dharma_bummer
New member
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2006
- Messages
- 4
It's long been acknowledged that The Jimi Hendrix Experience's "Electric Ladyland" album is one of the best ostensibly stereo albums to listen to through a quad decoder. Well, I finally gave it a shot and was positively amazed. The SQ decoder on my receiver isn't even full logic, but I heard separation and depth and panning in a nearly discrete way that I've never heard on any legit SQ albums.
But, as everybody knows... "Electric Ladyland" was recorded and mixed a couple of years before matrix quad came on the market.
So what's up with that? Prophetic genius at work or just dumb luck? Or a little from column A and column B?
I've read a quote somewhere from Jimi himself which indicates he was doing some very deliberate things with phase displacement during the mixing of this album and, in fact, had to give specific instructions to the masterer NOT to correct any phase oddities that exist on the master tape.
Did he foresee (or have some advance inside knowledge of the development of) matrix quad and use "Electric Ladyland" as a lab rat? Was he using phase displacement in an attempt to give plain ol' stereo a little more dimension, and it just happened to decode well to quad? Or did he just think it sounded cool?
I'd love to see somebody do the "decoder showdown" thing with the vid clips of the scope for some sections of this album (the crazy guitars at the end of "House Burning Down" would be my vote)...
But, as everybody knows... "Electric Ladyland" was recorded and mixed a couple of years before matrix quad came on the market.
So what's up with that? Prophetic genius at work or just dumb luck? Or a little from column A and column B?
I've read a quote somewhere from Jimi himself which indicates he was doing some very deliberate things with phase displacement during the mixing of this album and, in fact, had to give specific instructions to the masterer NOT to correct any phase oddities that exist on the master tape.
Did he foresee (or have some advance inside knowledge of the development of) matrix quad and use "Electric Ladyland" as a lab rat? Was he using phase displacement in an attempt to give plain ol' stereo a little more dimension, and it just happened to decode well to quad? Or did he just think it sounded cool?
I'd love to see somebody do the "decoder showdown" thing with the vid clips of the scope for some sections of this album (the crazy guitars at the end of "House Burning Down" would be my vote)...