Quad LP/Tape Poll Santana: Festival [SQ]

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Rate Festival

  • 10: Great sound, mix, content

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 9

    Votes: 1 9.1%
  • 8

    Votes: 1 9.1%
  • 7

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 6

    Votes: 2 18.2%
  • 5: Mediocrity Central

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 4

    Votes: 4 36.4%
  • 3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 2

    Votes: 3 27.3%
  • 1: Sux

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    11

EMB

2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Since 2002/2003
Joined
Feb 8, 2004
Messages
4,101
Location
The Top 40 Radio of My Mind
Columbia PCQ 34423, from 1977.

Side 1:

Carnaval
Let the Children Play
Jugando
Give Me Love
Verao Vermelho
Let the Music Set You Free

Side 2:

Revelations
Reach Up
The River
Try a Little Harder
Maria Caracoles

ED :)
 
Released also as Q8, very enjoyable album. In Italy is was a top-10 album.
Quad mix suck big time: basically it is a doubled stereo pair with different equalization. Extremely disappointing, especially because Santana had excellent quad mixes in the past, and the content of the album could be spreaded very well in the 4 channels.
As a guy that have the whole Santana discography, stereo *and* quad (all Q8), the best i can say is: avoid. It is not worthy. Any surround synthetizer will do a better service to a very good album rather than one of the suckiest Columbia mix ever done.

Unratable: the album by itself deserves a solid 8 1/2, but the quad mix is below zero.
 
Released also as Q8, very enjoyable album. In Italy is was a top-10 album.
Quad mix suck big time: basically it is a doubled stereo pair with different equalization. Extremely disappointing, especially because Santana had excellent quad mixes in the past, and the content of the album could be spreaded very well in the 4 channels.
As a guy that have the whole Santana discography, stereo *and* quad (all Q8), the best i can say is: avoid. It is not worthy. Any surround synthetizer will do a better service to a very good album rather than one of the suckiest Columbia mix ever done.

Unratable: the album by itself deserves a solid 8 1/2, but the quad mix is below zero.

What he said... ;)
same as with "Amigos"
 
I went to my copy of this LP
and played it with a TATE and Surround Master
The joystick has been not used as it would have been in early LPs
But it is 4 channel there are a small number of rear channel solo's
But they have blended the sound rather than made wide 4 channel surround
while it would not be a demo of Quad it is not that bad
But I have to say again (4 speakers big and the same) and TATE or Surround Master
to get the best surround

PS
make the room as dead as you can
at least carpet on the floor
 
The music is easily a 9 or 10. The "medley" is wonderful, although I prefer the live version on Moonflower, which was the first "non-Quad" Santana album. Yes, the mix is abominable. Averaging the music and mix (which is a zero), would yield a 5. Since the music is very good, I'll bump that to a 6. Perhaps you'd be better served to buy the CD or a nice, clean EU or Japan LP.
 
rustyandi,
probably the sq version in this case does "works better" rather than the q8... i have the q8 tape and it's just atrocious! No solo whatsoever. No separation. Nothing, nada, zilch.
I was totally shocked when i worked on that one, i had to check everything twice because i was blaming some hardware or software mess-up. No way, everything was ok. It was just the mix that sucked badly.
I can just imagine how good will sound a real mch mix of the initial medley. Done properly, it would be a killer demo track.
 
By this time I thought ol' Carlos was spinning his wheels, and without the quirky but very talented and passionate musicians that comprised the band of those early albums, well....it began to show, and FESTIVAL, for me, was all energy and volume and lacked the passion and inspiration one hears on parts of AMIGOS, which to this day I believe to be the last album where Carlos truly let it 'all hang out' and ventured into the kind of musical territory an artist so popular and commercial rarely went. Looking back, some of his material seems radical, and to call it 'jazz rock' or 'fusion' or 'latino rock' seems not only a disservice, but misrepresentation (but then I think SUPERNATURAL is a load of crap, what do I know?)

ED :)
 
Pics of the Israeli SQ LP...

3CD5BD1A-C3C7-4593-97BC-03B98B15D2FD_zpsgvd0oma5.jpg

889533AA-4517-44CD-A50D-B969EB73E368_zpsahlawarz.jpg

5ADE99FA-B509-47B9-9809-146BB8C1148D_zpsgliucv3s.jpg
 
for some reason i think Israeli copies sound great, i have Wish you were here, and its a big difference from the one pressed in U.S.
 
There is more going on here than double stereo, but not much. There are some things on here that are so subtle that they are hard to catch. But overall it is a pretty poor mix. I actually like the Amigos mix somewhat. Festival, not so much. Some great music though.
 
The music is easily a 9 or 10. The "medley" is wonderful, although I prefer the live version on Moonflower, which was the first "non-Quad" Santana album. Yes, the mix is abominable. Averaging the music and mix (which is a zero), would yield a 5. Since the music is very good, I'll bump that to a 6. Perhaps you'd be better served to buy the CD or a nice, clean EU or Japan LP.
I went with a 4 QL, but Moonflower may be my fav Santana album, and this has some of the same songs on it (studio version.) Iā€™ve even tried an up-mix with some of Moonflower but being live it doesnā€™t seem to do too well either. Maybe see if the stereo Festival! album will up-mix better. Thing is, the live versions are much more ā€œaliveā€ sounding, just incredible performances!

The SQ of Festival! sounds to me like they may have some percussion in somewhat of an SQ Quad mix, but with everything else in all 4 channels; but yeah very sad indeed.
 
I went with a 4 QL, but Moonflower may be my fav Santana album, and this has some of the same songs on it (studio version.) Iā€™ve even tried an up-mix with some of Moonflower but being live it doesnā€™t seem to do too well either. Maybe see if the stereo Festival! album will up-mix better. Thing is, the live versions are much more ā€œaliveā€ sounding, just incredible performances!

The SQ of Festival! sounds to me like they may have some percussion in somewhat of an SQ Quad mix, but with everything else in all 4 channels; but yeah very sad indeed.

to me the "Festival" Quad mix is akin to 'Double Stereo' but with the Fronts being a (low pass filtered? upshot is they are very Bass-heavy) copy of the Rears (high pass filtered? they seem all splashy, with a kind of hollowed out Treble).

Santana's "Amigos" and Herbie Hancock's "Secrets" (like "Festival" also said to have been mixed in San Francisco by Fred Catero) are mixed in a not dissimilar fashion, boomy yet clangy-sounding, just odd really.

the "Secrets" Quad however has some elements that feel like they are hard-panned and isolated to just one speaker but when you scrutinise the individual channels they are not, the same sounds also present in the other 3 just at a lower level.

as for "Amigos", i have gone through the SQ of that one time and time again and honestly i think its another of 'Fred's Fakes', unfortunately.

one thing that makes me smell a rat about all three of these Quads is when you sum the Surround Master-decoded Rears to Mono on any given SQ record, CF-leaked elements cancel out (so any leaked vocals or anything panned in the Centre Front that shouldn't be there gets wiped out) but on "Amigos", "Secrets" and "Festival" that doesn't happen.

what is both mystifying and disappointing in equal measure is that the Quads of Herbie Hancock's "Sextant", "Headhunters" & "Thrust" were all mixed by the same fellow as "Amigos", "Secrets" and "Festival" and the former three Quads are great examples of Surround Music, among the best Quads out there, so why he fudged it in 76-77 when he was doing The Real MultiCh McCoy in 73-74 i just can't fathom, can you?

oh and to add insult to injury, they are three lovely albums, with lots of proper surround potential. that hurts! harrumph! humbug! etc.!

"try a little harder now.." -- as the song goes! :LOL:
 
to me the "Festival" Quad mix is akin to 'Double Stereo' but with the Fronts being a (low pass filtered? upshot is they are very Bass-heavy) copy of the Rears (high pass filtered? they seem all splashy, with a kind of hollowed out Treble).
"try a little harder now.." -- as the song goes! :LOL:
yes way too much bass; I'll think with mine I'll check out each channel, and see if I can maybe do some stem type extraction and other tricks to further Frankenstein this mess into a quivering hulk of percussive Latin splendor... like QL I just doubt we'll ever see a proper mix of this stuff, so why not--- šŸ„ƒ awaaaayyyy!!!!
 
yes way too much bass; I'll think with mine I'll check out each channel, and see if I can maybe do some stem type extraction and other tricks to further Frankenstein this mess into a quivering hulk of percussive Latin splendor... like QL I just doubt we'll ever see a proper mix of this stuff, so why not--- šŸ„ƒ awaaaayyyy!!!!

do you have the regular Stereo LP? might be better off starting with that as a base for an upmix?
 
not the LP, but was just thinking about trying the Qobuz 24x96 files :unsure:

ok! i'd be really interested to see how you get on because i just briefly checked out Apple Music & Tidal's offerings for these albums that turned out to be the last two Santana Quads and it looks like there may be different versions of "Amigos" and "Festival" floating about on these services?

Tidal is calling the 'Master' of "Amigos" what sounds to me like the old 80's/90's CD that the artwork resembles (replete with the CD logo in the bottom right hand corner!) it sounds nice, not loud or compressed, so i think that is probably a pretty accurate portrayal of the original Stereo.

Apple has the same version of "Amigos" as Tidal and then a different sounding one on a Complete Santana albums set where it feels louder and just not as pleasant,. then on Apple Music from that same Complete Columbia set is "Festival" where its all squashed up into the Centre channel when I run it through the Dolby Surround decoder of the Yammy. yuck!

just grazing through my SM decoded Dutch SQ LP of "Amigos" right now for the first time in years, a rather unappetising experience! everything's reverb-y and phasey, some stuff feels like it may be coming from 'somewhere vaguely over there' but i still feel its a confection from idk what, i guess the Stereo? maybe with some added reverb as it all feels clangy and whispy and possibly some other tricks going on that for me don't quite work. a real shame, a great album, deserved much better Quad treatment. both albums did to be fair, such a mystery why they are so.. weird in Quad!

edit: i forgot to mention there's two versions of "Festival" on Tidal, one marked 'Master' and some other one, they didn't sound the same to me, i thought i preferred the one not marked 'Master' even though it seemed it may be a more modern remaster.. anyway all just cursory listens nothing techie, DR, waveforms and all that Jazz which you may get into if you really get sucked down the rabbit hole with this one and/or "Amigos"!
 
Last edited:
what is both mystifying and disappointing in equal measure is that the Quads of Herbie Hancock's "Sextant", "Headhunters" & "Thrust" were all mixed by the same fellow as "Amigos", "Secrets" and "Festival" and the former three Quads are great examples of Surround Music, among the best Quads out there, so why he fudged it in 76-77 when he was doing The Real MultiCh McCoy in 73-74 i just can't fathom, can you?

one thing that makes me smell a rat about all three of these Quads is when you sum the Surround Master-decoded Rears to Mono on any given SQ record, CF-leaked elements cancel out (so any leaked vocals or anything panned in the Centre Front that shouldn't be there gets wiped out) but on "Amigos", "Secrets" and "Festival" that doesn't happen.

just grazing through my SM decoded Dutch SQ LP of "Amigos" right now for the first time in years, a rather unappetising experience! everything's reverb-y and phasey, some stuff feels like it may be coming from 'somewhere vaguely over there' but i still feel its a confection from idk what, i guess the Stereo? maybe with some added reverb as it all feels clangy and whispy and possibly some other tricks going on that for me don't quite work. a real shame, a great album, deserved much better Quad treatment. both albums did to be fair, such a mystery why they are so.. weird in Quad!

rustyandi said:
I went to my copy of this LP
and played it with a TATE and Surround Master
The joystick has been not used as it would have been in early LPs
But it is 4 channel there are a small number of rear channel solo's
But they have blended the sound rather than made wide 4 channel surround
while it would not be a demo of Quad it is not that bad
But I have to say again (4 speakers big and the same) and TATE or Surround Master
to get the best surround

It just dawned on me a pair of possibilities:
1) the SQ encoder going bad when mixed, and monitoring just the SQ-encoded feed? Since the quad mixes were few in that timeframe and the consideration was for SQ only, Q8 was seen as a byproduct, maybe the SQ encoder was really screwed up.
2) the studio where it was mixed had NO proper quad facilities (the "joystick" panner) so they tried to emulate (badly) a SQ encoding? Phasing stuff deliberately so that at the end "something" will happen in the decoding?

Placing the mixing of these 6 album in the calendar can give a hint of what was really going on, if it was a constant screwup (=no quad facilities) or it was a progressive-weirdo (sq encoder going bad).
 
2) the studio where it was mixed had NO proper quad facilities (the "joystick" panner) so they tried to emulate (badly) a SQ encoding? Phasing stuff deliberately so that at the end "something" will happen in the decoding?
I was thinking the same thing. "Let's put that solo out-of-phase and maybe the decoders will throw that in the rear channels."
 
You experienced Quad masters here certainly understand the whole SQ thing far better than I ever will; always interesting to read these insights and ideas about it. Itā€™s just a mind blower for me that a musician of Santanaā€™s caliber (along with many others) end up with such trashy sounding versions. Could it be some of these engineers tasked with working with Quad back then just didnā€™t know the equipment/mixing techniques well enough to do it justice. Iā€™m still amazed at how some SQ titles sound fairly decent, while so many are just a real mess. But this was 1976, pretty late in the Quad game right?
 
Back
Top