HiRez Poll Alan Parsons Project, The - EYE IN THE SKY [Blu-Ray Audio]

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Rate the BDA of THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT - EYE IN THE SKY

  • 6

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 5

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 4

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 2

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 1: Poor Content, Surround Mix, and Fidelity

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    97

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Please post your thoughts and comments on this 2017 reissue of the classic Alan Parsons Project album "Eye in the Sky".
Reissued for its 35th anniversary, the box set contains a brand new 5.1 surround mix on Blu-Ray, remixed by Alan Parsons himself!
The following year (2018), the Blu-ray Disc was released outside of the box set, and the 5.1 mix is now available to stream in Dolby Audio on Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/eye-in-the-sky/1205670750
(n) :) (y)
2017 box set images:
CS670540-01A-BIG.jpg

CS670540-01B-BIG.jpg

THE-ALAN-PARSONS-PROJECT_35TH-ANNIVERSARY-BOXSET-EDITION-EYE-IN-THE-SKY_3D_1024x1024.jpg


2018 Blu-ray Disc:
711wKnn-ENL._SL1024_.jpg
 
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I wasn't able to afford this box-set (couldn't rationalize the purchase since I only want the blu-ray), but I thought the plan was to issue the blu-ray alone at some time, am I wrong?
 
I'm waiting with bated breath to hear feedback on this one. This is one of my favorite albums. I will be buying the standalone Blu-ray but I can't afford the box.
 
Sometime in 2018...nobody has a date yet...but the plan is to offer one:)

I hope so! An album I certainly want in surround. But not one I love SO much that I'm willing to go full Deluxe Edition for.

Although if a standalone is never released....I may have to shell out for it or secure a copy of the mix by other means....
 
This is a beautiful box set. The book is quite amazing. There's even a picture of the Columbia House reel tape (you know, those crappy 3 3/4 ips reels sold by mail order). The info is very detailed and I will spend an evening going through this at some point. The quick scan was quite satisfying.

The mix is, well, terrific, but it's mostly QUAD!!! The vocals are in the front left and right, not the center (a la Steven Wilson), but it works well. The fidelity is perfection and the surround mix is as well. It might not look it from the wav file below (of the first two tunes, (Sirius/Eye in the Sky), but it is very discrete. On the chorus of "Eye in the Sky", the lead vocal is mostly in the fronts, the harmonies in the rears, and during the second part of the chorus the lead stays front while the "Looking at You"'s are in the rears, but they're sort of floating back there, not bursting from the speakers. It's hard to describe without hearing it, but take it from me, it works. This is a great mix from the great Alan Parsons.

Good Surround. Great Surround. Surround like it should be. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but I think I'll be very pleased just from listening to the first two tunes on the PC.

Eye in the Sky.jpg
 
Initial observations....
I am liking the 5.1 mix greatly. (I had this in many formats, including the HDAD DVD). This is a serious notch up.

However, has anyone else had a problem with the LPCM 5.1 mix? Playing straight from the start it goes to a loud white noise glitch at the 4:34 mark, in Eye in the Sky. If you back it up from the following track, Silence and I, it doesn't show up, but playing it forward from 4:30 it happens again.

The DTS Master Audio seems flawless, as far as technical glitches go.
 
Hey folks - heads up... importcds has it for ~$85 AND has 10% off. With shipping it comes to $81 and change for me. I'm now trying to decide if I want to jump on it, as I had firmly decided to wait for the stand-alone... :)
 
This album is a mix of some stellar songs and some OK songs in terms of content. On most of the songs the fidelity and surround mixes are perfect, very discrete mix and crystalline fidelity. "You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned" has poorer, less clear fidelity and less going on in terms of discrete surround (the difference sticks-out from the rest of the songs). On "Step by Step" the drums come in very sharply at the beginning; someone mentioned elsewhere that they were cut-off... it sounds like it to me, too (I've never owned this album, so I'm not 100% sure... it definitely sounds unnatural). The cues for the beginning of many songs are off (so if you fast forward you miss the beginning of the next song). I'm not sure what I'm going to vote yet, but I hope they can fix the miss-cues and cut-off drums for the stand-alone release. I love "Eye In The Sky", "Silence And I", and "Old And Wise". The vocal surround mix on "Gemini" sounds gorgeous.
 
I rated this a nine. One point off for "You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned." It sounds less dynamic than the rest of the album. Fidelity is also slightly inferior to the other cuts.
Overall, though, a marvelous album in surround. Recommended.
 
Well, IIRC, "You're gonna..." was already that way in the original LP, it had a "grittier" sound to it...
Maybe , on purpose...just cause of the message of the song (think about it..artistic license)!!!
 
One of my top five favorite albums.

Rates a 10, no question. A perfect surround mix, relatively discrete and enveloping. Fidelity is much better than I remember of the vinyl from my youth, also far superior to the redbook CD.

As others have mentioned "You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned" is weak. I always skipped it on the CD, so for me it does not lower the score. After all, when you average in 9 songs at 11, and one at 6, the net score is still greater than 10 :)

To those who await the stand-alone BluRay, it will be well worth the wait. I tried my best to wait, just didn't have the patience.

Get it! (y)(y)(y)
 
Overall, this makes a nice addition to Mr. Parson's surround catalog.

I'd like to address several things.

The title track and its instrumental overture make for a great demo of the possibilities awaiting. If there's a singular feature of his work that is instantly recognizable it's his vocal sound. Breathy, choir-like harmonies adorn thick, breathy leads -- at least, when Mr. Woolfson is at the mic. The Alan Parsons sound was never more fully realized than when he sang lead. I nearly wish that Eric had helmed every track, though I am fully aware Mr. Parsons would not agree. There's a lot to making that sound. As it turns out, even more than I thought.

To explain, allow me a one-paragraph stopover with The Beach Boys. Wouldn't It be Nice, one of their most well-known hits, sounded nice on AM radio. On a fine system, the original mono never did much for me, nor did it inspire any particular appreciation for the group. But in 1997, before it burned a hole in my wool work pants, eighty dollars went for the new box set that contained the first stereo mix of the track. But what really fried my brain cells was the new stereo a capella mix -- just Brian Wilson and a couple others (not including Mike Love) putting in the master take. What a revelation! I'd simply had no idea, none at all, of the sheer beauty and nuance of what I'd been listening to all those years, buried under so many layers of mono. This unpleasant fact of multi-track recording -- the tendency to lose the stark deliciousness of basic tracks under further layers -- is well-known among engineers. Doug Sax put out a record years ago to demonstrate this -- The Sheffield Drum/Track Record. Today's a capella mixes provide a vocal companion to this phenomenon.

Can anything be done about this? Like the Beach Boys' track (although a far better recording), Eye in the Sky has a gorgeous vocal that is far less gorgeous the further down you go on the playback hierarchy (the one ending in a single 3" speaker). Here in multichannel, the vocal deconstructs in a way that is simply impossible in two channel. The chorus envelops you, and forces analysis: You've been here before -- yet you haven’t. Like a magic trick, you now wonder how it was done. There's a lot going on here, and as with The Beach Boys' track I found a new appreciation -- and wonder.

Then there are the drums. Confession: I've never really cared for his drum sound, at least on Pyramid through Ammonia Avenue. "Wimpy" is the word I'd use, with a wispy high end. It's not so much a case of passing years being unkind -- I thought likewise back in the day. With this release, Parsons has carried these same drum tracks into the 21st century. Still recognizable, yet much more contemporary. Tasty even. The high end is especially improved.

Other standout tracks: Silence and I -- a huge orchestral opus, and Psychobabble. This track left me cold in stereo, but now it really comes alive, sort of like a 5.1 mini-musical. It's choreographed, and you can't ignore it.

To discuss two tracks I had high hopes for but found disappointing, we have to discuss ... reverb. (REVERB reverb reverb). There has been a preference in this century to mix using much less reverb than in the "old days" (60's, 70's, and even 80's). In addition, the quality of reverb is a far cry. Gone are the physical chambers, springs, and metal plates of yesteryear with their too-noticeable character. All is now digital and true multichannel -- meaning any number of sources input can create a virtual soundfield. (This was not possible back in the quad era.) Tape-delayed "slap-back" reverb has been frowned on by some engineers since the early 80's (one in particular I knew bitched about Billy Joel's The Nylon Curtain for this trangression back in 1982). So today's reverb is cleaner, with less chararacter, and there's less of it.

Well I, for one, don't like things so dry. Although most of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road's surround remix featured near-perfect recreations of the original reverb, engineer Greg Penny apparently decided my favorite track Harmony simply went too far in this regard, and piled the track into the dryer on HIGH. This really wrecked it for me. Checkfield's Surrounded reaches the furthest extreme in this new desert culture. Some tracks -- e.g., Through the Lens -- are so bone dry, for me they make listening uncomfortable. I once knew John, the band member who remixed them. If I ever see him again, I'll have that bone to pick. (He lives in Costa Rica, so it's unlikely.)

So too Children of the Moon is, right from the intro, dried out. Parsons retains the deep reverb later on with the militant snares, but again is too shy with it on the chorale voces. We need reverb in this track to allow ourselves to slip away and fall under its spell but the lack of reverb takes me out of it. In addition, the fade-out is a little sloppy -- and Parsons' cross-fades were always so dramatic. Has the art of the smooth fade been lost to digital? It would seem so.

And to Gemini. A favorite track -- and "B" side to Eye -- turns out not as well as I'd hoped. Normally, I love discretely-separated vocals, but here -- there's something too obvious about the physical arrangement. In stereo, everything seemed organic -- new voices seemed to sprout like budding flowers on a single branch. But the real trouble is the ending, which builds up to ... nothing. In the stereo mix, the voices get noticeably louder in the climax, likely due to a manual pot-up by the engineer. Pot-ups (manual increases in track level during play) are also frowned upon as "unnatural" -- like cheating. Was Parsons averse to doing this now, though it was a crucial effect in the original version?

So there it is in one listen. I'm happy it exists, and happy to have it.

A 9.
 
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Overall, this makes a nice addition to Mr. Parson's surround catalog.

I'd like to address several things.

The title track and its instrumental overture make for a great demo of the possibilities awaiting. If there's a singular feature of his work that is instantly recognizable it's his vocal sound. Breathy, choir-like harmonies adorn thick, breathy leads -- at least, when Mr. Woolfson is at the mic. The Alan Parsons sound was never more fully realized than when he sang lead. I nearly wish that Eric had helmed every track, though I am fully aware Mr. Parsons would not agree. There's a lot to making that sound. As it turns out, even more than I thought.

To explain, allow me a one-paragraph stopover with The Beach Boys. Wouldn't It be Nice, one of their most well-known hits, sounded nice on AM radio. On a fine system, the original mono never did much for me, nor did it inspire any particular appreciation for the group. But in 1997, before it burned a hole in my wool work pants, eighty dollars went for the new box set that contained the first stereo mix of the track. But what really fried my brain cells was the new stereo a capella mix -- just Brian Wilson and a couple others (not including Mike Love) putting in the master take. What a revelation! I'd simply had no idea, none at all, of the sheer beauty and nuance of what I'd been listening to all those years, buried under so many layers of mono. This unpleasant fact of multi-track recording -- the tendency to lose the stark deliciousness of basic tracks under further layers -- is well-known among engineers. Doug Sax put out a record years ago to demonstrate this -- The Sheffield Drum/Track Record. Today's a capella mixes provide a vocal companion to this phenomenon.

Can anything be done about this? Like the Beach Boys' track (although a far better recording), Eye in the Sky has a gorgeous vocal that is far less gorgeous the further down you go on the playback hierarchy (the one ending in a single 3" speaker). Here in multichannel, the vocal deconstructs in a way that is simply impossible in two channel. The chorus envelops you, and forces analysis: You've been here before -- yet you have not. Like a magic trick, you now wonder how it was done. There's a lot going on here, and as with The Beach Boys' track I found a new appreciation -- and wonder.

Then there are the drums. Confession: I've never really cared for his drum sound, at least on Pyramid through Ammonia Avenue. "Wimpy" is the word I'd use, with a wispy high end. It's not so much a case of passing years being unkind -- I thought likewise back in the day. With this release, Parsons has carried these same drum tracks into the 21st century. Still recognizable, yet much more contemporary. Tasty even. The high end is especially improved.

Other standout tracks: Silence and I -- a huge orchestral opus, and Psychobabble. This track left me cold in stereo, but now it really comes alive, sort of like a 5.1 mini-musical. It's choreographed, and you can't ignore it.

To discuss two tracks I had high hopes for but found disappointing, we have to discuss ... reverb. (REVERB reverb reverb). There has been a preference in this century to mix using much less reverb than in the "old days" (60's, 70's, and even 80's). In addition, the quality of reverb is a far cry. Gone are the physical chambers, springs, and metal plates of yesteryear with their too-noticeable character. All is now digital and true multichannel -- meaning any number of sources input can create a virtual soundfield. (This was not possible back in the quad era.) Tape-delayed "slap-back" reverb has been frowned on by some engineers since the early 80's (one in particular I knew bitched about Billy Joel's The Nylon Curtain for this trangression back in 1982). So today's reverb is cleaner, with less chararacter, and there's less of it.

Well I, for one, don't like things so dry. Although most of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road's surround remix featured near-perfect recreations of the original reverb, engineer Greg Penny apparently decided my favorite track Harmony simply went too far in this regard, and piled the track into the dryer on HIGH. This really wrecked it for me. Checkfield's Surrounded reaches the furthest extreme in this new desert culture. Some tracks -- e.g., Through the Lens -- are so bone dry they make listening uncomfortable. I once knew John, the band member who remixed them. If I ever see him again, I'll have that bone to pick. (He' lives in Costa Rica, so it's unlikely.)

So too Children of the Moon is, right from the intro, dried out. Parsons retains the deep reverb later on with the militant snares, but again is too shy with it on the chorale voces. We need reverb in this track to allow ourselves to slip away and fall under its spell but the lack of reverb takes me out of it. In addition, the fade-out is a little sloppy -- and Parsons' cross-fades were always so dramatic. Has the art of the smooth fade been lost to digital? It would seem so.

And to Gemini. A favorite track -- and "B" side to Eye -- turns out not as well as I'd hoped. Normally, I love discretely-separated vocals, but here -- there's something too obvious about the physical arrangement. In stereo, everything seemed organic -- new voices seemed to sprout like budding flowers on a single branch. But the real trouble is the ending, which builds up to ... nothing. In the stereo mix, the voices get noticeably louder in the climax, likely due to a manual pot-up by the engineer. Pot-ups (manual increases in track level during play) are also frowned upon as "unnatural" -- like cheating. Was Parsons averse to doing this now, though it was a crucial effect in the original version?

So there it is in one listen. I'm happy it exists, and happy to have it.
I don't know what number to give.
Maybe I'll give another listen first.

I noticed the dry sound on Children as well, I almost prefer the stereo sound, but I'll take the discrete 5.1 mix any day. I really like how much the mix has increased the 3D space. Much more body to the sound.
 
One of my very favorite albums...I've been listening to the HDAD version for years. I'm not going down the rabbit hole degrading Alan or Eric's choice for songs-fans know what the weak songs are and I'll leave it at that.
..but finally left alone in the house, and cranked up on my mid-range system, opening with Sirius and blending into EITS just gave this old dog goosebumps.
I give it a 10 based on nothing but my pure enjoyment!
 
I voted 9.

I think the surround and fidelity sound fantastic. For me, I didn't get that totally warm fuzzy feeling while listening to the songs like I used to. Most of them, yes, not all of them. So, instead of a 10, I voted 9 out of respect for other titles where each song works for me. :)

Yes, I used to have the album....again....somehow the content didn't totally hold up over the years for me I guess.
Regardless, a classic and in my opinion, this is a must have if you enjoy the music.
 
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