7 More Dutton Vocalion Releases in July 2019 - Guess Who, Paul Revere & Raiders, Charlie Rich

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The five DV SACD's that Mrs. Surround bought for my birthday have arrived (safely with no cracked jewel cases.) But she won't give them to me NOW!!!! She's gonna wait until my actual birthday! :eek: I don't know where they are because she has hid them. No amount of begging, obvious signs of heart palpitations, sweating or chills is doing any good. I'll have to go cold turkey. Some one call this guy...😁

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You can always get her with that infamous line ....... NO SUGAR TONIGHT, ar!

 
Regarding your wife's comments on the "old 60s ****," you can start playing stuff from the 50s too...then let's hear what she has to say!

Not unless that 50s stuff is in surround!

Actually, there is a bunch of late 50's / early-60s stuff that really, really kicks ass when played through the Surround Master V2. I'll need to post my dissertation in one of the Surround Master threads. How's that sound @chucky3042? Oh, and then there is Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn quad on The Collection. That's from 1959...I wonder what multi-track machine they managed to record that one on given it's from the late 1950's.
 
The five DV SACD's that Mrs. Surround bought for my birthday have arrived (safely with no cracked jewel cases.) But she won't give them to me NOW!!!! She's gonna wait until my actual birthday! :eek: I don't know where they are because she has hid them. No amount of begging, obvious signs of heart palpitations, sweating or chills is doing any good. I'll have to go cold turkey. Some one call this guy...😁

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How long ‘til your birthday?
 
So, I put the Rubinstein Emperor Concerto in from this batch, but was surprised that my player only saw 3 tracks? It looks like the Michael Dutton mix of the Hunt Sonata isn't on this disc?
I believe it's like Sextant, part multi, part stereo, if your machine is set for multi only it won't see it until you switch to stereo.
 
OK everyone. This is a poll thread that will (should) stand the test of time. Please, no bickering or name calling or any of that crap. Q-Eight has a theory and speaks with authority on what he's experienced in the past. fredblue is probably correct is stating that the master tape is represented exactly as DV received it by the SACD from Dutton-Vocalion.

Arguing and name calling will not change anything. Just like the DVD-A of "Harvest", some think it's messed up, some don't. Can we please leave it at that. You can mess around all you like with the audio on your PC's, and you could try it Q-Eights way to see if you agree, but let's not drag all of that into this poll thread. This thread concerns what was released. Noting that you think the channels are not proper is perfectly legit to post in a poll thread. Saying that you think the audio is mastered exactly as the master tape is also something legit to post in a poll thread.

Heated exchanges in ANY thread at QQ are not appreciated. The sad part about this is that I personally respect HIGHLY both QQ members here, and I totally understand feeling protective of each members opinion, and in fredblue's desire to protect the only label that is currently pumping out surround discs, which puts me in a tough spot. I do not "side" with anyone. I do appreciate the two opinions, you must believe that.

I will relate a story here from the AF days. Marshal sent me a test SACD-R of the Best of the Guess Who which I was thrilled to get and immediately ripped to a disc that I could play in my car. After listening to it on the way to work and back, I noticed that it was totally screwed up with regard to the channel assignments. I immediately email Marshall and he had his guys check and the master tape was indeed noted wrong, and the channels were in the wrong spot. I can search for the emails when I get a chance, but Marshall thanked me considerably, as that master was about to go to Austria for pressing. In effect, I saved AF from an embarrassing release. (The same thing happened to "The Collection", but I did not catch every error on that one)

So it's VERY easy to guess that the master is the issue, not the mastering.

So please - everyone get along. It would make me a lot happier if we did.

I get what you're saying Jon, but I'll take a Poll thread with bickering and name calling over any Poll threads where 82.7% of content is:

"Has it shipped yet? No it hasn't. Damn Postal service!"

Just my 3.4 Canadian cents. ;)
 
Burton's voice never gets old...so good.

the man is (in my humble eyes) a musical genius. that's it! as Mr. Cummings says himself; "this is the end of the record".. boom boom! 😛

edit: i would just like to add (tap, tap.. is this thing on? 🎤 😆 ) i've heard a fair few quality singers in my brief time on planet Earth, both on record and "in the flesh" and even had a go or 3 at crap singing a bit myself and really this man's voice is just phenomenal.

Burton Cummings has one of, if not the most versatile and capable voices i've ever heard, he can express emotion galore one minute and absolutely rock your socks off the next -- oh and he wrote almost all this stuff as well. sweet baby James!!!! 😳 😱🤩😻

edit 2: its maybe also a moustache thing. i mean, Freddie Mercury, come onnnnn... instant ultra singing ability! 🧔🏻 if Tom Selleck could sing... 🤔 🤣
 
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So, I put the Rubinstein Emperor Concerto in from this batch, but was surprised that my player only saw 3 tracks? It looks like the Michael Dutton mix of the Hunt Sonata isn't on this disc?

Ubertrout, if you have an OPPO you probably have it set to output SACD multichannel ....... it won't play the stereo tracks unless you re~program it to do so.
 
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I finally had a chance to check all of this out. Here's what I found.

1) First and foremost: These Dutton-Vocalion SACDs of the RCA Guess Who albums are mastered perfectly. There are no channel errors with regards to what was on the master tape and what is on the SACD. It's exactly right. I checked both my Q8 rips and where available, my Q4 rips, and in all cases, what was on the 40+ year old RCA tapes is what's on the sparkling new SACD's from Dutton Vocalion.

2) Q-Eight has discovered something very interesting. Let's just look at the tune "No Time". This is a great tune to use as an example because it was on two different Q8's that I have archived rips of, Best of Vol 1 and American Woman. (Just for a point of fact, the channel assignments are exactly the same on "American Woman" and on "Best of Vol 1", so there is no error on one and not the other)

So below is a wav form of the Q8 Audio from an American Woman Q8 rip alongside a rip of the D-V SACD.
I have zoomed in on the first few seconds of the tune and you can clearly see that they are virtually the same. There are no mastering errors or channel errors here.

If you look closely, you'll "see" the intro drums in the Front Right and the Rear Left Channels of both rips. This puts them in the center of the room via a diagonal audio field. Maybe this is what they were going for, but......................

Q8 vs SACD No Time.jpg



I then followed Q-Eights suggestion and swapped the Rights. This put the drums in the rear channels (predominately) and I listened to the whole track. I liked it. I liked it a LOT more. And, just as he said, at the very end, the echoing vocal goes around the listening speakers clockwise perfectly - pure RCA Gimmick Mode.

Here's a look at the intro wav with the rights swapped:

Right Channels Swapped.jpg



To me, this looks, and sounds, more orderly. It makes for a better listen - at least to me.

Is it an error? We'll never know. Is it a mastering or DV error? NO WAY. In fact, if DV decided to modify the master and it was not the way it was actually intended, I am sure they would catch **** for doing so. They did what was proper, but it really does seem that the master could have been created improperly.

Interesting banter for a lazy summer weekend.
 
On an Oppo at least mine stop the disc hit the audio button on the remote and you will see a pop up menu. Choose SACD stereo and then you can see play the stereo tracks. This wont change the default setting of SACD surround if you set it up that way.
My Denon multi disc player is the same. Needs to be pre programed for stereo sacd as well as the cd layer.
 
One more visual clue. Take a look at the wav forms (SACD, Normalized for easier viewing) at the end of the tune. You can see the audio envelopes of the swirling echo'd vocal going from channel to channel. I have numbered them in order of hearing them. If you look at the waves, the sound goes from

FRONT LEFT to REAR RIGHT to FRONT RIGHT to REAR LEFT - That's nuts!?

odd.jpg


When you swap the right channels (not pictured here), it goes from FRONT LEFT to FRONT RIGHT to REAR RIGHT to REAR LEFT, then back to the FRONT LEFT. That's a real swirl effect. Right?

right.jpg




Swirls.jpg
 
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One more visual clue. Take a look at the wav forms (SACD, Normalized for easier viewing) at the end of the tune. You can see the audio envelopes of the swirling echo'd vocal going from channel to channel. I have numbered them in order of hearing them. If you look at the waves, the sound goes from

FRONT LEFT to REAR RIGHT to FRONT RIGHT to REAR LEFT - That's nuts!?

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When you swap the right channels (not pictured here), it goes from FRONT LEFT to FRONT RIGHT to REAR RIGHT to REAR LEFT, then back to the FRONT LEFT. That's a real swirl effect. Right?

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Great work, oh master audio sleuth! Does this work for all the tracks? Can’t wait until I have time to try this.

It would be nice to have a composite list of multichannel tracks with similar recommended channel swaps. For example based on my ears I agree with reports that swapping front/rear on “A Space in Time” by Ten Years After makes it sound much better.
 
I think the smoking gun is the song "Talisman". Remember I posted video of how the guitars freak out during the instrumental breaks? Swapping channels makes them participate in a steeple chase around the room.


Great work, oh master audio sleuth! Does this work for all the tracks? Can’t wait until I have time to try this.

It would be nice to have a composite list of multichannel tracks with similar recommended channel swaps. For example based on my ears I agree with reports that swapping front/rear on “A Space in Time” by Ten Years After makes it sound much better.

It only effects the four songs that appeared on Track 1 of the original Q8: American Woman, No Time, Talisman and Humpty's Blues.
The same strange channel arrangement makes an appearance on The Best of the Guess Who Q8 on the songs No Time and American Woman which I would imagine were pulled from the same master tape created to make the American Woman album.

Using an audio oscilloscope is the easiest way to spot the issues.
 
Great work, oh master audio sleuth! Does this work for all the tracks? Can’t wait until I have time to try this.

It would be nice to have a composite list of multichannel tracks with similar recommended channel swaps. For example based on my ears I agree with reports that swapping front/rear on “A Space in Time” by Ten Years After makes it sound much better.

check out Fourplay's thread 🙂

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...s/channel-reassignment-recommendations.19693/
 
So, I put the Rubinstein Emperor Concerto in from this batch, but was surprised that my player only saw 3 tracks? It looks like the Michael Dutton mix of the Hunt Sonata isn't on this disc?
Michael Dutton doesn’t mix these. They are old quad mixes.

The Sonata is added as a “bonus work” in stereo only. Presumably because it was never mixed to quad back in the day.

A sonata in quad might not be much to hear anyway. :)
 
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