Hello! About a year back, I made a post on a different site wherein I attempted to fix up the issues on the 5.1 version of (What's the Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis! I was curious as to what you'd all think of it, given that you're all such surround sound aficionados.
In the mix, I noticed a TON of errors, from the center channel being 6dB too loud and in the wrong polarity across most tracks, back channel audio (sans vocal reverb) seemingly being folded into the front channels by accident, and a few more errors constitute a mess that could otherwise be a really beautiful mix, which I tried to create! Feel free to listen to a stereo downmix I created as well as read this HUGE post I made on the topic for details!
(Keep in mind that in the post below, I often have descriptions of pictures below the pictures themselves!)
Despite its sales, this disc remains important not only for presenting the band in surround sound, but more importantly, for its radically different instrumental timbre (the quality of the sound), giving elements a level of clarity that wasn’t present in the original release. This creates quite a different experience for the listener, one that could be arguably better than the 1995 version, if not for the numerous errors that pervade its final release.
Morris emulated this sound onto Oasis primarily through a combination of heavily compressed individual elements and reverb, which worked excellently for the band’s debut, giving rather sterile recordings a punk edge. “Digsy’s Dinner”, for example, sounded like wedding music before Morris got his hands on it. In short, power, not the detail, of Definitely Maybe is what makes it great.
Oasis’ next album, however, put a higher emphasis on balladry that such a thick sound served to obscure. A dense and murky in-your-face mix seems perfect for tracks such as “Some Might Say” and “Champagne Supernova”, but acts to hide the melodic beauty of “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, “Cast No Shadow”, and “She’s Electric”, which honestly don’t need to be buried by a thick layer of sound to be fully appreciated.
In somewhat of a necessary transition to surround sound, Neil Dorfsman and David Swope chose to make the timbre of the instrumentation much clearer and easier to distinguish than the original mix. In a 2014 interview with Oasis Recording Info, Dorfsman states,
General errors with the mix:
I also used a correlometer to try and make sure everything was in sync. A correlometer checks for the presence of in-phase and out-of-phase elements in a mix. Above is a correlometer used for the front right and back right channels in the opening seconds of “Roll with It”.
For anyone curious about the steps I took in fixing up this album, this is how I edited “Hey Now!”:
I shifted the parking (i.e. when each track starts and ends) between “Hey Now!” and “[Untitled 1]” so the latter began at a more appropriate time. I also I shifted the front right and back left right channels of the song by one sample, and the back right channel by two samples, to make sure all channels were in sync. This is especially important so I could fix the center channel, and properly subtract the back channels from the front ones. You can see tiny black lines on the left side of those channels. That indicates the sample shift.
I increase the peaks slightly of the front two channels through declipping to try and make their resulting peaks the same level as the center channel, which would minimize audio artifacts when I fix that channel.
These two partially-declipped front channels are folded together and lowered by 6.6dB to match the loudness of the center channel. This result (shown in black) is then folded into the center channel (shown in blue) to create the intended center channel audio (shown in green).
The declipping process is used to make the front channels as dynamic as they can be. The center channel is also lowered by 6dB and its polarity is inverted. (For reference, red indicates a channel is polarity-inverted.)
At this point, I commissioned u/JoshFirefly to extract the vocal reverb from the back channels. This is done for two reasons. First, I wanted to remove the non-vocal-reverb back channel audio from the front channels. Second, I wanted to lower the back channel reverb at the end of the mix.I subtracted back channel audio from the front channels by polarity-inverting the back channel, non-vocal audio from the front channels. This finally creates what I think is the intended front channel audio (shown in green).
I took a copy of the non-subtracted front two channels and faded it in for the last 0.5 seconds while muting the rest of the channel’s audio (top). I also faded out the subtracted front two channels from the last step (middle). I folded both of these together to make the transition between this song and “[Untitled 1]” seamless.
I added a -6dB version of the the back-left channel, vocal-only audio (middle) to both of the back-channel, non-vocal audio channels to create the new version of the back channels. (The reason I only used the back-left vocal-only audio was to make sure both of the back channel reverbs were in sync.) This makes the back channel reverb the same level as that played from the center channel.
And voila! The final mix! You can see the two versions before and after, level-matched so they can be easily compared. Note the increased peaks of the front channels, the radically-different center channel, and the lowered vocal reverb in the back channels (harder to see, but look at the quieter sections and you’ll notice it).
This isn’t relevant to this track in particular, but I sped up “Roll with It”, “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, “Some Might Say”, and “Cast No Shadow” to have them match the speed and pitch of their 1995 stereo mixes. Some other tracks may have used some speeding up, but I refrained from doing so if they transitioned into another song.
When all these changes are made, you’re left with a rather beautiful result. Not perfect by any means, but a must-listen for both hardcore fans of Oasis and general fans of this album. As previously noted, the approach in making a lot of elements more clear really helped a lot of tracks shine. “Cast No Shadow” (which itself was hardly flawed before editing) especially feels warm and sweeping in this mix (though its back channels may be a bit overbearing at times), when the original release seemed covered in a thick mud. The drums across all the tracks are also beefed up quite a bit. Whereas the original 1995 release seemed to bury them quite significantly, the SACD version seems to put them more in line with what one would generally expect from a professional mix. It can be difficult to articulate just how great is it to have the entire mix be less mushy and amorphous until you compare the two. I myself can’t find the words to say just how great this mix sounds, perhaps due to being so entrenched in editing it, but it should not be understated.
The SACD version “Some Might Say” is especially subject to that, with the force of the mix absolutely failing to live up to its 1995 counterpart. While “Some Might Say” consists of multiple elements, thick roaring guitars are the heart of the song. With the SACD though, “Some Might Say” feels like a box of knick-knack sounds spread across the surround sound space. A sparkly guitar makes itself known in the back left channel, claps alert you to their presence from the back, and some of the worst drumming I’ve ever heard is brought to the forefront. (Honestly, White should have been allowed by Noel to re-record the drums after McCarroll was sacked.) Add upon that the early fade of the vocals and you get a mix that is both unfaithful to the original release and baffling in its own right. I honestly would not be shocked if that track was flat-out missing elements that the mixers intended to have, as the song is notably quieter than the rest of the album.
My other reservations with the mix are much smaller.
For one, the center channel is generally underutilized, mostly serving to house reverb, delayed repeating vocals, shakers, claps, and other minutia. Placing delayed vocals in the center, separate from the lead vocals, is certainly an odd choice, because they complement the lead vocals first and foremost. If someone has their center channel attenuated a bit louder than normal, it only makes this effect more transparent, taking you out of the moment.
The center speaker generally functions to make dialogue clear when listening to films in surround sound, so putting the vocals there should be a natural fit. Surround sound savant Steven Wilson, for example, utilizes this idea by placing dry (i.e. not reverbed) vocals in the center channel with reverb for them placed in the front left and front right channels. While the lead vocals in this mix are placed in the front left and front right channels for the rest of the album, the opening of “Wonderwall” specifically has them in the center channel, swapping to the front two channels after the instrumentation kicks in. Not only does this violate the mix map of the rest of the album, but the switch is incredibly off-putting, taking you out of the experience. (I actually changed this aspect in my edits for that reason.)
Another distracting aspect of this mix is that there is so much vocal reverb that it almost renders this release a complete non-starter. While vocals are nearly always applied with reverb as an industry standard for music, the amount of reverb here is far too much. The level of it from front left and front right channels is itself suitably loud enough to carry the album. Additional vocal reverb to the center and back channels only serves to make Liam sound disconnected from the rest of the band. It seems that the extra reverb was applied to make Liam sound like he is performing in a room, but the lack of this reverb on the rest of the instrumentation makes it sound like they’re not performing with him. (This is one big reason why I lowered the back channel reverb in my edits. I am unsure if the mixing engineers intended there to be this much reverb, but if they did, I think it was a terrible mixing decision.)
In regards to effects, the two untitled excerpts pretty much serve as reverby fluff. It seems that the mixers weren’t actually given the full “The Swamp Song” recording tracks to work with, and the result is that “[Untitled 1]” just consists of reverbed and delayed versions of the original mix spread across the 5 channels. “[Untitled 2]” is radically different from its initial mix, focusing less on the excerpt of “The Swamp Song” and more on the surrounding ambience, but nevertheless doesn’t really rise above its reverb.
Neil Dorfsman and David Swope tended to be rather timid about using the back channels, instead directing most of the attention to the front of the mix. Dorfsman explains in an interview that this is mainly because the band weren’t involved in the mixing process (and may not have been aware of it to begin with), and thus, he didn’t want to go too out there with his mixing choices. Still, I can’t help but yearn for a bit more than what’s present here.
I personally am a fan of surround sound gimmickry, with things sliding across my ears from left to right and front to back. While I can understand why the mix doesn’t lean on that effect, “Champagne Supernova” is a song that I imagined could have used it brilliantly, given that it is such a psychedelic song. Imagine as well if the sliding riff throughout “Hey Now!” panned behind you and towards the center like fingers on a fretboard.
One great time that the album does lean into its surround sound format would be the start of “Roll with It”. The opening guitar hits you in the center of the surround sound space before the drums direct your attention to the front and the rest of the guitars explode into existence. Such an effect would be impossible in a stereo space, and excites me every time I hear it. These moments are few and far between however, leaving this presentation of Oasis in surround sound feeling like a missed opportunity, more often than not refusing to lean upon the strengths surround sound offers over a stereo presentation.
I feel like a broken record when talking about this (as I’ve referenced this in other posts), but the beauty that this mix provides essentially begs Oasis’s album Be Here Now to be newly mixed as well. I would absolute adore the various overdubs plaguing the mix to be stripped, simplifying the album down to the fundamentals that made the band so compelling to begin with.
Thanks as well obviously to those involved in the creation of this mix to begin with, including mixer Neil Dorfsman, assistant mixing engineer David Swope, and mastering engineer Vlado Meller! Perhaps somebody reading this post can get into contact with any of them to figure out how the heck all these errors occurred!
In the mix, I noticed a TON of errors, from the center channel being 6dB too loud and in the wrong polarity across most tracks, back channel audio (sans vocal reverb) seemingly being folded into the front channels by accident, and a few more errors constitute a mess that could otherwise be a really beautiful mix, which I tried to create! Feel free to listen to a stereo downmix I created as well as read this HUGE post I made on the topic for details!
- Hello
- Roll with It
- Wonderwall
- Don’t Look Back in Anger
- Hey Now!
- [Untitled 1]
- Some Might Say
- Cast No Shadow
- She’s Electric
- Morning Glory
- [Untitled 2]
- Champagne Supernova
(Keep in mind that in the post below, I often have descriptions of pictures below the pictures themselves!)
Intro
Awful, great, and middling, the 2003 surround sound release of Oasis’s album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is an odd creature, to say the least. Without the involvement of the band, Sony commissioned mixing engineer Neil Dorfsman and assistant mixing engineer David Swope to create this surround sound version of the album for the company’s newly-created SACD format. An SACD (or “Super Audio CD”) could hold both a stereo mix and a multichannel mix, and Sony intended the format to become a successor to the immensely popular CD format. While sales of this SACD in particular are not known to the public, its failure is likely the cause of Sony axing plans to release a surround sound mix of Heathen Chemistry, and no other studio albums by the band have been remixed in surround sound since.Despite its sales, this disc remains important not only for presenting the band in surround sound, but more importantly, for its radically different instrumental timbre (the quality of the sound), giving elements a level of clarity that wasn’t present in the original release. This creates quite a different experience for the listener, one that could be arguably better than the 1995 version, if not for the numerous errors that pervade its final release.
The (Potentially) Beautiful Mix
The beauty of this SACD mix largely stems from its contrast in mixing style to that of original mixer Owen Morris. While Morris was important to the formation of all of Oasis’s first three albums, his hand in crafting Definitely Maybe especially was tantamount to the album’s success, largely due to his Phil Spector-esque “Wall of Sound” approach for its mixes. Phil Spector’s wall of sound technique is not to be confused with the loudness wars that Oasis’s first three albums helped pioneer. The wall of sound is a process for creating a dense orchestral aesthetic that often made elements blend together in a way where individual instruments couldn’t be identified. While these different elements may not be outwardly clear, they are nevertheless important to the mix as a whole.Morris emulated this sound onto Oasis primarily through a combination of heavily compressed individual elements and reverb, which worked excellently for the band’s debut, giving rather sterile recordings a punk edge. “Digsy’s Dinner”, for example, sounded like wedding music before Morris got his hands on it. In short, power, not the detail, of Definitely Maybe is what makes it great.
Oasis’ next album, however, put a higher emphasis on balladry that such a thick sound served to obscure. A dense and murky in-your-face mix seems perfect for tracks such as “Some Might Say” and “Champagne Supernova”, but acts to hide the melodic beauty of “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, “Cast No Shadow”, and “She’s Electric”, which honestly don’t need to be buried by a thick layer of sound to be fully appreciated.
In somewhat of a necessary transition to surround sound, Neil Dorfsman and David Swope chose to make the timbre of the instrumentation much clearer and easier to distinguish than the original mix. In a 2014 interview with Oasis Recording Info, Dorfsman states,
Only in rare occasions does the timbre of instrumentation change so dramatically in a retrospective remixing of an album, especially for one as famous as Morning Glory. This SACD mix is in many ways radically different to the original release, yet faithful enough to the band’s efforts that it arguably stands as the superior of the two versions. That is, however, only if we ignore the numerous errors on the disc that make it a horrendous listen.[Oasis] are famous for their noisy, turned-up-to-11 un-separated sound. And I was a little hesitant about the 5.1 mix because of that, because 5.1 tends to separate instruments out in a way that’s semi unnatural in my opinion, and that’s sort of the point of it all… the Oasis record could’ve been mixed in mono and it would’ve been just as powerful. As you say, Oasis are famous for their ‘wall of sound’ kind of production and it was a little daunting to do this 5.1 because, by its nature, 5.1 mixing separates elements out in a way that isn’t presented in the stereo mix. And I was a little worried about that… I wanted to get a certain clarity but retain the intense energy of the original stereo mix; I found that kind of daunting.
The Errors
There are so many obvious errors on this release that I am utterly perplexed they were not caught in mixing, mastering, or Sony’s approval process for the mixes. Neil Dorfsman himself was present during its mastering, and at no point alludes to technical difficulties in creating the mix, which only raises more questions of when these shortcomings could have arisen.General errors with the mix:
- The center channel is 6dB (i.e. 4x) too loud. "She's Electric", for example, is dominated by piano (from its center channel) because of it. Shakers and delayed vocals, also in the center channel, frequently present themselves as fervent, unwanted guests. The few elements that don’t have this issue appear to be the opening vocals and bass guitar of “Wonderwall”, and perhaps the acoustic guitar in “Cast No Shadow”.
- The center channel is in the wrong polarity across most tracks (no, not out-of-time phase; the polarity itself is the issue), which essentially makes it subtract certain elements from the mix as a whole. “Morning Glory”, “[Untitled 2]”, and “Champagne Supernova” don’t appear to have this issue, and the bass in the center channel of “Wonderwall” appears to be in the correct polarity.
- Back channel audio (sans vocal reverb) is folded into the front channels across half of the tracks, making the back channels feel unused or underutilized when listening in surround sound. This also makes most back channel elements more present than they should be when folding down the mix to stereo.
- “Hello”, the two untitled interludes, “Cast No Shadow”, “Morning Glory”, and “Champagne Supernova” are the only tracks that don’t have this issue. “Don’t Look Back in Anger” may have this issue to an extent, but has a mellotron in the back channels that does not appear in the front channels. “Roll with It” also has Noel’s post-second-chorus “ahs” in the back channels that are not shared with the front channels, and the same is the case for one swishy instrument in “She’s Electric” and pewing synths in “Some Might Say”.
- Clipping is persistent across the release, likely due to mastering engineer Vlado Meller, who previously and infamously mastered Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication a few years prior. Clipping distorts the audio signal and can introduce artifacts such as hiss to the sound.
- The clipping/compression from mastering is baffling at times, where sometimes info in the center channel far below the peaks of the front channels became smashed, such as the opening vocals of “Wonderwall” or the slide guitar of "Roll with It".
- Vocals definitely could be de-essed a lot better. De-essing is the process of eliminating the excessive prominence of sibilant sounds (s, z, ch, j, and sh). An Oasis example of de-essing would be comparing the UK vs. US masterings of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, with the latter de-essing vocals a bit better. (You can hear this excerpt of “Don’t Look Back in Anger” with the US master in the left channel, and UK master in the right channel to get a sense of what I mean.)
- While the difference may be subtle, the center and back channels face a rather large amount of plate-reverbed vocals, which serve to exacerbate this issue further. (The reverb itself also seems to be out of sync by a few samples between these three channels.) Quite frequently I was taken out of the moment and towards the back channel reverb when I heard Liam udder an “s” or “sh”.
- The front right and back left channels appeared to be one sample too early, and the back right channels appeared to be two samples too early. This may be the result of converting DSD (Direct Stream Digital; the format that SACDs play) to WAV, but I thought it was worth noting regardless, as it affects how the channels are edited.
- “Hey Now!” has a -6.6dB polarity-inverted version of the entire front two channels folded into the center channel, cancelling out much of the mix when folded down to stereo.
- “Some Might Say” has its vocals fade out about a minute before the track ends.
- “Champagne Supernova” is missing Liam’s “ah’s” during its final big breakdown.
- The back left channel of “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and back right channel of “Morning Glory” are missing vocal reverb entirely.
- “Morning Glory” is missing Noel’s “well’s” in the back right channel during choruses.
- “Morning Glory” has its LFE (low-frequency effects) channel so quiet that it might as well not exist.
- “Wonderwall” has its back channels 3dB (i.e. 2x) too loud.
- The center channel bass of “Wonderwall” appears to be 105 samples early compared to the little bit of it that is in the front channels.
My Attempts to Fix These Errors
I attempted to fix these many issues to be the best of my (albeit limited) ability, working with an approach that was moreso logical than artistic. That is to say, I was generally trying to fix the album up to what I think the mixers originally intended. With that, is me listening, listening, and listening, in surround sound and in a stereo downmix to try and make the results the best I can.I also used a correlometer to try and make sure everything was in sync. A correlometer checks for the presence of in-phase and out-of-phase elements in a mix. Above is a correlometer used for the front right and back right channels in the opening seconds of “Roll with It”.
For anyone curious about the steps I took in fixing up this album, this is how I edited “Hey Now!”:
I shifted the parking (i.e. when each track starts and ends) between “Hey Now!” and “[Untitled 1]” so the latter began at a more appropriate time. I also I shifted the front right and back left right channels of the song by one sample, and the back right channel by two samples, to make sure all channels were in sync. This is especially important so I could fix the center channel, and properly subtract the back channels from the front ones. You can see tiny black lines on the left side of those channels. That indicates the sample shift.
I increase the peaks slightly of the front two channels through declipping to try and make their resulting peaks the same level as the center channel, which would minimize audio artifacts when I fix that channel.
These two partially-declipped front channels are folded together and lowered by 6.6dB to match the loudness of the center channel. This result (shown in black) is then folded into the center channel (shown in blue) to create the intended center channel audio (shown in green).
The declipping process is used to make the front channels as dynamic as they can be. The center channel is also lowered by 6dB and its polarity is inverted. (For reference, red indicates a channel is polarity-inverted.)
At this point, I commissioned u/JoshFirefly to extract the vocal reverb from the back channels. This is done for two reasons. First, I wanted to remove the non-vocal-reverb back channel audio from the front channels. Second, I wanted to lower the back channel reverb at the end of the mix.I subtracted back channel audio from the front channels by polarity-inverting the back channel, non-vocal audio from the front channels. This finally creates what I think is the intended front channel audio (shown in green).
I took a copy of the non-subtracted front two channels and faded it in for the last 0.5 seconds while muting the rest of the channel’s audio (top). I also faded out the subtracted front two channels from the last step (middle). I folded both of these together to make the transition between this song and “[Untitled 1]” seamless.
I added a -6dB version of the the back-left channel, vocal-only audio (middle) to both of the back-channel, non-vocal audio channels to create the new version of the back channels. (The reason I only used the back-left vocal-only audio was to make sure both of the back channel reverbs were in sync.) This makes the back channel reverb the same level as that played from the center channel.
And voila! The final mix! You can see the two versions before and after, level-matched so they can be easily compared. Note the increased peaks of the front channels, the radically-different center channel, and the lowered vocal reverb in the back channels (harder to see, but look at the quieter sections and you’ll notice it).
This isn’t relevant to this track in particular, but I sped up “Roll with It”, “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, “Some Might Say”, and “Cast No Shadow” to have them match the speed and pitch of their 1995 stereo mixes. Some other tracks may have used some speeding up, but I refrained from doing so if they transitioned into another song.
When all these changes are made, you’re left with a rather beautiful result. Not perfect by any means, but a must-listen for both hardcore fans of Oasis and general fans of this album. As previously noted, the approach in making a lot of elements more clear really helped a lot of tracks shine. “Cast No Shadow” (which itself was hardly flawed before editing) especially feels warm and sweeping in this mix (though its back channels may be a bit overbearing at times), when the original release seemed covered in a thick mud. The drums across all the tracks are also beefed up quite a bit. Whereas the original 1995 release seemed to bury them quite significantly, the SACD version seems to put them more in line with what one would generally expect from a professional mix. It can be difficult to articulate just how great is it to have the entire mix be less mushy and amorphous until you compare the two. I myself can’t find the words to say just how great this mix sounds, perhaps due to being so entrenched in editing it, but it should not be understated.
My Issues with the Mix, Even After Fixing It
Even though I quite adore this mix, I still have a few things that I am not happy with, whether they be from mixing decisions or my inability to make the edits I want. Most notably, I feel Dorfsman and Swope missed the point a bit in regards to the minutia of the mix and how a lot of it is meant to be buried. Hand-claps, shakers, and tambourine should not be as present as they are here, and somewhat detract from the power that Oasis is known for.The SACD version “Some Might Say” is especially subject to that, with the force of the mix absolutely failing to live up to its 1995 counterpart. While “Some Might Say” consists of multiple elements, thick roaring guitars are the heart of the song. With the SACD though, “Some Might Say” feels like a box of knick-knack sounds spread across the surround sound space. A sparkly guitar makes itself known in the back left channel, claps alert you to their presence from the back, and some of the worst drumming I’ve ever heard is brought to the forefront. (Honestly, White should have been allowed by Noel to re-record the drums after McCarroll was sacked.) Add upon that the early fade of the vocals and you get a mix that is both unfaithful to the original release and baffling in its own right. I honestly would not be shocked if that track was flat-out missing elements that the mixers intended to have, as the song is notably quieter than the rest of the album.
My other reservations with the mix are much smaller.
- “Don’t Look Back in Anger” has this mellotron element in the back channels that is not shared with the front ones, so I cannot do the channel subtraction. The final chorus also has doubled vocals that end a little oddly (“Her soul slides away-ay”).
- There’s this one swishy instrument in the back but not the front channels of “She’s Electric” that I was unable to isolate. (Not a big disappointment, but noteworthy nonetheless). The same is the case for some pewing synths in “Some Might Say”.
- An odd thumpy sound from the kick pervades “Hey Now!” and “Morning Glory”, which is likely an unintended result of Dorfsman trying to make the kit in general more present throughout the mix.
- “Morning Glory” I believe is missing Noel’s “well’s” in the back right channel during the choruses. (u/JoshFirefly was unable to extract those vocal elements from the mix.)
- “Champagne Supernova” focuses on a completely different guitar lead during its final breakdown (compared to the original mix), instead opting to pan the original lead to the far right, which I can’t help but feel bothered by. It is also still missing Liam’s “ah’s” during that breakdown.
Judging this as a Surround-Sound Mix
While I have mostly been assessing the SACD mix in its timbre, noting its effectiveness in the surround sound space is certainly important as well. Overall, I find myself a bit disappointed in that respect.For one, the center channel is generally underutilized, mostly serving to house reverb, delayed repeating vocals, shakers, claps, and other minutia. Placing delayed vocals in the center, separate from the lead vocals, is certainly an odd choice, because they complement the lead vocals first and foremost. If someone has their center channel attenuated a bit louder than normal, it only makes this effect more transparent, taking you out of the moment.
The center speaker generally functions to make dialogue clear when listening to films in surround sound, so putting the vocals there should be a natural fit. Surround sound savant Steven Wilson, for example, utilizes this idea by placing dry (i.e. not reverbed) vocals in the center channel with reverb for them placed in the front left and front right channels. While the lead vocals in this mix are placed in the front left and front right channels for the rest of the album, the opening of “Wonderwall” specifically has them in the center channel, swapping to the front two channels after the instrumentation kicks in. Not only does this violate the mix map of the rest of the album, but the switch is incredibly off-putting, taking you out of the experience. (I actually changed this aspect in my edits for that reason.)
Another distracting aspect of this mix is that there is so much vocal reverb that it almost renders this release a complete non-starter. While vocals are nearly always applied with reverb as an industry standard for music, the amount of reverb here is far too much. The level of it from front left and front right channels is itself suitably loud enough to carry the album. Additional vocal reverb to the center and back channels only serves to make Liam sound disconnected from the rest of the band. It seems that the extra reverb was applied to make Liam sound like he is performing in a room, but the lack of this reverb on the rest of the instrumentation makes it sound like they’re not performing with him. (This is one big reason why I lowered the back channel reverb in my edits. I am unsure if the mixing engineers intended there to be this much reverb, but if they did, I think it was a terrible mixing decision.)
In regards to effects, the two untitled excerpts pretty much serve as reverby fluff. It seems that the mixers weren’t actually given the full “The Swamp Song” recording tracks to work with, and the result is that “[Untitled 1]” just consists of reverbed and delayed versions of the original mix spread across the 5 channels. “[Untitled 2]” is radically different from its initial mix, focusing less on the excerpt of “The Swamp Song” and more on the surrounding ambience, but nevertheless doesn’t really rise above its reverb.
Neil Dorfsman and David Swope tended to be rather timid about using the back channels, instead directing most of the attention to the front of the mix. Dorfsman explains in an interview that this is mainly because the band weren’t involved in the mixing process (and may not have been aware of it to begin with), and thus, he didn’t want to go too out there with his mixing choices. Still, I can’t help but yearn for a bit more than what’s present here.
I personally am a fan of surround sound gimmickry, with things sliding across my ears from left to right and front to back. While I can understand why the mix doesn’t lean on that effect, “Champagne Supernova” is a song that I imagined could have used it brilliantly, given that it is such a psychedelic song. Imagine as well if the sliding riff throughout “Hey Now!” panned behind you and towards the center like fingers on a fretboard.
One great time that the album does lean into its surround sound format would be the start of “Roll with It”. The opening guitar hits you in the center of the surround sound space before the drums direct your attention to the front and the rest of the guitars explode into existence. Such an effect would be impossible in a stereo space, and excites me every time I hear it. These moments are few and far between however, leaving this presentation of Oasis in surround sound feeling like a missed opportunity, more often than not refusing to lean upon the strengths surround sound offers over a stereo presentation.
Conclusion
The 2003 SACD mix of Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is terrible, middling, and amazing all at the same time. Mixers Neil Dorfsman and David Swope give an excellent timbre for the band presented unambitiously in surround sound, with the entire experience undermined by glaring errors in its commercial release. The disc stands as an odd document in the band’s discography, a relic of executive demands that somehow produced a heartful, albeit flawed, result.I feel like a broken record when talking about this (as I’ve referenced this in other posts), but the beauty that this mix provides essentially begs Oasis’s album Be Here Now to be newly mixed as well. I would absolute adore the various overdubs plaguing the mix to be stripped, simplifying the album down to the fundamentals that made the band so compelling to begin with.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to u/swollenfootblues and u/aftermathinmono for listening to my edits before I posted it, u/JoshFirefly for extracting the bass in “Wonderwall” and vocal reverb from the album, r/oasisfan99 for providing a scan of the front cover photo of the album to create edits of, and r/meteorlocked for recreating the album art using the scanned photo! Thanks as well for anyone who has commented or read any of my posts! Knowing that people care about what I do means a lot to me.Thanks as well obviously to those involved in the creation of this mix to begin with, including mixer Neil Dorfsman, assistant mixing engineer David Swope, and mastering engineer Vlado Meller! Perhaps somebody reading this post can get into contact with any of them to figure out how the heck all these errors occurred!
My Meticulous Notes to Recreate This Yourself
I have compiled my various notes on my edits here as well as the Perfect Declipper files I used to try and undo the distortion of its compression! Just add "mega" before the period in the links below! If it says you need a decryption key, copy everything after the "#" in the link and use that!- My Word Doc with meticulous notes on my edits: .nz/file/yoZAQbbJ#OJsnXaw_AhNXTJxBbuu5VgMcxTbRMrh6izR4yVo-UAc
- Perfect Declipper files: .nz/folder/OlJilaLC#koxfU6qoXvsTIwmiuGPB0Q
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