mS (and this error had of course occurred upstream from the center-channel mixdown).
The cure for this mess was to delay all the other channels (RF, LR, RR, LFE) by the same amount, to line them up with the LF. Then, I just deleted the flawed, useless fake center channel. It's no longer needed anyway. A 1 mS delay doesn't sound like much, but I was surprised by, for example, how much it was able to blur the front L-R stereo image, particularly the "phantom" center. With the delay corrected, the phantom center is back in tight focus. Even the front-to-rear relationship is noticeably more well-defined.
Last but not least, the first 2 tracks on the quad release were mastered at the wrong speed - 2 different wrong speeds to boot! After timing them against the same tracks on the stereo release, it was necessary to slow the first by about 3%, and the second by about 6%! (That one was particularly annoying, causing not only a 1/2 step in musical pitch but an obvious giddy-up in the tempo.)
Anyway, long story short: Now playing, Rough and Ready by The Jeff Beck Group, in all its original, funky '70s quadraphonic glory.
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I don't think that's strange at all, Gyuri. Lots of music sounds best to me at certain times of the year. I think it goes back to when I first purchase a particular title. If I like it, it will be in heavy rotation for awhile, and I think it sort of "imprints" itself on that particular season.
For example, when I was a kid, mowing lawns during the summer to make some cash, I would come in after a long hot day and listen to a Yes LP (one summer it was Fragile, next it was Close to the Edge). This daily ritual went on for weeks (I really, really like those records). So even now, some 45 years later, when the weather gets nice and I catch the scent of fresh-cut grass drifting through the windows, I listen to those old Yes albums once again (now in glorious surround sound!), and life is good.
For example, when I was a kid, mowing lawns during the summer to make some cash, I would come in after a long hot day and listen to a Yes LP (one summer it was Fragile, next it was Close to the Edge). This daily ritual went on for weeks (I really, really like those records). So even now, some 45 years later, when the weather gets nice and I catch the scent of fresh-cut grass drifting through the windows, I listen to those old Yes albums once again (now in glorious surround sound!), and life is good.
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But still, I could have chosen from a thousand other records for this listening session, or something else from Suzanne Vega.
Though the couple of days are ticking in my mind, I should listen to something from Suzanne Vega.
Anyway, thanks for the tip, next will be:
Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans.
Though the couple of days are ticking in my mind, I should listen to something from Suzanne Vega.
Anyway, thanks for the tip, next will be:
Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans.
Swing Je T'aime and Joscho Stephan Perform Live At The Rialto Theater. The second song "Smile" is done particularly well and is my favorite one of the set. And singer Laura Gearhardt isn't to shabby either!
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