HiRez Poll Emerson Lake & Palmer - BRAIN SALAD SURGERY [DVD-A][2000 WB]

[timbre4]

Could be they were chucked after WBMF was mixed?

Thanks. It sounds like after Kellogg assembled the elements and did his mix, the tape library reverted to chaos.

Bingo and Bingo, I think that’s exactly what happened on both accounts.

 

[kap'n krunch]

Hang on, don't get too excited yet. Let's review some details. (posted this on QQ in past years, repeating here for context).

The live shows in 1973-1974 featured a PA system with quad speaker arrays - rears placed at the back edge of the arena venue floor. It was designed by Bill Hough - the first person I ever heard use the phrase "digital delay lines". I recognized him milling about in the middle of the arena floor at the Feb 1974 show in San Diego and started a conversation. I specifically asked if the show might be recorded; he replied: "there's a Scully-Metrotec 16 track machine backstage recording the show every night." <every night?>

The quad mixing on WBMFTTSTNE: As long time Q8 sufferers like myself know, the core of the band largely up front most of the time, reverbs or silence in the rears. The first hint of quad is the Moog solo panning around the room in Hoedown. Toccata synth drums all over the place, Aquatarkus synths and guitar solo in Battlefield for sure. More for effect during specific moments and not entire songs per se. WBMFTTSTNE is essentially the same as being there in terms of panning and such.

Now think about what we've seen and heard on recordings of this magic era:
1) WBMFTTSTNE is released on Q8 tape only in 1975; JVC Cutting Center engineer Darrell Johnson personally reveals 'poorly engineered tapes; we could not cut a stable CD-4 master" so it was nixed, never to be.
2) "recording the show every night"? The QBFH show and subsequent CD release use the same Anaheim CA show. You're telling me there's no other good show recordings to pull from? Doubting they were recording the show every night
3) In the 1990's we saw the release of several volumes of 'From The Manticore Vaults' issued in a "beat the Boots" strategy. All eras of ELP in dodgy quality. Where are these great 1973-74 recordings then?

More specifically and some of this not posted before:
4) I used to do the new DVD-Audio listings on QQ; in 2003, Rhino listed WBMFTTSTNE as a forthcoming 5.1 release. Very exciting until it quietly disappeared from their listings several weeks later.
5) About 2011-12 when Razor & Tie had ELP catalog and we were testing the DVD-A discs (ELP, Tarkus, later BSS then Trilogy), it was mentioned to us that WBMFTTSTNE was on the table and maybe Cal Jam 1974 (video). Never happened and then the ELP catalog moved yet again without these plans to SONY Music.
6) In 2014, I had a FB Messenger conversation with Jakko Jacszyk regarding his BSS mix. I promised not to share that. But I will mention that during the BSS assembly (mislabeled tape boxes, etc.) that the WBMFTTSTNE tapes showed up in error.
NOTE: How Kellogg had a relatively simple bake and copy (admitted over-simplification) in 1999-2000 and yet Jakko had a nightmare of tape searches and such 10 years later is baffling. I don't think the ELP tape library got the TLC it deserved.

Are there additional multi-track recordings of these classic shows out there? Doubtful. Given multiple record labels penchant for scrapping the barrel, surely these would've been made available by now. "Quad soundboards?" - recorded on what exactly? Soundboard decks were stereo R2R or cassette. I think Greg Lake likely played him some of WBMFTTSTNE for reference.

Thank you for a wonderful interview on a great person and pro surround mixer. I'm glad that Greg Lake gave so much passion to Kellogg during the initial WEA Rhino release. It stands in stark contrast to the lack of interest the band shared with Steven Wilson when he was tasked with 5.1 mixing of the ELP catalog.

...hmmm ...it seems we can't have ANYTHING slip right by you , huh????...shall we start calling you "the QQ Police"????

 

[timbre4]

Ha. We both know there’s another person who will weigh in as Oz on the topic of this band.

PS - a lot slips by me; Mongo only pawn in game of life.

 

[kap'n krunch]

Ha. We both know there’s another person who will weigh in as Oz on the topic of this band.

PS - a lot slips by me; Mongo only pawn in game of life.

oh, man I was just saving a Candygram fer you!!!

btw, I was busting my ass watching "The adventures of Sherlock Holmes' younger brother"...much better flick than it is given....

 

[evb62]

I read this thread and subscribed to this forum to add my two cents.

Regarding a stereo mix in this DVD-Audio, apparently, there is one.

I bought this DVD back in the day, and I still have it. This week I wanted to rip it, and could not find the stereo mix, but I remembered reading about it back then. I opened it with "DVD-Audio Explorer" (not to be confused with the commercial product called "DVD Audio Extractor", and found that the each multichannel track contains two substreams. Here is what the DVD-Audio Explorer manual has to say about this:

"Substreams: usually there is just one substream, but there may be two when track contains stereo downmix."

And also:

"Get Stereo Downmix
This is an interesting option, and only applies to a select number of DVD-Audio titles. N.B It does not downmix multichannel tracks to stereo! It makes use of a special feature called "SMART" (System Managed Audio Resource Technique), which is a special way of storing a stereo substream in the multichannel stream. "Coefficients" are placed in the audio stream to determine what information goes into the matrixed stereo downmix. Some titles make use of this feature due to space constraints on the disc. For more info, see http://patches.sonic.com/pdf/white-papers/wp_dvd_audio.pdf, under the "SMART Content and Downmixing" heading. You can determine whether your disc has this feature by checking if there are two substreams, as shown in the right panel track info."

I seem to remember reading many years ago that this DVD has this "SMART" feature, and there are indeed two substreams. I ripped the tracks using the stereo downmix option, and the resulting stereo mix sounds good to me.

The DVD-Audio Explorer can still be found at:
DVD-Audio Explorer 20080721 Beta 3 Free Download - VideoHelp

And there is a white paper on the DVD-Audio format mentioning this downmix option at
White Paper - DVD Audio


Oh, and on another note, I don't think this was mentioned here, and it was one of the first things I noticed about this disc. On Benny the Bouncer, Lake sings "The people laughed as he bled", instead of "The people gasped as he bled". I never noticed this in any other release, including my old LP.

 

[ssully]

N.B It does not downmix multichannel tracks to stereo!

Well, actually it does, and does so according to data provided by the content creator...as described in the next few sentences. Not sure what the DVDAE manual is getting at. The stereo version on such early DVDAs is absolutely derived from the multichannel mix.

(IIRC some years after the DVDA was released, one of the shadier CD companies, possibly Castle, mistakenly released the downmix as a 'remaster' on CD)

Regarding alternate vocals and lyrics on BSS , the opening line of Benny is also an alternate take, as is 'And was the holy lamb of God ' on Jerusalem .

 

[Beefalo]

I read this thread and subscribed to this forum to add my two cents.

Regarding a stereo mix in this DVD-Audio, apparently, there is one.

I bought this DVD back in the day, and I still have it. This week I wanted to rip it, and could not find the stereo mix, but I remembered reading about it back then. I opened it with "DVD-Audio Explorer" (not to be confused with the commercial product called "DVD Audio Extractor", and found that the each multichannel track contains two substreams. Here is what the DVD-Audio Explorer manual has to say about this:

"Substreams: usually there is just one substream, but there may be two when track contains stereo downmix."

And also:

"Get Stereo Downmix
This is an interesting option, and only applies to a select number of DVD-Audio titles. N.B It does not downmix multichannel tracks to stereo! It makes use of a special feature called "SMART" (System Managed Audio Resource Technique), which is a special way of storing a stereo substream in the multichannel stream. "Coefficients" are placed in the audio stream to determine what information goes into the matrixed stereo downmix. Some titles make use of this feature due to space constraints on the disc. For more info, see http://patches.sonic.com/pdf/white-papers/wp_dvd_audio.pdf, under the "SMART Content and Downmixing" heading. You can determine whether your disc has this feature by checking if there are two substreams, as shown in the right panel track info."

I seem to remember reading many years ago that this DVD has this "SMART" feature, and there are indeed two substreams. I ripped the tracks using the stereo downmix option, and the resulting stereo mix sounds good to me.

The DVD-Audio Explorer can still be found at:
DVD-Audio Explorer 20080721 Beta 3 Free Download - VideoHelp

And there is a white paper on the DVD-Audio format mentioning this downmix option at
White Paper - DVD Audio


Oh, and on another note, I don't think this was mentioned here, and it was one of the first things I noticed about this disc. On Benny the Bouncer, Lake sings "The people laughed as he bled", instead of "The people gasped as he bled". I never noticed this in any other release, including my old LP.

Welcome to the QQ forum @evb62

 

[mandrix]

 

[timbre4]

POLL thread folks - use link in 1st post for ripping discussion