Pink Floyd The Wall in 5.1

[ssully]

Holophonic sound is actually for headphones (used for The Final Cut amd Pros & Cons), while Q Sound is for speakers (Amused To Death). Waters has talked extensively about both formats. I first read about it in Nicholas Schaffner's Floyd book A Saucerful Of Secrets back in the day.

Oops, right! I confused the two.

Momentary Lapse was recorded using Spherical Sound, which seems to just sound more expansive but nothing to write home about. Chris Squire also used it for the song "The More We Live" on Yes' Union album.

I seriously doubt Squire had anything to do with its use on that track. The song was written (and the bass played) by Billy Sherwood, and most importantly, the track was produced by Eddy Offord. Easily the best track on that album.

 

[ssully]

I’m always amazed at how bands don’t take care of their muilti-track tapes? As Steely Dan comes to mind as they couldn’t do a 5.1 mix of The great Aja album because they are missing parts of that album?

In that era and even today, recording sessions, and the tapes that emerge from them, were generally paid for by the record companies. Bands didn't own their multi or stereo masters.

Witness what Taylor Swift has done, in response to that. (Something that Prince threatened to do back in the day, but never did)

 

[ssully]

Final Cut? Not Now John sounds good really loud. One of the Few -> Hero's Return is my favorite bit. OOTF is more of an intro for Hero's than a separate track. Dave's flanger sound in Hero's is greatness! The rest of the album is Roger's weakest solo album. (Not counting the recent live releases that hit like a cover band.)

Back in the day, the dynamic audio of The Hero's Return was most impressive. If your stereo was cranked to hear One Of the Few you were in for a surprise.

 

[jimfisheye]

The multitrack was a means to an end much more back then. No one thought about going back and reworking some mix element any more than a wood carver pondered some ability to preserve intermediate states of a carving to return to. (I'm searching for an analogy that would still be impossible and just silly to contemplate with that.) The process was complex and involved enough to just not ever entertain.

Of course some people were forward thinking and contemplated all of that! Just trying to explain all the rest.

Now we can record endless tracks for endless time and preserve it as long as someone cares to manage the digital archive. (Backups and so forth.) We can recall the mix session with everything dialed up EXACTLY how it was left with a click-click. (You can't reposition 500 analog controls across a board and fx rack EXACTLY no matter how many pictures you took and pencil marks you made. And the slight slight differences add up and it... doesn't sound the same. So rework meant booking studio time and kind of starting from scratch.)

Some studios had workflow where they would make copies of the multitrack (in sync) to proxy work from while recording overdubs and rehearsing mix moves because they knew just repeated plays of the tape started degrading it. Then grab the original tapes for the final mix. They didn't even rely on getting through the recording session with the tapes let alone contemplating reworking them years later!

This was some of the scene in the analog days.

 

[Owen Smith]

On the other hand, I find the DVD to be completely watchable and I am just glad that it even got a DVD release.

The DVD is indeed watchable, but I find the 5.1 audio a bit underwhelming and I expect that is due to being Dolby Digital. The DTS HD MA 5.1 on the Spanish disc could improve on that, depending on the source. If this is just from a film print then it is either 70mm with 6 track magnetic sound which could be good, or it is 35mm with Dolby Stereo (ie. 2 track optical with Dolby Surround / PL encoded) which would be a serious downgrade.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084503/technical/?ref_=tt_spec_sm
I agree that at the price it's worth a punt.

 

[bookofsaturdays]

The DVD is indeed watchable, but I find the 5.1 audio a bit underwhelming and I expect that is due to being Dolby Digital. The DTS HD MA 5.1 on the Spanish disc could improve on that, depending on the source. If this is just from a film print then it is either 70mm with 6 track magnetic sound which could be good, or it is 35mm with Dolby Stereo (ie. 2 track optical with Dolby Surround / PL encoded) which would be a serious downgrade.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084503/technical/?ref_=tt_spec_sm
I agree that at the price it's worth a punt.

The movie came out in 1982 so I would assume it was Dolby Stereo, not sure if there was a 70mm blow up print with six-track sound or not.
The LPCM 2.0 on the DVD is surround encoded so it could very well be sourced from a 35mm optical track.

 

[jimfisheye]

Back in the day, the dynamic audio of The Hero's Return was most impressive. If your stereo was cranked to hear One Of the Few you were in for a surprise.

I believe that's one of the things I like about it!
Ironically there was a CD reissue somewhere along the line where they stuck the Tigers Broke Free single between those 2 tracks and broke the best part of the album.

I know things got reshuffled and changed along the way even at the time. Still...

My favorite Wall track is probably What Shall We Do Now which was unfortunately edited out. But I also think it's a good edit into Young Lust. Oh well. An original edit mix + an extended version mix would be the solution of course.

WSWDN and the extended wall building overture interlude led me to listening to all the live shows from the tour. (As much is possible from the various recordings.) Everyone should check out some of that to hear how this was really meant to be played! The redux tours are pretty phoned in and toned down compared to Floyd themselves on the original tour. That ITAOT edit compilation seems to have a lot of energy sucked out of it with the edits. Roger had some visual elements seriously upgraded on his tribute tour but the music performances really stunk.

 

[Owen Smith]

The movie came out in 1982 so I would assume it was Dolby Stereo, not sure if there was a 70mm blow up print with six-track sound or not.

It specifically says on that imdb page I linked to that there was a 70mm blow up print with 6 track magnetic sound. It also says the 35mm was Dolby Stereo, no need to assume anything.

 

[bookofsaturdays]

It specifically says on that imdb page I linked to that there was a 70mm blow up print with 6 track magnetic sound. It also says the 35mm was Dolby Stereo, no need to assume anything.

Gotcha. Well I hope if it ever does get released to Blu-ray we’ll get both mixes included.

 

[atrocity]

Not for a while now but when I used to hear various 'classic rock' radio some years ago I'd hear Pigs (3 Different Ones) often enough and they even rarely bleeped out "You fucked up old hag..."

I once heard it with a clumsy cut that rendered the line as merely "You old hag" and called the radio station to ask about it. This was decades before Nipplegate when for the most part no one really cared what happened on FM radio, so I really surprised by the deletion. The DJ said that it wasn't anything they'd done locally, they just had a promo version of the album that (or so a memory from over 40 years ago is trying to tell me) had actual song separation and apparently as a "bonus" snipped out the naughty word.

I have a similar promo for The Final Cut that has song separation but a warning about "Not Now John" - that song becoming the "hit" seems to have caught everyone by surprise and radio stations were doing their own horrifically clumsy edits until Gilmour and the backing singers rushed back into the studio to re-record it as "Stuff all that." One of our local stations also mangled "pissed" but let it go once the new recording came in.

 

[atrocity]

It specifically says on that imdb page I linked to that there was a 70mm blow up print with 6 track magnetic sound. It also says the 35mm was Dolby Stereo, no need to assume anything.

I can say from personal experience that there were 70mm six track magnetic prints.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Some years ago I encoded some 1280x720p23.976 MPEG-4 AVC 'up-scales' from the NTSC (720x480) and PAL (720x576) MPEG-2 DVD sources. They looked pretty good, so I'll be interested to see how well the Spanish '1080p' Blu-ray compares!

Either-way, as I managed to get the disc for less than a tenner delivered, I'm not too fussed if it turns out to be a pile if plop!

The Blu-ray disc arrived yesterday and I can confirm that it is an improvement over the NTSC and PAL DVD releases. The video has been encoded in MPEG-2 at 1920x1080p23.976 and there's just one 5.1-channel audio stream, encoded using DTS-HD MA. There's also just one subtitle set, in Spanish. And there are just eight chapters.

What was used as the source is anybodies guess

 

[privateuniverse]

I once heard it with a clumsy cut that rendered the line as merely "You old hag" and called the radio station to ask about it. This was decades before Nipplegate when for the most part no one really cared what happened on FM radio, so I really surprised by the deletion. The DJ said that it wasn't anything they'd done locally, they just had a promo version of the album that (or so a memory from over 40 years ago is trying to tell me) had actual song separation and apparently as a "bonus" snipped out the naughty word.

I have a similar promo for The Final Cut that has song separation but a warning about "Not Now John" - that song becoming the "hit" seems to have caught everyone by surprise and radio stations were doing their own horrifically clumsy edits until Gilmour and the backing singers rushed back into the studio to re-record it as "Stuff all that." One of our local stations also mangled "pissed" but let it go once the new recording came in.

This is the insert that came with the promo copies of Animals.

 

[Owen Smith]

The Blu-ray disc arrived yesterday and I can confirm that it is an improvement over the NTSC and PAL DVD releases. The video has been encoded in MPEG-2 at 1920x1080p23.976 and there's just one 5.1-channel audio stream, encoded using DTS-HD MA. There's also just one subtitle set, in Spanish. And there are just eight chapters.

OK the headline specs are better than the DVD releases, but does it actually look and sound better? It could just be an upscaled rip of one of the DVD releases for all the information we have.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

OK the headline specs are better than the DVD releases, but does it actually look and sound better? It could just be an upscaled rip of one of the DVD releases for all the information we have.

With regard to the sound, I don't know yet. But with regard to the video, it's not been up-scaled from an NTSC or PAL DVD... When I have time I'll post some comparisons.

 

[himey]

What was used as the source is anybodies guess

Turner Classic Movies

 

[JonUrban]

I'm one of those kooks who loves The Wall all the way through. I even like the little bits like "Vera Lynn". I listened to it time and time again riding from Greenwich CT back to Hartford, which at rush hour can be impossible each way, and it got me through that toil. To me it's like one piece, start to finish. I also like the movie! What can I say?

 

[himey]

I even like the little bits like "Vera Lynn"

Goodbye Blue Sky! So many good bits!

 

[J. PUPSTER]

I always felt the Helicopter, children's choir and ending telephone rings would go nicely into some Atmos heights. Any chance it could be mixed into Atmos?

 

[atrocity]

This is the insert that came with the promo copies of Animals.

Fantastic! Thank you!