How Do Moody Blues Quads on SACD Rank?

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I'm not jsayers, but I'll give you my list right now:

1) "To Our Children's Children's Children"
2) "Days Of Future Passed"
3) "A Question of Balance"
4) "Seventh Sojourn"
5) "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour"
6) "On the Threshold of a Dream"
7) "In Search of the Lost Chord" (since it's stereo only)

Hope that helps! :)
 
As far as sound quality without regard to music, my ranking is:

1) On the Threshold of a Dream ("Lovely to See You" quad mix blows away the stereo mix. Tremendous dynamic range on "To Share Our Love" and "Never Comes the Day."
2) To Our Children's Children's Children (I would say that this one exhibits the largest improvement of the seven albums over the stereo version.)
3) A Question of Balance (With some songs, the bass is too low a volume in the mix.)
4) Seventh Sojourn (Could have done a better quad mix on "Lost in a Lost World," and "I'm Just a Singer"...Hayward guitar solo is too loud)
5) Days of Future Past (tie) (Need to juice up the surrounds on Nights in White Satin.")
5) Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (tie) (Disappointed somewhat as I expected the same level of sonic improvement as with TOCCC.)
7) In Search of the Lost Chord (As noted above, it's only available in stereo.)
 
How would you rank the core seven? I want to gradually collect all the Moody sacds, so it would be great to know what to get next!

The 1st 2 could both be my #1 favorite, but on the rest I had no trouble ranking them.

1. To Our Children's Children
2. On A Threshold Of A Dream
3. In Search Of The Lost Chord
4. Days Of Future Passed
5. A Question Of Balance"
6. Seventh Sojourn
7. Every Good Boy.
 
When I listen to "In Search Of The Lost Chord", since it wasn't in quad, I tend to play it back using DPLII and pretend it's in surround. For me, it sounds better and comes pretty darn close to surrounding me. :)
Yes, the SACD stereo sounds pretty darn good in synthesized 5.1 / 7.1. And I think that the song "Question" on Question of Balance sounds more satisfying playing the stereo SACD layer with PLIIx or Logic 7 rather than the quad mix. I like the quad version also, just not as much.

Wouldn't it be great to have the multichannel masters of all this stuff and come up with our own mixes? After making about 500 iterations, we'd finally be pleased with the results yet sick of hearing the stuff! LOL
 
Ah, I see this is now its own thread.
Very good.
I'm always torn at times between going OT to answer a question or help a fellow member a little or just staying OT and responding to the most relevant postsā€¦

But to get back to the subject of this new thread, all 6 of the Moodies surround SACDs have been a big part of my collection for the last five years, and I absolutely love all of them. Probably because I'm such a big fan of the music, but the Quad mixes are nicely done and are very discrete at times without being very gimmicky.
I definitely recommend them all to anyone who is interested. :)
 
I'm a big fan of Days of Future Passed. So I'd have to rate that # 1 on my Moody Blues Multichannel SACD list. The others follow. :)
 
I have a real hard time rating "The Classic 7even" in order of best for me. I just can't do it because they all have their moments.

Now, if "Long Distance Voyager" was released in surround?! No contest, baby!!! :51banana:
 
So far I only have the DTS disc and the SACD of Days of Future Passed (I alternate between the two as I like them both) so I cannot wait to hear the other four I really like (which I'll be ordering the SACDs of in two weeks' time):

To Our Childrenā€™s Children
Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
Question Of Balance
On The Threshold Of A Dream
 
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But to get back to the subject of this new thread, all 6 of the Moodies surround SACDs have been a big part of my collection for the last five years, and I absolutely love all of them. Probably because I'm such a big fan of the music, but the Quad mixes are nicely done and are very discrete at times without being very gimmicky.

I meant to ask those of you who have had the pleasure of hearing the Quad mixes before the SACDs were released: Is the sound drastically different, whether in a positive or negative way? What were you thoughts when you heard the SACDs for the first time?
 
I meant to ask those of you who have had the pleasure of hearing the Quad mixes before the SACDs were released: Is the sound drastically different, whether in a positive or negative way? What were you thoughts when you heard the SACDs for the first time?

You may find your answer if you perform a search on QQ for both the Quad and SACD versions. I seem to remember reading some commentary regarding the differences. One of them is regarding dynamic range on the SACD's vs the original Quads. :)

Speaking of which, I'd love to see all the Moody Blues albums mixed to 5.1. :)
 
I meant to ask those of you who have had the pleasure of hearing the Quad mixes before the SACDs were released: Is the sound drastically different, whether in a positive or negative way? What were you thoughts when you heard the SACDs for the first time?

I've never had the original quad LPs but as the title of this thread implies, the sacds are essentially the quads, with a somewhat pathetic attempt to add content in the center and LFE channels. The sound (of music) is barely noticeable in those channels so why did they bother? My own feeling is that the center and LFE actually impact the listening experience in a negative way. I always turn those 2 channels off when I listen to the sadcs.
 
I meant to ask those of you who have had the pleasure of hearing the Quad mixes before the SACDs were released: Is the sound drastically different, whether in a positive or negative way? What were you thoughts when you heard the SACDs for the first time?
From my experience the bass was much stronger on the quad reels. I always had to turn the bass down on all channels. I do really like all the SACD's though.
 
I don't have SACD (whatever that is) but the Childrens Children discreet version seems to be their nicest quad recording. It obviously was thought about as a quadraphonic release. Either that or the sound engineer was very good. But Days of Future past was my first purchased tape so it will always be my favorite.
As I may have asked before, does anyone else sometimes try a diamond speaker configuration instead of the FL - FR and RL - RR standard?
 
I don't have SACD (whatever that is) but the Childrens Children discreet version seems to be their nicest quad recording. It obviously was thought about as a quadraphonic release. Either that or the sound engineer was very good. But Days of Future past was my first purchased tape so it will always be my favorite.
As I may have asked before, does anyone else sometimes try a diamond speaker configuration instead of the FL - FR and RL - RR standard?

I haven't invested in DSD converters either. I don't think everyone in the world that has invested in high quality PCM converters (including every recording studio - and I'm not even aware of a DSD format DAW that exists) is going to be too interested in starting over with one of the pricier items in their system.

Anyhoo...

I have nice PCM digitized copies of the quad reels. They sound nice. The mixes are a little quirky sounding in that the albums are mixed like a classical production would be. That became their signature sound in a way. The quad mixes are well done and with the same aesthetic as the stereo mixes. In the period as opposed to sounding like a remix. Nothing super flashy or crazy with motion save a few things but nice separation and natural surround via mix placement. And just a ton of extended dynamic range from having twice the output channels to mix into.

My only complaint is there was no surround mix for ISOTLC (on their previous label)!


The only use of the 'diamond configuration' to my knowledge was live Pink Floyd shows. I don't believe any albums were mixed to that format for the surround mix. Including the 4 surround mix albums Floyd released. (Or 3 I guess since the quad Live At Pompeii hasn't been officially commercially released yet.)


And I can confirm that the bass is bangin' on the quad reels! :) (In a good still well balanced way.)
 
The horrible reality of missing tapes, and to think they were already missing back in the early 1970s! :(

Yeah, that is pretty sad. People tend to get annoyed but my positive outlook on things, but in this case I'd say that yes, it is a shame those tapes are lost, but on the other hand, we do have the Quads for the other six albums. Not that many groups have actually bothered release 100% of their Quad mixes in fine sounding digital versions.
 
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