Steven Wilson Will In Absentia or Deadwing be Reissued?

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I wonder if you are using a receiver with "Phase Matching Bass" and therefore it is compensating already.

Interesting thought! Never heard of that feature. I googled it and it seems this is something Onkyo receivers offer - but mine's Yamaha.

I'm happy about the way In Absentia sounds anyway - I realize it could be better, but it's always been okay to my ears. :) The mix and content are awesome, so that makes up for it.
 
Interesting thought! Never heard of that feature. I googled it and it seems this is something Onkyo receivers offer - but mine's Yamaha.

I'm happy about the way In Absentia sounds anyway - I realize it could be better, but it's always been okay to my ears. :) The mix and content are awesome, so that makes up for it.

I've also got a Yamaha Receiver! I thought maybe my lack of a perceived bass improvement was just my ears (still could be, lol), but maybe it has something to do with the Yamaha Receivers? I'm sure I made the adjustment correctly because the bass visually improved markedly on my spectrum analyzer after the adjustment. I have my bass management set to "large speakers".

Anyway, I'm happy with the way the mix sounds either way:)
 
This is probably as good a time as any to spread the word that the center channel on the existing In Absentia surround mix is unintentionally phase inverted! You can easily correct this in software like Audacity and it sounds _SO_ much better, especially since there is quite a bit of bass present in the center channel that no longer cancels out with the sub. Credit goes to "dtfreak05" for the discovery, thanks!

Reference:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...ferent-dvd-a-masterings.287258/#post-14266197

Not only that it looks to me like the LFE channel is both out of phase and delayed by a few samples. Not as easy to fix, ugh.
 
It's amazing to me that you were able to hear that the center was out of phase. I assumed the only way you'd be able to determine that is by looking at the waveforms. Impressive!

Haha, thanks man. I've been into music production and audio engineering for a very long time now and I guess I've developed quite an ear for such issues.

The same happened to me when I listened to the aforementioned Opeth album, which I had to turn off immediately because it was a truly horrible experience with the phase problems. I was actually glad when I found out that I wasn't the only one and that the record company was willing to sort out the issue.

Another example would be the original DVD-A release of R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People. There are 2 or 3 tracks with some serious phase problems. I can specifically remember track 2, which also features a weird editing error / jump at the the very beginning. It's mostly the vocals being affected, making Michael Stipe sound like he's singing through a can. To this day I'm very sure that is not the way it was supposed to sound.

It's almost ridiculous how many of these so called high end / high resolution audio releases are bogged by audio issues. Makes me wonder if there is any quality control happening these days before shipping the items out to well paying customers.
 
Maybe a dumb question but did you double click the center channel in Audacity? To my knowledge you have to do so to select a single channel. :couch

Yes, be careful! In Audacity it's very easy to look like you've only selected one channel when you're doing the inverting (or any other function), but actually invert the whole file.

Keep a close eye on the other channels when you do the inversion to make sure they don't change! After the inversion, only the center channel should be selected (in dark gray).
 
Another example would be the original DVD-A release of R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People. There are 2 or 3 tracks with some serious phase problems. I can specifically remember track 2, which also features a weird editing error / jump at the the very beginning. It's mostly the vocals being affected, making Michael Stipe sound like he's singing through a can. To this day I'm very sure that is not the way it was supposed to sound.

Automatic for the People is one of my favorite albums ever. The weird skip/error at the beginning of Try Not to Breathe (track 2) in the 5.1 mix has always bugged me, and I know what you mean about the narrow center channel "singing through a can" effect (which is present on the stereo mix, but nowhere near this extent). I didn't know about the phase problems, though. Yet another reason to look forward to the recent Dolby Atmos re-mix in the 25th anniversary edition! (Which is my upcoming Xmas present.) :D

Back to the point, is there a reason surround mixes seem to have such a higher frequency of errors like this? Is it lack of experience? Time and/or budget? Care? Or do stereo mixes have just as many issues, but are perhaps dissected less studiously by listeners?
 
Without Audacity is it possible to make this change?

Yes Robert. You can do it with ffmpeg using a command line or bat file. (BTW: ffmpeg runs on just about any OS)

Can you run Windows? I can post a bat file that will do it or I could add the function to my Music Media Helper app (Windows only) pretty easily. (Eventually I'd like to make a Mac OS version of some tools but that won't be all that soon)
 
Here's the Windows .bat (command file) to invert phase in centre channel for all 6 Ch (5.1) FLAC files in a folder:

Download ffmpeg.exe and whack it in a new folder on your desktop (named 'ffmpeg' for example)

Download from: https://www.ffmpeg.org/

Create a new text file

Copy this in:

IF NOT EXIST "Output" MD "Output"

for %%A IN (*.flac) do (
"C:\Users\[YOURUSERNAME]\Desktop\[YOURFFMPEGFOLDERNAME]\ffmpeg.exe" -i "%%~nA.flac" -af "aeval='val(0)|val(1)|-val(2)|val(3)|val(4)|val(5)':c=same" "Output\%%A"
)
pause



NOTE: Change '[YOURUSERNAME]' and '[YOURFFMPEGFOLDERNAME]' above into the correct folder names for your PC

Save the new file as: "Invert Phase Centre For 6Ch Flac.bat'

---------
EDIT: Here's my bat file to download: Please remember to change my folder names to yours (username & ffpeg folder name):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GWYTvSGZo25HVETyGAtfiwoNd9oKs4Ei/view?usp=sharing
---------

Copy the new bat to same folder as your original FLACs you want to change

Run: Invert Phase Centre For 6Ch Flac.bat

This creates a new folder under your FLAC folder named 'Output' and then creates new flac files from each of original files by inverting the phase of the centre channel & copying the other channels into new files in 'Output' folder.

If you have WAV files then change the BAT file to use '.wav' extension instead of '.flac'

The new FLACs will not be tagged.

I'll add this to a new tool in Music Media Helper within next 24hrs. You can ten just use that to point the the files and it will change and re-tag the new files based on original tags.
 
I just uploaded a new Music Media Helper app (Windows only) adding:


  • A new option in the 'Remix' tool to Invert Phase on any channel(s) in 6Ch mix - For titles like Porcupine Tree - In Absentia (the centre channel)

View attachment 31479

This will also re-tag new inverted FLAC files based on original (source) flacs. There is an option to overwrite or create new in a sub-folder from source folder.

EDIT: I just posted another update that supports Phase Invert of any channel(s). (Originally this was hardcoded to invert on Centre Channel only). This feature currently only supports 6 channel (5.1 layout ) input files.
 
Hi folks,

Member wavelength kindly alerted me of this issue and I have brought it to Steven's attention. We are looking into it and it appears you are indeed correct!

I'll let you know when I have further info.
 
Not only that it looks to me like the LFE channel is both out of phase and delayed by a few samples. Not as easy to fix, ugh.

Indeed the LFE channel appears out of phase as well. Meaning that both the Center and LFE channels have inverted phase compared to the other channels.

As for the sample delay, could you point me to a part where it is easy to check?
 
Indeed the LFE channel appears out of phase as well. Meaning that both the Center and LFE channels have inverted phase compared to the other channels.

As for the sample delay, could you point me to a part where it is easy to check?

It was just a matter of matching the peaks where there was something that appeared common to the center and LFE, although there was one track I noticed a place where both channels had a hard start at the same time and the LFE was a little late. Looks to me shifted by about .003 seconds so probably not significant in any meaningful way.

Maybe try looking at 2:12.81 and 3:38.95 in Strip the Soul, or the very beginning of Chloroform.
 
It was just a matter of matching the peaks where there was something that appeared common to the center and LFE, although there was one track I noticed a place where both channels had a hard start at the same time and the LFE was a little late. Looks to me shifted by about .003 seconds so probably not significant in any meaningful way.

Maybe try looking at 2:12.81 and 3:38.95 in Strip the Soul, or the very beginning of Chloroform.

Thanks! I'm in the process of checking the released version with the original files. Will update later.
 
The above posts are what makes QQ such a great community. One member digs up an old post and before you know we have the instructiosn and tools to make it ourselves PLUS the artist himself is aware of the issues in time to correct for the upcoming re-issue.

:worthy

Thanks all!
 
Here's the Windows .bat (command file) to invert phase in centre channel for all 6 Ch (5.1) FLAC files in a folder:

Download ffmpeg.exe and whack it in a new folder on your desktop (named 'ffmpeg' for example)

Download from: https://www.ffmpeg.org/

Create a new text file

Copy this in:

IF NOT EXIST "Output" MD "Output"

for %%A IN (*.flac) do (
"C:\Users\[YOURUSERNAME]\Desktop\[YOURFFMPEGFOLDERNAME]\ffmpeg.exe" -i "%%~nA.flac" -af "aeval='val(0)|val(1)|-val(2)|val(3)|val(4)|val(5)':c=same" "Output\%%A"
)
pause



NOTE: Change '[YOURUSERNAME]' and '[YOURFFMPEGFOLDERNAME]' above into the correct folder names for your PC

Save the new file as: "Invert Phase Centre For 6Ch Flac.bat'

---------
EDIT: Here's my bat file to download: Please remember to change my folder names to yours (username & ffpeg folder name):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GWYTvSGZo25HVETyGAtfiwoNd9oKs4Ei/view?usp=sharing
---------

Copy the new bat to same folder as your original FLACs you want to change

Run: Invert Phase Centre For 6Ch Flac.bat

This creates a new folder under your FLAC folder named 'Output' and then creates new flac files from each of original files by inverting the phase of the centre channel & copying the other channels into new files in 'Output' folder.

If you have WAV files then change the BAT file to use '.wav' extension instead of '.flac'

The new FLACs will not be tagged.

I'll add this to a new tool in Music Media Helper within next 24hrs. You can ten just use that to point the the files and it will change and re-tag the new files based on original tags.

Thanks bro, will try the new version of Media Helper later today.
 
The above posts are what makes QQ such a great community. One member digs up an old post and before you know we have the instructiosn and tools to make it ourselves PLUS the artist himself is aware of the issues in time to correct for the upcoming re-issue.

:worthy

Thanks all!

Only a vinyl re-issue has been confirmed at this point. The 5.1 re-issue is not a certainty yet.
 
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