The O'Jays' Ship Ahoy: Defective Multichannel Layer?

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sjcorne

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I finally scored a copy of this disc last week (not cheap) and was ecstatic. Not an easy title to obtain these days. I gave it a quick spin when it came and was absolutely blown away by how good the title track sounded. Seriously, this may be one of the best SACDs ever.

I then proceeded to rip the disc and noticed it would always freeze in the middle of track 5. I tried first tried ripping separate multichannel .DSF files and then the whole ISO image. Both the SACD_Extract and ISO2DSD programs failed to successfully rip it.

I then tried it to play it directly on both my SACD players (Denon DBP-2012UDCI and Sony DVP CX985V). Tracks 5-7 would not play in multichannel, yet the stereo layer is perfectly playable. Seems I'll unfortunately have to return it...

Has anyone else had problems with this disc? I couldn't find anything here or on SHF.
 
I finally scored a copy of this disc last week (not cheap) and was ecstatic. Not an easy title to obtain these days. I gave it a quick spin when it came and was absolutely blown away by how good the title track sounded. Seriously, this may be one of the best SACDs ever.

I then proceeded to rip the disc and noticed it would always freeze in the middle of track 5. I tried first tried ripping separate multichannel .DSF files and then the whole ISO image. Both the SACD_Extract and ISO2DSD programs failed to successfully rip it.

I then tried it to play it directly on both my SACD players (Denon DBP-2012UDCI and Sony DVP CX985V). Tracks 5-7 would not play in multichannel, yet the stereo layer is perfectly playable. Seems I'll unfortunately have to return it...

Has anyone else had problems with this disc? I couldn't find anything here or on SHF.

I donā€™t recall having any issues with mine; Iā€™ll check it out but it will have to be tomorrow. When you say tracks 5-7 do you mean off the disc or from the dsf files?
 
Iā€™m wondering if certain machines start to have tracking problems with their lasers as they age? What machine are you ripping with. Might try a different unit if you have one.
 
Iā€™m wondering if certain machines start to have tracking problems with their lasers as they age? What machine are you ripping with. Might try a different unit if you have one.

Perhaps, but the main issue is that those tracks donā€™t play off the disc with any of my players. Have yet to see a disc that the massive Sony changer couldnā€™t play.
 
Yeah, sounds like funky disc, real shame if so, expensive little bastards. I payed up big for mine also maybe 5-6 years ago:mad:

At least itā€™s refundable. This is one of those discs thatā€™s totally worth the big bucks though. Iā€™ll get another one, whatever it takes...
 
I do know the one I have plays fine on both my Denon 3910 & the Oppo 205. And itā€™s a great sounding title, worth paying up for, but it still stings a little. I ā€˜ll also check my pile of overflow if I have an extra copy but I doubt it. If so Iā€™ll let you know.
 
You might find this post helpful from steelydave from the Polls section for this title:

So I converted my rip of this disc to PCM and tore it apart in Nuendo, expecting it to be a mess like the Isley Brothers 3+3 SACD. Just to recap for anyone who didn't read my thread about it, the Isley Brothers disc not only had the rear left & right channels swapped, but the channel levels (both left to right and front to back) were unbalanced on every single track, and by different amounts on each track. Not only that, spectral analysis revealed that frequency response cut off abruptly around 20kHz, suggesting it was sourced from a 44.1kHz PCM master.

The reason I wanted to look at the O'Jays disc is that I was pretty sure that the rear left and right channels were swapped, due to the intro for 'For The Love Of Money' panning in a 'Z' pattern instead of a circle, like most quadraphonic pans did. Sure enough, listening to the channels from every song on headphones bore this theory out, the right and left rear channels are swapped. Here's my proof - these are the things that align properly after you do the rear channel swap:

(FL = front left, FR = front right, SL = surround left, SR = Surround Right)

Track 1: bass guitar FL & SL
Track 2: Intro sound effects FL & SL and FR & SR, bass guitar FL & SL
Track 3: Backing vox FL & SL during outro
Track 4: Low backing vocalist FL & SL
Track 5: Bass guitar intro circles instead of zig-zags, outro vocals, same thing
Track 6: Bass drum & backing vox FL & SL
Track 7: Low backing vocalist FL & SL
Track 8: Backing vocals FL & SL

Pretty conclusive I think - this was originally released on SQ vinyl (in addition to Q8) and they pretty much never did diagonal pans because (aside from sounding weird) they would give SQ encoders siezures.

So that's the bad news. The good news is that both the stereo and surround layers are both high resolution. I don't think it's possible to tell if this release originated in PCM or not but if it did, it was at least 96/24 because there's high frequency content in both the stereo and surround layers above 30kHz. Additionally, all of the channel balances, both between left and right speakers, and front and back are absolutely bang on, I didn't have to tweak anything.

If you're going to do what I did and convert the SACD to PCM and re-author as 5.1 FLAC, you can delete the center channel. I found the front soundstage was greatly improved by eliminating it - it's just a mono sum of the front left and front right speakers and it sort of 'smears' the front soundfield just by virtue of existing. I kept the LFE track because I wasn't sure if they 'shaved off' any of the bass in the LFE track from the main speakers, and I didn't want to mess with it for ages trying to figure it out, because to my ears it sounds good as-is.

An interesting note: I dynamic range analysis on my final FLACs (after the rear channel swap and the center channel deletion) using the DR meter in foobar and the results were interesting: every track was reduced by 1dB versus the analysis for the untouched SACD. I don't know if it was the removal of the center channel, or the fact that I worked at 88.2kHz/24bit thereby removing a lot of the ultrasonic noise that exists starting around 40kHz) that would account from this, but it would be interesting to determine if the ultrasonic noise inherent in DSD artificially inflates dynamic range readings.


Having said all that, I agree with fredblue about how amazing this recording is, especially with the rear channels fixed. It's truly an example of how good old quad masters can sound in modern digital formats. I just wish the labels that are sitting on all these amazing recordings realize soon that they need to sell these pumpkins, because eventually it's going to be November 1st and nobody's going to want them any more.

I'm tempted now to look at some of the other quad to SACD discs that Sony did like Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow and the Herbie Hancock Headhunters album. Are there any others that I'm missing?
 
I recanted my findings on the diagonal instrument placement being wrong in a thread somewhere a couple of years ago, after speaking to one of the Sigma engineers who worked on some of these quad mixes. In a nutshell he told me that the diagonal placement (ie the same sound in FL & SR or FR & SL) was to put an instrument or voice in 'phantom center' in the quad mix (ie where the listener was sitting). The normal way to do this would be to put the same sound in all 4 speakers, but SQ mixing rules dictated that you couldn't have the same sound in both rear speakers because rear phantom center cancelled out during SQ encoding, and also according to him, even more critically, if you put something phantom rear center and then SQ encoded it, when you tried to cut the vinyl it would create pure vertical modulation which would cause the needle to jump right out of the LP groove.

It sounds to me like there's a physical defect with the disc sjcorne bought, as many people (including myself) have ripped this disc. SACDs basically being DVD discs, they're subject to all the same pitfalls as any other optical disc, from scratching to "laser rot" to simply being a defective pressing.
 
Yeah, sounds like funky disc, real shame if so, expensive little bastards. I payed up big for mine also maybe 5-6 years ago:mad:

I have one of the original copies of Ship Ahoy on Surround SACD when it was first released.
Works fine here on SACD players. And it was no problem to copy the DSD files from it.
 
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