10 WORST 5.1/Quad Mixes - What's yours?

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Quad Linda

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What 5.1/Quad albums would you have mixed differently? Please be sure to indicate if it's one of your worst because you don't like the music. Please mention the format, since some have multiple mixes. Here's mine:

1- Greatest Hits - Tony Orlando & Dawn CD-4/Q8 Lots of re-channelled muck. What were they thinking?
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2- Concert in Japan - John Coltrane ALL LP's are QS OK, it's a great historic recording. It's from a mono radio broadcast. Gary said, "we'll sell more if we mix it for Quad." QUADRAMONIC!!
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3- Tapestry - Carole King Q8 This mix is so drenched in echo, that I prefer to listen in 2 ch!! The SACD 5.1 has a wonderful mix and I love it. The music is fantastic. This mix is truly painful to listen to.
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4- Tea for the Tillerman Q8 - Cat Stevens Like many of the &M Quad titles issued early on, it's Quasi-Quad.
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5- Teaser & the Firecat Q8 - Cat Stevens More Quasi-Quad
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6- Catch Bull at Four Q8 - Cat Stevens Ditto
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7- Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass Greatest Hits Q8 More of the same
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8- Sergio Mendes & Brazil '66 Greatest Hits Q8 Quasi - Quad revisited
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9- Wes Montgomery's Greatest Hits Q8 The CD-4 was cancelled, I wonder why? lol!!
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I once was given a mix of a Daft Punk album that seems to be a retail mix that has to be the absolute worst dreck I've ever heard, but I've never heard it mentioned here so I actually question its authenticity.

Other than that, what crosses over from "meh" status into truly bad?

Both Bowie's STS and Ziggy mixes
Rush's "Signals" and "Fly By Night"
The Doors' S/T
Queensryche's "Empire"
Oasis "What's the Story, Morning Glory"

Can't think of much else. Too many mixes fall right in the middle.
 
i guess would be much easier to list good mixes so remaining just automatically will fall in the category bad ones :)
 
10- Night Calls - Joe Cocker DTS CD Not much of a mix
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Two also rans:

Kind of Blue - Miles Davis SACD 5.1 & DVD-V Dual Disc They played it back and placed speakers where the mikes were in the same studio it was recorded in. Get the SACD for hi-res. They should have just released it as 2 ch and 3ch.
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Time Out - Dave Brubeck SACD 5.1 Done in exactly the same manner as Miles' Kind of Blue.
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(In no particular order)

1. Funkadelic - Cosmic Slop Q8 Mostly rechannelled dreck. I think 1 or 2 songs are actually from multitrack and they're mixed similarly to the rechannelled songs to maintain continuity.

2. The Ohio Players - Ecstacy Q8 Hmmm, the other Westbound Quad. Stereo all the way through. Dry up front, mild echo/reverb in the rear. Why bother?

3. Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic Q8 Quad so tight, it can only be measured by special equipment.

4. The Guess Who - Artificial Paradise Q8 Very tight almost double stereo with heavy reverb. Virtually unlistenable.

5. The Guess Who - Flavours Double Stereo

6. The Guess Who - Power in the Music Double Stereo

7. The Guess Who - Rockin' So tight, it might as well be Double Stereo.

8. The Guess Who #10. Oh for fucks sakes we almost had it!! ALMOST a good, discrete mix like B.O. vII and Road Food, but they decided to put both guitars in the right channels and Burt's keyboards in both lefts. So you get great separation on the rights with different guitars front and back; but even if they did double-mic Burt's piano, it still almost sounds like mono out of the left. Wonky soundfield applies. And it's NOT a channel location error as drums are 95% in the front and just slightly audible in the back. Ugh.... so close!

9. Janis Joplin - Pearl Q8 An early mix that unfortunately suffers from incoherance. They'd rather have put a track here, a track there all willy-nilly without any regard to logic. Re: the drum kit. Overhead mic in FL, Hi-Hat FR, Kicker BR, Snare BL. The whole kit in general gets lost once other instruments kick in. The Loggins & Messina Q8 does this too and I just don't really like it. Mixes need focus. Mixing the drums discretely across the front is the way to go. Kicker up the middle. Snare to one side, hi-hat/cymbals the other and fatten up the overheads into a nice, wide, room-filling fat mono. Just lovely.
(It's not the worst mind you, but it bothers me and keeps me from listening to what could've been a Quad coup de gras)

10. Bachman-Turner Overdrive Four Wheel Drive. Recorded on Dolby 24-track. And this becomes the issue when you try to mix 24-track into Quad. You have so much going on that things begin to overlap and the whole soundfield collapses into essentially, mono. Having 5 or 6 drum tracks to play with is fun, but unless you've baffled and/or mic them correctly, you get so much leakage it just falls apart.
 
I would think that there will be at least 10 'Silverline' fake 5.1s (Anything with King Buiscuit in the title or recorded in the 60s) which would be included which is a shame because for one or two they got it very right
 
I would think that there will be at least 10 'Silverline' fake 5.1s

i think they have done more harm to DVDA format, than help. they were good in supplying market by DVDA.
no one else have filled shelves so good as they did but there are big chance that some folks was turned off
of this format, when first introduction to surround was their pop titles.
 
I would think that there will be at least 10 'Silverline' fake 5.1s (Anything with King Buiscuit in the title or recorded in the 60s) which would be included which is a shame because for one or two they got it very right

Which reminds me to add Living Colour's "Collideoscope" to my list!
 
It really doesn't seem fair to list Silverline titles because we all know that they are for the most part horrible. They should be legit label releases. I will start listening.
 
It really doesn't seem fair to list Silverline titles because we all know that they are for the most part horrible. They should be legit label releases. I will start listening.

Haha.. They are horrible! The only exceptions I've got are the Silverline Blondie DualDisc & Motörhead DVDA are both great mixes and fidelity! If you don't own them already (fearing the curse of Silverline!) i'd say get them. They're both much better than I was dreading when I got them very cheaply..!!
 
i think they have done more harm to DVDA format, than help. they were good in supplying market by DVDA.
no one else have filled shelves so good as they did but there are big chance that some folks was turned off
of this format, when first introduction to surround was their pop titles.

Totally agree with you Otto! Silverline helped mortally wound a potentially wonderful format that was already practically dying :(

You raise a very valid point.. Can you imagine if Silverline was your first/only experience of DVDA/Hi-Res/surround music!?
You'd think it was a steaming pile of doo-doo's..!!!
 
a potentially wonderful format that was already practically dying :(

from official commercial point of view - perhaps.
in fact, not really "dying", but abandoned by major labels and instead was picked up by amateurs as
most advanced and convenient for preservation, duplication and usage.
actually SACD had same (or even worst) fate. life support were mainly received thanx to believe in
it's own "unbreakable" status, either by hardware or software, thus safeguarded against piracy.
oh well, not anymore as we know. albeit now internet filled by homebrew SACD-R with use audio sources
other than official SACDs, it's still way behind DVDAs due to format's and hardware limitation.
 
I think it's fair to say the US Capitol Q8's of Pink Floyd's DSOTM and AHM were horrible poorly decoded SQ mixes. They sound nothing like the actual original discrete quad mixes.

A_L
 
Weren't Q8's supposed to be discrete? These tapes WERE DISCRETE. They were discrete transfers from decoded SQ sources!! :mad:@: Only the hammerheads at Capitol could have brought you such a mess! :howl
I think it's fair to say the US Capitol Q8's of Pink Floyd's DSOTM and AHM were horrible poorly decoded SQ mixes. They sound nothing like the actual original discrete quad mixes.

A_L
 
That paul simon mix is really bad. The wallflowers dvda also sucked (sorry I forget the titles). I was dissappointed with alice cooper's billion dollar babies, but that was a little better than bowie's ziggy disaster. Rush's signals is up there as one of the worst I've heard. Ted nugent's free for all blows, as does beach boys pet sounds. Most live mixes are also bad because someone somewhere decided that 5.1 live has to mean only crowd noise and maybe ambience if you're lucky in the rears.
 
Rush - Snakes and Arrows - Prefer the stereo - just sounds flat....
Dave Brubeck - Time Out - As above....
The Doors - The Doors - Do a proper Surround mix (like the Best Of)
Rob Thomas - ...Something To Be - Way to low volume in the rears, and not much happening back there...
Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue
Snora Jones - Come Away With Me - Just a boring mix (P.S. - I actually like the music)
Genesis - Wind and Wuthering - Why oh why did Nick mix the cymbals in all channels? :mad:@: He did seem to get a bit better with his later mixes...
Neil Young - Harvest - just a weird (unbalanced) mix....

These may be controversial......
Crowded House - I hate the mix on Don't Dream Its Over... the vocals in the rear don't seem integrated....
Elton John - GBYBR - This just sounds harsh and horrible.... I know its probably the original recording, but to me its unlistenable. All other EJ discs are great, but this - yuck.....
 
Rush - Snakes and Arrows - Prefer the stereo - just sounds flat....
Dave Brubeck - Time Out - As above....
The Doors - The Doors - Do a proper Surround mix (like the Best Of)
Rob Thomas - ...Something To Be - Way to low volume in the rears, and not much happening back there...
Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue
Snora Jones - Come Away With Me - Just a boring mix (P.S. - I actually like the music)
Genesis - Wind and Wuthering - Why oh why did Nick mix the cymbals in all channels? :mad:@: He did seem to get a bit better with his later mixes...
Neil Young - Harvest - just a weird (unbalanced) mix....

These may be controversial......
Crowded House - I hate the mix on Don't Dream Its Over... the vocals in the rear don't seem integrated....
Elton John - GBYBR - This just sounds harsh and horrible.... I know its probably the original recording, but to me its unlistenable. All other EJ discs are great, but this - yuck.....

Yes, GYBR is, I agree, most likely a bright recording in the first place. I've heard so many different mixes & masterings of that album over the years and all that I've heard, bar the MFSL CD are over-bright sounding. I still love the 5.1 mix as it made an album I'd played to death sound exciting again!

The other EJ classic years (70-76) albums that could be accused of being too bright are "Caribou" and "Blue Moves".
Only my original Ray Staff mastered DJM LP of Caribou doesn't have too much top end energy, imo. Even the first DJM CD pressing of it is too bright and the Rocket '95 remaster.. yuck! So I think it's inherent in at least that recording too and Ray tamed Caribou for vinyl just right back in the day. As for BM, the first Phonogram CD is particularly harsh, yet dead-sounding. The original UK LP however is superb, so that's a mastering problem as opposed to the recording, I think.

The rest of that period of Elton's albums (especially the first press DJM CDs) are super dynamic and as smooth as baby's bums!
 
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