DTS-CD Botched DTS transfers

[Dylan Berichon]

I felt the need to do a bit of ranting after what happened tonight.

I landed a DTS conversion of Earth Wind and Fire's "Spirit" from a Q8. One of my all time favorite albums and a quad title I've been searching out for quite some time.

So when I went to listen to it, I found that the front and rear channels were totally out of sync. And it wasn't a linear error, either (as I tried fixing it in Adobe Audition.) When one part would match up, another part would be way off.

It leads me to believe that who ever did this conversion recorded the fronts and rears separately (on what didn't sound like a very well calibrated tape deck).

I wouldn't mind lower fidelity, certainly considering it came from a Q8, but channels being totally out of sync I can't deal with... It makes me wonder why anyone would encode a recording like this. Do some people just not listen to the end result?

 

[BananaSlug]

Yeah, I've got a copy of that one too. People do the best they can, sometime it would be much better if they kept it to themselves. I believe that there is an SQ transfer out there somewhere as well - and maybe other Q8 versions.

 

[atrocity]

I wouldn't mind lower fidelity, certainly considering it came from a Q8, but channels being totally out of sync I can't deal with... It makes me wonder why anyone would encode a recording like this. Do some people just not listen to the end result?

I think some people just don't care...it's quantity over quality or something.

I've had to completely give up trading CDs (DTS and other unofficial rarities) because too many of my trading partners ("too many"="by far the majority") didn't care if they were spreading excrementally bad copies. No one seemed bothered by rare live performances loaded with skips, inappropriate gaps, pops, etc. and no one seemed bothered by DTS material full of those "chirps" you get when the errors are too gigantic to be corrected.

I could reclaim a bunch of space if I'd just grow up and throw away the literally hundreds of CD-Rs I've gotten that I know I'll never play again. Damn "Fahrenheit 451" for screwing me up for life and leaving me unable to toss any media!

 

[stoty50134]

Is it possible to isolate the channels in software and re-align them, so as to burn a new disc?

 

[ingresman]

I think thats very possible, if not with audition then with some custom code.
I've got a band on the run rear channels only, which was a real shame as id been after it for ages

 

[Dylan Berichon]

Is it possible to isolate the channels in software and re-align them, so as to burn a new disc?

Like I said above, it's not a linear error. I already tried it.

When you line up part of it, another part will be totally out of sync.

It's like the tape wasn't played at the exact same speed the second time through.

 

[Lucanu]

It's possible that the guy who did this dts conversion didn't own a Q8 player but only a stereo one.
He recorded it then putted the result into a multitrack software trying to reconstruct the original quad mix.

That's the only possible reason for this result, I believe

 

[JonUrban]

I had someone send me an Atom Heart Mother 2 CD set once. Disc 1 was the fronts and Disc 2 was the rears of the UK Q8, which unlike the US Q8, is very discrete.

I spent an entire day trying to get the two stereo pairs sync'd, and finally gave up. As I recall, I sent them on to other converters and they tried as well. No go. As I recall, the time sync was not start to finish, it actually fluctuated within the music. Very hard to deal with.

A few years later, I bagged the UK Q8!

 

[winopener]

Better to have the "real McCoy" to work with. ... also because the UK version is easier to "join" than the USA one - other than being a real discrete tape and not a sq-decoded.

 

[Dylan Berichon]

It's possible that the guy who did this dts conversion didn't own a Q8 player but only a stereo one.
He recorded it then putted the result into a multitrack software trying to reconstruct the original quad mix.

That's the only possible reason for this result, I believe

I'm thinking either that, or who ever recorded it didn't have a multi channel sound card.

 

[Q-Eight]

and we all know how reliable 8-track transport speed is.

My Technics 858 is the worst for this. Some days it's spot on, but other times it's way slow. However, I have a Pioneer HR-100 that I've done my own Q8 conversion with and had very little synching to do afterwards. That one is a quality deck!