Who Gets To Decide If A Surround Sound Reissue Uses The Original Mix or A New One?

[sjcorne]

oh and very sorry its the wrong thread sjc but I have to say it now before I forget (!) can you please add Mac Davis' "Thunder In The Afternoon" to the list of Quads with Bass in Left Rear and Drums in Right Rear?

thank you!

edit: not sure if i have posted about it before? (told you i was getting forgetful!) but i have a theory about those 76/77 CBS Quads that all have Bass Rear Left/Drums Rear Right which are all uncredited on their SQ LPs.. basically that they were all by one engineer and I'm pretty sure I know who that engineer was..

Done

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...placement-in-old-quad-mixes.25511/post-395364

Yes, I believe you said it was likely Dick Bogert & Warren Vincent.

 

[fredblue]

Done

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...placement-in-old-quad-mixes.25511/post-395364

Yes, I believe you said it was likely Dick Bogert & Warren Vincent.

marvellous! many thanks!

oh yeah, so i did.. sheesh.. Gin's a helluva memory wiper huh!
I think Warren was maybe out of the picture by then but Dick was at the helm panning that rhythm section to the Rear with gusto!

oh ps. I think 360 Deg's of Billy has
some diagonal drums?

 

[Philip Spinner]

Wow! That is quite an achievement. I'm hoping to get there myself someday...

Obviously I don't expect you to remember everything, but do you recall if Herbie Hancock's Secrets and Santana's Festival have any actual separation?

It has been a while since I've heard these but I think it is as Fred Blue says, not very good. Right now I'm recovering from major shoulder surgery and since all my tapes are in large boxes and in storage it will be a while before I can get them out. Too heavy. I can't even play LP's at the moment which is a bummer. I will try to get them out as soon as possible and play them.

 

[Philip Spinner]

just want to chip in for a sec if I may, to say that while i agree most Columbia Rock/Pop/Soul (etc) Quads were active mixes, i'm pretty sure not all Masterworks Quad mixes are active extravaganzas, some of their Classical SQ LPs were called "surround spectaculars" or "surround sound" but others had more of a concert hall ambient type mix.

wrt Herbie's Secrets, a member here (i'll ask if he is happy to be identified) who's opinion about this stuff I trust totally has the Q8 and told me it is not discrete.

as for Festival, another QQ member who also knows their stuff and who has the Q8 (winopener) has described it on QQ as a "sucky" mix, double Stereo with different EQ in the Front channels from the duplicated Rears.

here's the exact quote from winopener;

"Let me say it clear: Festival quad is a double-stereo with different EQ for front and rear. There's nothing real quad going on. That's why i said it does need a remix: it's not a question of encoding/decoding, it's possible to argue for long about the fidelity of a quad 8 track but in any case it is a discrete media, and the quad presentation sucks big time."

check out the chat in this QQ thread on Santana's Lotus;

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...-256-stereo-download.23209/page-3#post-328901

I can't verify how the quad is on all those titles that were available only on disc but from what I remember almost all the classical tapes were fairly active, but it has been a while. I'm sure a few were ambience in the rear but I can't remember which ones. There are a lot.

 

[fredblue]

It has been a while since I've heard these but I think it is as Fred Blue says, not very good. Right now I'm recovering from major shoulder surgery and since all my tapes are in large boxes and in storage it will be a while before I can get them out. Too heavy. I can't even play LP's at the moment which is a bummer. I will try to get them out as soon as possible and play them.

get well soon!

 

[fredblue]

Gave a bit of a listen to each channel last night. It's not a quad mix, at all. In fact, the L/R and surround channels seem fairly similar. It's the center channel , for the parts I listened to, that seemed the most discrete. Interesting.

(its about 15 years too late to complain about it now but indulge me so i can get it off my chest!)

you know, its atrocious what those buffoons did.. they were presented with 4-channel Quad mastertapes and tasked with putting them on a modern multichannel format.. the brief would include, one assumes, assigning all the channels correctly and preserving the original Quad presentation.. yet for reasons known only to them, they went out of their way to screw them all up!!

think about it a minute, those arseholes took lovely Quads and made ambient double stereo utter bullshit out of them. i call that vandalism.

 

[ubertrout]

(its about 15 years too late to complain about it now but indulge me so i can get it off my chest!)

you know, its atrocious what those buffoons did.. they were presented with 4-channel Quad mastertapes and tasked with putting them on a modern multichannel format.. the brief would include, one assumes, assigning all the channels correctly and preserving the original Quad presentation.. yet for reasons known only to them, they went out of their way to screw them all up!!

think about it a minute, those arseholes took lovely Quads and made ambient double stereo utter bullshit out of them. i call that vandalism.

I'm going to give Sony a little credit here. There was some speculation that the multichannel tracks are just upmixes from stereo. Listening, at least to the different channels on the Ravel disc, showed that it wasn't an upmix - the woodwinds are much more prominent in the center channel in a way you'd only get from the multitracks. So they went back to the original session tapes (probably 8 tracks) and made a new 5.1 mix in the contemporary style with hall ambience surround. So they weren't lazy, but I think they were misguided.

I think especially back in the day (early 2000s), Sony felt that re-releasing quad mixes was anathema to their standards, and decided to make surround tracks from scratch. And some of them are really nice - especially for stuff that never had a quad release. But if you have a surround mix that was approved at the time of the making of the recording by the artists, that should be what you use, especially since the deficiencies of various quad systems are most problematic in classical.

For whatever reason, Deutsche Grammophon didn't agree, and pretty clearly pressed surround mixes from unreleased quad mixes, with the center and lfe summed and at lower volumes. But DG's quad mixes were for the most part very staid (we found exceptions later with the Mowrey recordings).

Either way, Dutton Epoch is getting to the RCA and Masterworks/Columbia archives, and I'm thrilled at the results. I don't know if Sony is going to realize the error of their ways for their own releases, but it's at least plausible?

 

[sjcorne]

I think especially back in the day (early 2000s), Sony felt that re-releasing quad mixes was anathema to their standards, and decided to make surround tracks from scratch. And some of them are really nice - especially for stuff that never had a quad release.

I always thought it was interesting that some of their Multichannel SACDs title did use the quad mixes (Ship Ahoy, 3+3, Head Hunters, Mysterious Traveller), yet others were remixed despite having a quad version in the vault (Toys In The Attic, these classical releases, etc).

 

[fredblue]

I'm going to give Sony a little credit here. There was some speculation that the multichannel tracks are just upmixes from stereo. Listening, at least to the different channels on the Ravel disc, showed that it wasn't an upmix - the woodwinds are much more prominent in the center channel in a way you'd only get from the multitracks. So they went back to the original session tapes (probably 8 tracks) and made a new 5.1 mix in the contemporary style with hall ambience surround. So they weren't lazy, but I think they were misguided.

I think especially back in the day (early 2000s), Sony felt that re-releasing quad mixes was anathema to their standards, and decided to make surround tracks from scratch. And some of them are really nice - especially for stuff that never had a quad release. But if you have a surround mix that was approved at the time of the making of the recording by the artists, that should be what you use, especially since the deficiencies of various quad systems are most problematic in classical.

For whatever reason, Deutsche Grammophon didn't agree, and pretty clearly pressed surround mixes from unreleased quad mixes, with the center and lfe summed and at lower volumes. But DG's quad mixes were for the most part very staid (we found exceptions later with the Mowrey recordings).

Either way, Dutton Epoch is getting to the RCA and Masterworks/Columbia archives, and I'm thrilled at the results. I don't know if Sony is going to realize the error of their ways for their own releases, but it's at least plausible?

no slack cut to Sony from me.
unforgivable Quadraphonic vandalism.
Sony maybe felt "Quad anathema" among a lot of dumb things in the early 2000's wrt their SACD strategy (or lack of).. imho they needed help, their ineptitude was our loss.

 

[fredblue]

I always thought it was interesting that some of their Multichannel SACDs title did use the quad mixes (Ship Ahoy, 3+3, Head Hunters, Mysterious Traveller), yet others were remixed despite having a quad version in the vault (Toys In The Attic, these classical releases, etc).

latter-day surround snobbery/anti-Quad/confirmation bias bullshit may be contributing factors to Sony Masterworks Quad SACD desecration.. or may not.. can anybody tell me how qualified Louise De La Fuente and Richard King were to decide to so summarily discard the old Quad beauties and do their own thing.

the Aerosmith Quad/5.1 switcheroo i cannot account for. oh hang on, maybe J.Messina needed new tyres for his Ferrari.

 

[4-earredwonder]

no slack cut to Sony from me.
unforgivable Quadraphonic vandalism.
Sony maybe felt "Quad anathema" among a lot of dumb things in the early 2000's wrt their SACD strategy (or lack of).. imho they needed help, their ineptitude was our loss.

One must remember that SONY's DSD/ SACD format was STEREO before the switch to multichannel to compete with DVD~A which was multichannel from the start. After the failure of QUAD in the 70's, SONY perceived DSD as an 'audiophile' stereo format as a 'replacement' for RBCD.

I agree they should've released those 70's QUADS intact but instead opted to tinker with them, again, to compete with DVD~A's 5.1 strategy and the 5.1 standard of DVD's motion picture/concert releases.

And also notable, before SONY's takeover of BMG [RCA and their associated labels], even BMG was reluctant to release multichannel music only opting to release a scant few DVD~A titles under the RCA banner.

The early 00's was also uncharted territory for SURROUND MUSIC as a lot of those 70's Columbia QUAD remix engineers were 'probably' no longer in Sony's employ and at that time only DTS Entertainment was releasing music in Surround.

And of course the fact that there WERE two competing formats [a potential Beta vs. VHS fiasco] was a further cause for confusion to the buying public.....and record labels alike....as to WHAT format to choose.

 

[bmoura]

I always thought it was interesting that some of their Multichannel SACDs title did use the quad mixes (Ship Ahoy, 3+3, Head Hunters, Mysterious Traveller), yet others were remixed despite having a quad version in the vault (Toys In The Attic, these classical releases, etc).

That was also true with some of the Universal Music titles. Where the Surround SACDs had a newly commissioned Surround Sound mix vs. the edition in the vaults.
A decision by the record label and the artists.

 

[bmoura]

latter-day surround snobbery/anti-Quad/confirmation bias bullshit may be contributing factors to Sony Masterworks Quad SACD desecration.. or may not.. can anybody tell me how qualified Louise De La Fuente and Richard King were to decide to so summarily discard the old Quad beauties and do their own thing.

the Aerosmith Quad/5.1 switcheroo i cannot account for. oh hang on, maybe J.Messina needed new tyres for his Ferrari.

As with the Universal Music Surround SACDs and the Warner Music DVD-A releases, it is up to the artist and record label on whether to use an earlier mix - or to do a new one when an album is reissued.

 

[bmoura]

.

 

[bmoura]

One must remember that SONY's DSD/ SACD format was STEREO before the switch to multichannel to compete with DVD~A which was multichannel from the start.

No, SACD was designed to have both Stereo and Surround Sound from the start. Single Layer Stereo SACDs were completed first in development and were the first SACDs released for that reason. Later on, Single Layer Surround SACDs, CD compatible Hybrid Layer SACDs and then Hybrid Layer Surround Sound SACDs.

All of these SACD formats were on the market for some time before the ill-fated "Dual Disc" was released. Dual Disc was the DVD-A camp's attempt to add CD compatibility when they realized it was a market requirement.

 

[winopener]

The big promoter for DualDisc was the same Sony that first delivered then pulled the plug to SACD. Plenty of Sony titles in DD format (+200 at Discogs), some Universal, some indie, some Warner (USA only, other countries got separate cd+dvd package)

 

[fredblue]

That was also true with some of the Universal Music titles. Where the Surround SACDs had a newly commissioned Surround Sound mix vs. the edition in the vaults.
A decision by the record label and the artists.

interesting info., thank you!

do you know the current state of play with regard to Quad masters held in Universal's vaults?

we've had DTS and other modern day format reissues of Quads which are Universal assets, including, Ohio Players, Steve Miller, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Allman Brothers.. can one presume the rest of the Quad masters from labels such as Capricorn, Mercury & Capitol are safe and sound in Universal's vaults too and so may also get a reissue someday?

 

[bmoura]

The big promoter for DualDisc was the same Sony that first delivered then pulled the plug to SACD.

Actually the "big promoter" of the Dual Disc format was Warner Music along with Dolby Labs.
Sony Music joined in with Universal Music later on.