Had a quick go at picking the Surround on the DVD-A of this apart tonight, looking at the individual 6 channels of each song for the first time ever.. and it does seem pretty weird in there, got to say.
Half a dozen tracks in so far, take Track 1 as an example, I would say all the tracks are wrongly assigned!
I may be totally wrong but for me Front L&R work better as Rear L&R and so vice versa, Rears become Fronts... and Channel 3 (usually the Centre) has low bass content albeit at a low level and Channel 4 (usually the LFE track) has lots of lovely harmony vocals in it just at a crazily low level.. I worked out if you greatly increase the level of what should be the LFE channel, then you miraculously get those harmony vocals.. that uncannily seem to work well in the centre channel..!
It gets weirder.. on a couple of other tracks while the fronts and rears appear to be ok, I've found there is also Centre channel and LFE info buried, it is just at such a mega low level you can't detect it in either case.. boost both and ta-da you've got dry vocals that sound great in the centre channel and some low bass in the sub..!
Then things get even weirder when it emerges some of the tracks have one front channel that just works better as one of the rears (either lead vocals are lower level in those channels, sometimes with reverb, or they have backing vocals mixed higher in those channels than the lead vocals, which to me is a giveaway they had to be in the wrong channel originally, surely?) ..anyway I've found so far on those couple of tracks that by swapping just, say, Front Right with Rear Right things can snap more into focus.
Track 5 has no LFE content (even when whacked up by daft levels like +50db there's just zilch) but does have nice dry lead vocals in the Centre channel, that even cut out in the track when the strings come in and then the vocals kick back in again when the strings section ends, its extraordinary to hear those vocals in isolation! Why would anyone bury them?
I'm too zonked to carry on tonight but I will revisit and mess around with the remaining songs soon and see how they work out.. maybe you guys will be inclined to have a look at it all on your computers tonight (if you haven't done so already) and see if your findings marry up with any of mine at all..?
Suffice to say so far I'm inclined to believe the 6 channels on the disc by and large have the raw ingredients of a pretty decent surround mix but have been buggered up in some way. If that is not the case, then why would anyone involved in either the creation of the mix or the mastering or even authoring stage of this dial down the centre channel, which has unique content distinct from the other channels, to such an extent as to be inaudible..?
It just makes no sense to me..
Yet, unless I'm remembering wrongly, didn't the fellow who remixed this go on record at one point saying he preferred a 4-channel mix... and thats why there's no Centre channel on most tracks?
When there actually is some kind of a centre track..!
Would it be too far-fetched to speculate there was potentially a cover up back in the day, when it was found the finished product was a mess but by then it was too late, discs were pressed and out there and those involved were told to keep their lips buttoned and/or bluff their way out of it..? Hmm.. who knows? Not me but its fun playing around with the tracks and seeing whats actually going on in them after all these years of living with the surround mix "as is"
