HiRez Poll Blue Oyster Cult - AGENTS OF FORTUNE [SACD]

[kap'n krunch]

a 4.
Boring mix....not their best album and a sonic mess (nothing above 20k but it sounds like there's nothing above 12 K!).
Sold it, even though I like BOC....

 

[fredblue]

A nominee for the worst (modern) MC release of a classic.

Reaper, the most famous track, is a complete throwaway here.

What the hell were they thinking?
Do they let just anyone remix a million-selling classic?

I give it a 2, just because
a) at least they released it and
b) any track still beats Gladys Knight/Midnight Train to Georgia.

Yes!! that Quad of Gladys Knight is absolutely bloody AWFUL...!!!!

 

[fredblue]

Very late to the party, but I just got this last night...

While it is certainly not the direction I would have taken if I were doing the mix, I was surprised and somewhat delighted by the direction Shelly Yakus ultimately took. There is a lot of detail there, I just had to crank up the levels on the rear channels to hear it. I am leaving this one in the spinner for a few days to see how it wears.

totally agree! the mix is much better than its abysmal reputation, I like it even more than the last time I played it (last May! it's not a frequent flyer round here!).

anyway.. if you've got this disc and find it lacking, try this:

1.) tweak and raise the rears a bit (just 1dB apiece was enough for me but you may want to add a bit more),
2.) experiment with moving the rears further away from your listening position,
3.) give each channel a notch of 0.5dB @ 2khz and 6khz...

..and this one really comes to life!

 

[ar surround]

totally agree! the mix is much better than its abysmal reputation, I like it even more than the last time I played it (last May! it's not a frequent flyer round here!).

anyway.. if you've got this disc and find it lacking, try this:

1.) tweak and raise the rears a bit (just 1dB apiece was enough for me but you may want to add a bit more),
2.) experiment with moving the rears further away from your listening position,
3.) give each channel a notch of 0.5dB @ 2khz and 6khz...

..and this one really comes to life!

I find that a not insignificant number of discs, as well as this one, benefit from tweeking the surrounds. On a few, I even crank them up 6dB. Not surprising however, I've never found a need to adjust the surrounds on any of Steven Wilson's mixes.

 

[neil wilkes]

totally agree! the mix is much better than its abysmal reputation, I like it even more than the last time I played it (last May! it's not a frequent flyer round here!).

anyway.. if you've got this disc and find it lacking, try this:

1.) tweak and raise the rears a bit (just 1dB apiece was enough for me but you may want to add a bit more),
2.) experiment with moving the rears further away from your listening position,
3.) give each channel a notch of 0.5dB @ 2khz and 6khz...

..and this one really comes to life!

So essentially, you're saying it has been screwed up in the mastering then by the sound of it?

 

[fredblue]

So essentially, you're saying it has been screwed up in the mastering then by the sound of it?

pretty much Neil, yeah.. though I doubt the source material they were given was upto much.. they didn't help matters by making the rears too quiet and dialling certain things down in the mix. it's certainly the best I've ever heard the album.. though its always sounded pretty shit!

gotta say though I would have cranked the fcuk out of that cowbell in "Reaper" for the 5.1 mix, just for fits and giggles..!!

 

[keenly]

I find that a not insignificant number of discs, as well as this one, benefit from tweeking the surrounds. On a few, I even crank them up 6dB. Not surprising however, I've never found a need to adjust the surrounds on any of Steven Wilson's mixes.

Yes i find that too! I need to raise the rears when playing; Usher 8701, R Kelly Chocolate Factory, Meat Loaf Couldn't of said it.

I find it utterly stupid to put alot of music in the rears but then make the volume so low one can hardly hear it! STUPIDITY i tell thee! Meat loaf sounds AMAZING when you turn the rears up abut 2-3db. Vocals, guitars and more in the rears yet waaaaaay too low in comparison to the fronts.

 

[keenly]

Yes this album is a bit flat but if you turn rears up 2-3db the MC mix sounds pretty good!

 

[jaypfunk]

I don't understand all the hate for this one either. This is a great record. Yeah the sound is a little dull but not horrible. keenly's suggestion to raise the rears is a good one. You can hear lots of cool stuff in the mix that you don't on the stereo mix. I gave it an 8.

 

[ar surround]

I don't understand all the hate for this one either. This is a great record. Yeah the sound is a little dull but not horrible. keenly's suggestion to raise the rears is a good one. You can hear lots of cool stuff in the mix that you don't on the stereo mix. I gave it an 8.

Yes, I also crank up the surrounds until they become somewhat overbearing and then back them off a bit. There are a number of 5.1 recordings that need this adjustment to yield a satisfying surround field. Perhaps the subject of a new thread some day?

 

[kap'n krunch]

I'm sorry I'm such a pain in the ass..
This mix is SOOOO dark sounding that it SPOILS IT for me...

 

[Watsy1958]

I do have to admit it's pretty terrible I don't have a Sacd play so I play my Sacd's on a old PS3 then with software I have on my old PS3 im able to extract the music and convert to flac format. Normally any other Sacd i'v done was 100% but this blu oyster cult turned out down right terrible. There is no doubt something went wrong when they remastered this album into 5.1 what a train wreck .

 

[atlantasteve]

I think some of the tracks are just fine and others lack punch. Unfortunately, I am not going to adjust speaker levels song to song. So I just tune out on the bleh tracks and perk up on the sonically exciting ones. I give it a 6.

 

[hafquark]

This was BOC's Dark Side of the Moon moment. An album more overtly commercial than its predecessors, but unmistakably a band at its peak. Is the SACD rather murky with somewhat rolled-off highs? Yes, just like the stereo LP. Is the surround mix conservative? Yes, but also more clear and revealing than the vinyl and far from being a doubled stereo or purely ambient. As always for BOC, the louder the better.

An 8, I say.

 

[MrSmithers]

I love this album (content wise) but the surround mix is a bit of a let down... My vote is a generous 7 (Content 9/Mix 6/Sound 5) because I love the music and it's still better then the stereo version. And there are some nice surround moments but it's just not very cohesive... It also has quite a dull lifeless sound...

Raising the rears does add some oomph but we NEED MORE COWBELL!!! Where's Gene Frenkle when you really need him?!

 

[fredblue]

I love this album (content wise) but the surround mix is a bit of a let down... My vote is a generous 7 (Content 9/Mix 6/Sound 5) because I love the music and it's still better then the stereo version. And there are some nice surround moments but it's just not very cohesive... It also has quite a dull lifeless sound...

Raising the rears does add some oomph but we NEED MORE COWBELL!!! Where's Gene Frenkle when you really need him?!

you know Dr. Zachary Smith(ers), you've prompted me to go all Robbie The Robot and have another look at this one on the computermabob..

..i just can't see how somebody like Shelly Yakus could go from mixing mega discrete-o-Quads like Edgar Winter's "Jasmine Nightdreams" and Rick Derringer's "Spring Fever" to this, can you??

..but then the 80's were a cruel decade for some of the 70's survivors, maybe the decade just beat the Quad out of him!?

 

[MrSmithers]

you know Dr. Zachary Smith(ers), you've prompted me to go all Robbie The Robot and have another look at this one on the computermabob..

..i just can't see how somebody like Shelly Yakus could go from mixing mega discrete-o-Quads like Edgar Winter's "Jasmine Nightdreams" and Rick Derringer's "Spring Fever" to this, can you??

..but then the 80's were a cruel decade for some of the 70's survivors, maybe the decade just beat the Quad out of him!?

Oh cool well do see what you can download from that computerised clump of a mix Fred Flintstone... Funnily enough one of the better mixes for me is ‘E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)’! And you just wonder why they made such a blithering booby on some of the other songs?

I think yourself and Jonathan have alluded that when Sony jumped into the multichannel pool of opportunity - a lot of the albums were rush jobs or more of an afterthought… Not withstanding the great quad 5.1 reissues like Ship Ahoy etc… So we end up with cruddy mixes on What’s The Story, Alice In Chains (not heard it) and a few others I’m sure?

I mean this album does have some really cool moments (with the rears adjusted, think I went for +3db) but there’s still something just lacking - it sounds like a wobbling weakling? Maybe the mix is good but when it was mastered it got turned into a gigantic gargoyle?! I say, I say we must have good mixes to counter the neanderthal ninnies of the stereo only brigade!

 

[fredblue]

Oh cool well do see what you can download from that computerised clump of a mix Fred Flintstone... Funnily enough one of the better mixes for me is ‘E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)’! And you just wonder why they made such a blithering booby on some of the other songs?

I think yourself and Jonathan have alluded that when Sony jumped into the multichannel pool of opportunity - a lot of the albums were rush jobs or more of an afterthought… Not withstanding the great quad 5.1 reissues like Ship Ahoy etc… So we end up with cruddy mixes on What’s The Story, Alice In Chains (not heard it) and a few others I’m sure?

I mean this album does have some really cool moments (with the rears adjusted, think I went for +3db) but there’s still something just lacking - it sounds like a wobbling weakling? Maybe the mix is good but when it was mastered it got turned into a gigantic gargoyle?! I say, I say we must have good mixes to counter the neanderthal ninnies of the stereo only brigade!

that's true, those Sony Single Layer 5.1's are a pretty mixed bag with many a head-scratcher.. and frankly there's a fair bit of surround rubbish when the albums could and should've had great mixes (Macy Gray, KD Lang/Tony Bennett Wonderful World). for me the most consistent mixes are by Thom Cadley and even 1 or 2 of those aren't his best work imho.. though it was kind of early days in 5.1 music mixing as an art, i guess? (as evidenced by things like the Gloria Estefan MCh SACD which is fun but rather weird and uneven).. one of the biggest obstacles in the success of and subsequent enjoyment of those SACDs is that not many of the albums bothered the upper reaches of any chart (many were kind of obscure and nothing to write home about musically, put it that way). also, a number of the mixes on those SACDs were originally intended for DVD-Video releases and video collections and in fact ended up in a sort of dual inventory (albeit with potentially different audiences) on a number of them (Celine Dion Hits comp, Alice In Chains Hits, Lauryn Hill Unplugged, 911 Concert in NY, Roger Waters in the flesh, Divas VH1) and so it could be argued were mixed for a video/MTV type crowd maybe more than the audiophile audience.. and weirdly other stuff that got mixed in MultiCh (Jennifer Lopez hits for example) were unfortunately Stereo only SACD and made it out in Surround on DVD-Video instead complete with all sorts of extraneous sound effects linking bits and other guff. oh i dunno.. i don't really think about them much now Will tbh, i'm so besotted with the DV Quad offerings and many tick all the boxes of what i look for in a great surround music release that a lot of the early days 5.1's are but a dim distant memory!

 

[Beefalo]

I'm a fan of the whole album and know it quite week. The MSFL gold CD was in regular rotation on my car stereo back in the day. I like this SACD much better than the gold CD. If I may offer my observations:
1. Center channel volume low. I raised it 5db. The main vocals rarely come from the center. Vocals are spread around too much for me.
2. Surround channel volume not low. They only put out discreet sounds 25% of the time. The rest of the time sounds like a bleed from one of the main channels. That's why you really don't notice them and want to increase the volume.
3. The lowest bass (not all the bass) needs a boost from a subwoofer or two.
I'm giving it a 7.
How many multichannel SACD are being released these days?
Beggars can't be choosers!

 

[JohnA]

A 7 from me.
Didn't have to fiddle with surround levels like others, they were spot on for me.
Dynamics very flat, mix average.
We've had *much* worse..