What were the channel assignment issues? Does the AF release differ from the reel or the Q8?
The problem stems from the fact that there was a production error on the American Woman Q8. The first program has a channel error - off the top of my head I cannot remember exactly what it is. It's either swap the lefts front to back or swap the rights front to back. Whichever puts the drums MORE to the rear and lets the guitar solos spin in a clockwise direction.
But when the "Best of" was produced, they simply pulled the same tapes used for the American Woman Q8 and copied them over. So, the songs "America Woman", "No Time" and "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature" wind up with improper channel locations, but the rest of the Q8/Q4 is correct.
When the guys at Audio Fidelity tried to fix what was broken, I don't think they were aware of which songs were effected, and just simply went for what sounded good.
freddyblue has mentioned that on many of the RCA Master Tape boxes, there is NO notation for track format. So that could be any of three layouts and with the Guess Who stuff not being super discrete.... it's very hard to tell. So, that disc is a complete hash of it since they re-assigned channels on songs that didn't need to be changed.
However, I'm basing my educated assumption on what matches the other songs. If you listen to the rest of the American Woman album, or even the other Guess Who Q8's.... they don't really treat the 4 speakers as 4 corners.
A LOT of the early RCA Quads (in the PQ8 series) are more of a "four wall" type of layout utilizing the phantoms between speakers and essentially creating 4 pairs of stereo speakers.
So, to get the song American Woman straightened out, we want ONE guitar front and center. We want another guitar BACK Center. Bass & Burton are in all four. Drums are mixed to stereo and slanted slightly (about 85%) to the rear with kicker in Back Left and the rest of the kit in Back Right. Conga & Bongo seemed to have been mixed on their own channels and those go in the stereo phantoms Center Left and Center Right. The guitar solo should spin clockwise.
The song "Talisman" is really hard to figure out BUT, about 3/4's of the way through the song, two guitars engage in what I call a "steeplechase" effect. One guitar is literally chasing the other guitar around the room with about 180° degrees of separation between them. Get the channels WRONG, and it simply turns into Uncle Burton's guitar freakout.
But then we also have to make sure phasing is correct. This is where a 4-channel oscilloscope really comes in handy. A mono signal should produce a laser like beam. An out-of-phase mono signal will create a V between channels and this is incorrect. This is why some articles that spin around the room seem to disappear at certain points or the sound seems to pulsate.
Seriously, this is one of my favorite albums and just once I'd like to have a commercial, hi-res version that I just pop in the car and "dig". Doesn't make much sense to me if I have to buy a commercial copy, rip it, reset the channels, only to convert to DTS since I seem to lack the talent to create a DVD-Audio disc. I certainly don't have the facilities to stamp an SACD so, I would very much like to put on my Dr. Sam Beckett suit and set right what once went wrong. Not only for my enjoyment, but for yours too.
). Speaking of which, I can’t fathom why anyone would want to stand in the way of a Ten Years After quad release.
! I really do think it would be DV's kind of thing, it's just wishful thinking about it being remixed to quad.
