HiRez Poll Beach Boys - PET SOUNDS [DVD-A/BDA]

[Marcsten]

So the DVDA arrived this week and NYE I finally got time alone to listen pretty close (no I was not drinking - yet). Its a two sided disc and I wanted to hear the DVDA side, obviously. Put it in and started listening. By way of background - sorry if this is too long - I have never been a BB fan and this is the only recording of theirs I own. Even as a 12 YO back in the day I was a Rolling Stones guy and to a lesser extent the Beatles. Surf music held zero appeal to me. But I am pretty familiar with about half of Pet Sounds over the years and agree its a departure so gave it a shot here. The extensive liner notes point out what a change it was for them and how the label and fans rebelled. That only tells me how fickle their fans were in 1966. To me, this is clearly a BB album. The unmistakable harmonies and falsetto and so on, although the songs are generally downbeat and introspective. In short, I like it, a while lot more than their other stuff.
As for the mix, well my first impression was there couldn't have been all this reverb on it in 1966! When I had played through everything except some of the outtakes at the end, I played some stereo tracks. I was right. Who thought that was a good idea? Then I figured out what I had done. I was playing the wrong side. It was the DTS side. God I am so old.
So flipped it and, maybe its just me, but the DVDA side sounds way less reverby, and not bad at all. Of course greater dynamics as well. Returning to the liner notes, they say that Brian Wilson subscribed to the Wall of Sound ala Phil Spector. Really? Not that I can tell. Why do I bring that up? Because that is how the surround mix sounds to me. Big and enveloping but not discrete for the most part. Some tracks do have instruments isolated in corners, but the Doobies this ain't!
Overall, the engineering back in 1966 is really what is most on display to me, as it was for the Beatles (but not the Stones!!). Just about no one else did this sort of sophisticated stuff that is pretty common now.
SO for me, the music is a 6, which is about three times what I give other BB stuff, and for the mix, I don't know, maybe a 6 also. For the DVDA. For the DTS, a 3. Overall I'd say 6.

 

[ar surround]

Decided to take a chance on this one in spite of the mixed reviews. I'll admit, I was never a real fan of this album aside from the hits. First off, I think the fidelity is great. The mix provides an immersive experience in that I feel like the music is surrounding me, however I don't hear many significant discrete elements. I spent the day ripping the album and messing with the channel assignments... What I found is that on "Wouldn't It Be Nice", the center and subwoofer are reversed, but this only occurs on that song. There is discrete, vocal-only info in the center channel of most songs, but you have to raise the level of the center channel to hear it. Also, there are multiple songs where the wave forms appear that they may be assigned to the wrong channels... The funny thing is, however, that when you start shuffling the channels around, it doesn't make much difference to the overall sound of the mix! And raising the center channel levels doesn't make it sound any better either (those vocals are already present elsewhere in the mix!) So, after wasting hours of my life, listening to these songs over and over, tweaking this and that, I decided the original mix is just fine... But I also decided this is an amazing, intimate, textured, emotional album that goes much deeper than the hits and I can't believe I ignored it all these years! I give it 3 for fidelity, 3 for content, and 1 for the mix, so 7.

"...after wasting hours of my life..." Add me to that esteemed list, Sean: I messed around with Wouldn't It Be Nice because that song seems to be the most convoluted mix of the lot. For my 6th iteration, I came up with:

1) Swapping the fronts with the rears as @Plan9 and others mentioned, then
2) Lowering the left channels by -4 dB to get the lead vocal centered, then
3) Swapping the center and subwoofer channels because they are reversed in the mix, then
4) Raising the volume of the center channel by 20 dB to be able to hear some background vocals action in that speaker, then
5) Raising the subwoofer channel by 25 dB to augment the bass, then
6) Rerouting the subwoofer channel to the LF to try to get the bass more centered

So what did I come up with after all this messing around? Essentially, a really boring surround mix of Wouldn't It Be Nice that is concentrated towards the front and center stage.

Then I listened to the other tracks. Except for God Only Knows and perhaps a couple of others, the lead vocals are skewed to towards the left front and would require the same +/- 4 dB adjustment to center them. This would possibly result in the same bland mono-centric mix that I came up with on Wouldn't It Be Nice.

I've got one more idea that I'll fool with later (to waste another hour or so of my life.)

 

[Scottie-boy]

I have owned this DVD-A for ages. I had bought it back in the day because I had always heard Pet Sounds was one of the greatest albums of all time. Was always a beach Boys fan through my Dad's collection of greatest hits, but had never listened to this one. I say that because I had no bias towards mono mix, stereo, etc.
When I first listened to it - I didn't get it at all. After listening to it several times its now one if my favorite hi-rez disks of all time. Its awesome music. I do understand some of the gripes about rears being to loud, channel displacements etc. - but I love it. 9 for me with hopes of another mix reaching 10.

After some time, changed my vote to a 10. While others have complained about channel issues, etc. on "wouldn't it be nice", this is one of my least favorite songs on the album - and since this mix was my first listen ever, my virgin ears don't know the difference. This album is every bit the genius I was always told it was. As always, my gauge of album greatness is whether or not I continually come back to it for years and years. This one still does it for me - and moves me. It's a ten.

 

[jaybird100]

I'm hoping they give mixing this another try. I'm sure they could do better.

 

[somethingcleveridunno]

I'm hoping they give mixing this another try. I'm sure they could do better.

With its profile in the public and among critics, Pet Sounds seems like a natural candidate for that AI de-mixing technology that Peter Jackson's company came up with.

Or, y'know, labels could just have the mixing engineer listen to a sample of the final production test. It's so sad that so much work was put into this, only to have someone not catch errors introduced at the final stages.

 

[JediJoker]

With its profile in the public and among critics, Pet Sounds seems like a natural candidate for that AI de-mixing technology that Peter Jackson's company came up with.

I don't think that tech is really necessary in this case. It's already been remixed into stereo and surround sound; it could be mixed again into immersive.

 

[somethingcleveridunno]

I don't think that tech is really necessary in this case. It's already been remixed into stereo and surround sound; it could be mixed again into immersive.

Instrumentation was all smashed down to a mono track during production, only the vocals are discrete on the masters. Limitations of Brian making such a complex album with 4-track equipment.

 

[jaybird100]

Instrumentation was all smashed down to a mono track during production, only the vocals are discrete on the masters. Limitations of Brian making such a complex album with 4-track equipment.

Brian never intended it to be released in anything but mono.

 

[ar surround]

After some time, changed my vote to a 10. While others have complained about channel issues, etc. on "wouldn't it be nice", this is one of my least favorite songs on the album - and since this mix was my first listen ever, my virgin ears don't know the difference. This album is every bit the genius I was always told it was. As always, my gauge of album greatness is whether or not I continually come back to it for years and years. This one still does it for me - and moves me. It's a ten.

If you want to take the time, you can improve the mix as discussed here:

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...pet-sounds-5-1-even-if-youre-not-a-vet.32748/

 

[ar surround]

With its profile in the public and among critics, Pet Sounds seems like a natural candidate for that AI de-mixing technology that Peter Jackson's company came up with.

Or, y'know, labels could just have the mixing engineer listen to a sample of the final production test. It's so sad that so much work was put into this, only to have someone not catch errors introduced at the final stages.

The latest incarnation of Sounds Of Summer (3 disc set) has a lot of tracks that were reworked into stereo using DeMIX Pro. The results are variable. Good Vibrations isn’t so hot because they couldn’t separate the various voices. And I suspect that they had issues separating the music also. At least with Pet Sounds, they have multis that separate the voices nicely.

 

[quadrifonico]

Listened on blu-ray . Subwoofer provides a wide and deep oomph, but this album still sounds better in mono. Multichannel mix sounds a bit incoherent to me, it basically splits the voices in the rears. I voted 8

 

[Dynamic Editor]

When adapting a piece of art to a different medium, one must ask themselves, "What is the point? What else should be said about this that hasn't been said already?"

This is why changes are made through adaptation. What can be said in a book can and will be told told differently in a movie. Translating a mix from mono to stereo or stereo to 5.1 is no different. Different elements separate further when translating to a higher number of channels, provoking a different effect. Even if you want to retain the spirit of the previous material, changes are necessary to drive the growth of art as a whole. So, what did the mixing engineers of this 5.1 mix of Pet Sounds want to add to the dialogue?

The answer is basically nothing, judging by this mix. The 5.1 version of Pet Sounds is essentially the stereo version of the album, sometimes with a little reverb added to either the front or back channels as an afterthought to denote a sense of space. Often the mix is too loud in the back channels, making it sound as if the band is slightly behind you. But the mixers seem so damn scared of changing the stereo mix that it's honestly rather pathetic.

To an extent, I sort of get it. For an album that incorporates Wall of Sound production, translating that same effect to surround sound is a tall task. Wall of Sound is meant to have elements mix together in mono to create a powerful effect. That's a big reason why people consider the mono version of Pet Sounds to be the definitive mix. But I still believe there is a way to meet the medium and the message in the middle to an extent, retaining a diffuse enough sound that still incorporates somewhat discrete-ish elements as well.

But again, the 5.1 mix of Pet Sounds didn't attempt to do that, nor did it attempt to do much at all, offering so little that you'd probably get more from the album playing it in mono or stereo with a surround sound setting atop it. So why even bother with this mix? I'm giving this a 2.