Yeah--if that's the album it was promoting, then it pretty much has to be, right?
sjcorne claims there's more going on in the discrete version of that mix than most of us give it credit for, and he's such a careful listener that I have to believe him. Still, I think almost everyone agrees that it's the least interesting of the three SD quads.
Thank you for the kind words.
Pretzel's quad has always fascinated me personally, as it does seem to come up here from time to time, and it's still kind of a mystery why the mix is so conservative.
All 3 Steely quads were done by Roger Nichols, who famously shared Beck & Fagen's obsessive nature in the studio. I personally enjoy Nichols' quad mixes of
Can't Buy A Thrill and
Countdown To Ecstasy as they are very four-corner discrete, but they do feature many outtakes, extended takes, and overall differences to the stereo mixes. I assume Becker & Fagen were not involved with the quad mixes as they probably wouldn't have allowed this (they were involved with Elliot Scheiner's later 5.1 mixes which are extremely faithful to the stereo), and I have to wonder why Nichols would mix them this way as he was involved with the original recording and would have an intimate understanding of how they sound.
i found the QS LP is.. kinda weird surround in places and virtually non-existent Quad in others, when decoded!
Agreed. Nichols' quad mix of
Pretzel Logic is entirely strange because it has a totally different style of mix: instead of being four-corner discrete, it's more like everything instrument is audible in every channel, but sometimes something will be slightly louder in the front instead of the rear or vice versa. So, it's a mystery to me why: 1) Nichols would suddenly change his quad mixing philosophy after doing 2 albums by the same group, and 2) why mix it this way knowing it would never work with the QS matrix decoding. The QS LP is pretty much a mess in my opinion: through both my QSD-2 (single band variomatrix decode) and surround master "Involve" mode it sounds sort of like everything is everywhere except it has this lopsided effect, like it's sometimes louder in the rears or on one side-wall versus the other.
Thanks to humprof, I did get to hear the discrete version recently. The conversion he provided has one side sourced from an ABC/GRT Q8 duplication master (these have popped up on eBay from time to time, for ABC quad albums such as Three Dog Night's
Hard Labor and others), and the other side from a Q8. While it's not as much of a mess as the QS LP, I still don't really get what Nichols was going for. It is definitely a remix from the multis, just incredibly unimaginative. I bet Elliot Scheiner's 5.1 version rights all these wrongs and suits the material in perfectly tasteful but aggressive way...I just think it would be nice to have the opportunity to hear it and confirm that for myself.
I took a look at the discrete versions of four songs on this EP in audacity. My overall conclusions about this mix haven't really changed, but if anyone's interested here's some analysis.
"With A Gun"
I listened to both the fronts and the rears separately, as well as the fronts panned left and the rears panned right. It seems like everything is audible in every channel, BUT the acoustic strumming is biased toward the fronts and the drums are slightly biased to the rears. The vocals seem to drift a bit toward the rears as well. The guitar bits during the chorus ("With a Gun", duh duh duh) are mostly in the front with some echo in the rear.
"Rikki Don't Lose That Number"
The opening sound effects are everywhere, but louder in the rears (specifically left rear) as the waveform shows. This one
really sounds like double stereo, but with some EQ trickery such as more high end in the fronts and more low end in the rears.
"Barrytown"
Drums appear to be louder in the fronts, perhaps due more to EQ manipulation (the fronts clearly have more hiss than the rears on this track). Vocals also much louder in fronts. It sounds sort of like the guitar parts are slightly separated front and rear, with the acoustic strumming up front and the underlying electric supporting part in the rear, but it's all kind of mish-mashed together.
"Pretzel Logic"
My favorite track on the album. Love the jazzy shuffle feeling and the time-travel concept. As you can see in the waveform, it starts off left front with some bleed to the other channels. It sounds like keyboard stays left front, guitar right front. Listening to the rears only I hear both at lower volume, but the drums and vocals are more prominent. When the guitar fills kick in at the second verse ("I have never met Napoleon..."), they seem biased toward the rear channels, but still exist at a lower volume in the front.
This probably wasn't the right thread for all this, but my overall feeling on this one is stick to the stereo until UMG decides to release the Scheiner mix.
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