Rick Wakeman - Six Wives and Arthur

Needledrop? Ugh....of course I find this out after I order it and it ships. What a fucking waste of time...they should put a disclaimer on the packaging so that people can make an informed decision on whether or not to purchase it, I think it is reasonable to expect a release to be sourced from a master unless otherwise stated. Sure, needledrop may be great for those that don't have the equipment if the master truly is lost (which I somehow doubt), but I have no need for someone else's needledrop of this.

The Rang said:

The quad is a needle drop?!
What about the 2.0.....
This set just moved onto my "skip it" list

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They couldn't find the quad master. Many masters, quad and stereo, are missing across the industry. It's a CD-4 transfer or nothing for the quad.

I believe the stereo is a new 24/96 transfer of the stereo master tape, so should be much cleaner.

Thanks for the info. I have a query, and sorry if I missed this eleswhere in these posts, but Six Wives was an SQ release on A&M in the USA and CD-4 from Japan (with far superior vinyl). Arthur was CD-4 in both countries as I recall. So, if Six Wives is from vinyl and SQ, I wonder what equipment was used? I have the Japanese CD-4 but no set up currently able to play it. Just curious as I have ordered both not realising they are vinyl rather than master tape sources. I will be very interested in the sound quality.

omega4 said:

Thanks for the info. I have a query, and sorry if I missed this eleswhere in these posts, but Six Wives was an SQ release on A&M in the USA and CD-4 from Japan (with far superior vinyl). Arthur was CD-4 in both countries as I recall. So, if Six Wives is from vinyl and SQ, I wonder what equipment was used? I have the Japanese CD-4 but no set up currently able to play it. Just curious as I have ordered both not realising they are vinyl rather than master tape sources. I will be very interested in the sound quality.

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I'm not sure what the Six Wives quad is, nor is Oxford Dickie as they dropped him out of the loop for communications after he'd done his bit. They may or may not have found the quad master tape. If someone has the Six Wives and believes the quad sounds like vinyl, then I'll post again saying what it is. But I don't want to put out speculation.

When it comes to archive releases I'm interested in, I'd prefer a decent needledrop to nothing.

Is Six Wives also from vinyl? God, I hope not....ugh, I feel scammed now.

ArmyOfQuad said:

Is Six Wives also from vinyl? God, I hope not....ugh, I feel scammed now.

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Don't know, and nor does OD. They stopped talking to him (typically record company attitude).

Owen Smith said:

I'm not sure what the Six Wives quad is, nor is Oxford Dickie as they dropped him out of the loop for communications after he'd done his bit. They may or may not have found the quad master tape. If someone has the Six Wives and believes the quad sounds like vinyl, then I'll post again saying what it is. But I don't want to put out speculation.

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I see you've confimed OD provided a CD-4 rip/decode of Myths and Legends of King Arthur...

I know its unconfirmed whats actually been released, but did he provide a CD-4 rip/decode of Six Wives or did he provide a SQ decode?

fredblue said:

You always get everything first in New Zealand!

Nope! I pre-ordered them as soon as rtbluray posted the Amazon UK links, which I imagine was same time as you guys, if not before!

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I pre ordered both from Amazon too. My Six Wives arrived today, and my Arthur is on the way. I've just listened to the Six Wives quad mix, and I love it. I had forgotten how good the music was. The quad mix - lots happening all around, not gimmicky, and I didn't detect any signs of it being a needledrop. Its possible though that I may have missed telling sounds, due to them being drowned out by my curses as I struggled to remove the bloody "deluxe" adhesive!

Needledrop quad on a 2015 release? How disappointing. I heard a rumour once that Six Wives was released as a quad reel in Japan - is there any truth to that?

I believe it's likely the Japanese King releases were all released on reel, I've heard that said, but they are extremely rare, and I'd hesitate to state it as fact until I saw solid evidence. We do know Carpenters Now & Then and Quincy Jones - You've Got It Bad Girl reels exist, and a Carpenters Singles quad reel conversion floats around.

Mike the Fish said:

When it comes to archive releases I'm interested in, I'd prefer a decent needledrop to nothing.

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Indeed. If the quad masters can't be found then it's this or nothing. And while a few can play the legacy quad formats or convert them themselves, the vast majority can't including myself. Would people rather record companies stopped includind quad on these releases?

Owen Smith said:

Indeed. If the quad masters can't be found then it's this or nothing. And while a few can play the legacy quad formats or convert them themselves, the vast majority can't including myself. Would people rather record companies stopped includind quad on these releases?

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I agree.. I'm happy to still have an official release of this. I don't have a CD-4 demodulator (or any previous version of the album!)

However the record company should make it clear what their source is for a release - as part of the (pre) release information they provide. Then people can make their own decision on whether to purchase it (or not).

LizardKing said:

I see you've confimed OD provided a CD-4 rip/decode of Myths and Legends of King Arthur...

I know its unconfirmed whats actually been released, but did he provide a CD-4 rip/decode of Six Wives or did he provide a SQ decode?

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OK, OD ripped the vinyl SQ at 24/96 (they asked for 24/96) and did an SQ/II decode. Actually it was SQ/II-and-a-bit, a process that never saw releases on his blog. The shame is this happened a few weeks before SQ/III and then SQ/Phoenix were developed, with Phoenix in particular producing amazing results.

OD also tried an SQ decode of the CD but found it considerably worse in quality, which is not his usual finding as he usually prefers CD transfers.

However, what is not clear is whether the quad master tape was found. He was told several times that various tapes had been found, and then no they hadn't the tape was something else confusingly labelled, etc. So Six Wives is either a quad master tape transfer, or an SQ/II+ vinyl decode as described above. I'm hoping people that know what to listen for can tell, but note the vinyl was in very good condition and OD regularly does vinyl decodes so good I can't tell they're from vinyl. So it may be very hard to spot unless you can spot the SQ rear channel bleed into the fronts (which SQ/Phoenix removes), but that would require knowing what the CD-4 or other discrete copy sounds like. Which is probably not common.

Owen Smith said:

Indeed. If the quad masters can't be found then it's this or nothing. And while a few can play the legacy quad formats or convert them themselves, the vast majority can't including myself. Would people rather record companies stopped includind quad on these releases?

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Agree with you there.. if the master tapes can't be found then what do you do.. Q4 would be the ideal substitute I guess.. but if that's not an option then a pristine CD-4 done justice has gotta be the next best thing.. just think, it could have been from Q8..

Of course, we'd all rather it was from master tapes but if the end results good and it gets more Quad mixes out there officially (and from all the chat about these two DVD-A's online it looks like they'll sell well.. I've noticed there is quite some interest) then that's got to be a good thing for us lot, imho..

The problem is that when you put out a release like this, it pretty much cancels the possibility of a release sourced from the actual masters if they do turn up. As far as the record company is concerned, these titles are now 'done' and even if the quad masters turned up in two years I highly doubt they'd re-do it for release again.

When masters are 'lost', unless they've been burned up in a vault fire they're not actually lost, the record company just doesn't have the time/money/patience to source them. These labels have warehouses of tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of various kinds of tapes, often poorly labelled, mislabelled, or with barcode stickers falling off so spending money to pay someone to look through everything for a release that will likely sell in the thousands of copies just isn't worth it for them. I can almost guarantee you that the Wakeman masters are sitting in a vault in the US somewhere and left hand (Universal US) doesn't know what right hand (Universal US) is doing.

We all know OD's work is high quality, any flaws probably can't be helped. I am glad to see OD get some recognition for his work, outside of quad forums. I hope they didn't get it for free, OD deserves to get paid for doing work.

I read a review of Six Wives in The Times praising the release, and also said that the release includes a Quadraphonic version (great publicity I thought), then said it was useless ....unless you had 4 speakers! Anyway I'd rather have Quad transfers from vinyl than none al all - it'll preserve my SQ vinyl of Six Wives if nothing else. Its shame there were no Quad masters found, but having read lots of threads, I also think that as OD did the decodes of both albums it will be well done.

DuncanS said:

I read a review of Six Wives in The Times praising the release, and also said that the release includes a Quadraphonic version (great publicity I thought), then said it was useless ....unless you had 4 speakers! Anyway I'd rather have Quad transfers from vinyl than none al all - it'll preserve my SQ vinyl of Six Wives if nothing else. Its shame there were no Quad masters found, but having read lots of threads, I also think that as OD did the decodes of both albums it will be well done.

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It's not clear whether the quad master for Six Wives was found or not. Hopefully people will be able to listen and tell.

I didn't buy Six Wives myself because I don't like the music, it's just crazy insane noise in all four speakers all the time to me (OD once describe it as "four to the wall"). King Arthur I hadn't heard, so I bought it and fortunately I rather like it.

My Amazon UK pre-orders of both arrived, literally just this minute. Guess what I will be doing for the next hour and a half? :banana: