HiRez Poll Tomita - Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé [SACD]

[rtbluray]

Please post your thoughts and comments on this 2019 Multichannel SACD release from Dutton Vocalion, available to purchase here: https://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=CDSML8554



DAPHNIS ET CHLOÉ
LP R4C 2069 (1979) STEREO/QUADRAPHONIC
MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937) Electronically created by Isao Tomita

1: DAPHNIS ET CHLOÉ: SUITE NO. 2
DAYBREAK – PANTOMIME – GENERAL DANCE

2: PAVANE FOR A DEAD PRINCESS

3: BOLÉRO

MOTHER GOOSE SUITE
4: i PAVANE OF THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
5: ii HOP-O’-MY-THUMB
6: iii LAIDERONNETTE, EMPRESS OF THE PAGODAS
7: iv CONVERSATIONS OF BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
8: v THE FAIRY GARDEN

Remastered from the original analogue tapes by Michael J. Dutton

Multi-ch Stereo
All tracks available in stereo and multi-channel

SA-CD
This hybrid CD can be played on any standard CD players

CDSML8554

 

[MIDIQ]

Really liking this a lot. First listen, i was thinking a 9. But after two more listens, i vote a definite 10. Great music and great surround mix.

 

[Mesozoic Mike]

Still waiting for mine to arrive. Must be all the rain ...

 

[Greg Z]

I've been really getting into Tomita lately.
Here's hoping Dutton Vocalion releases more of the original quad versions.
The Denon SACDs are nice but I want the original versions.

 

[Sixtyten]

Genuinely? If you like surround mixes, you need to buy this, It's frigging beezer. Bolero? Jeepers!
The music swirls around the room like a helicopter. No, it isn't subtle. And all the better for it.

10, No, the poll should go to 11 - because, like this album, it's one better.

 

[willothewisp]

musically it is'nt up to his previous releases, at times it comes across as lack lustre. mix is what we have come to expect from a Tomita album.
doubt it will get played much though so a 7 for the poll

 

[beerking]

After reading Adam's nudge, I thought better get my vote in!!

It is a Rising Sun 10.

 

[warp2600]

Didn't know there was a vote about this release (until I saw a post about it at the Vocalion thread). I don't follow these vote threads but in this case I just had to. This disc is amazing. First of all, I have liked this album since my childhood. I used to have it on tape. Then, the European RCA CD from the 80s was excellent. But this SACD absolutely elivated it to an even higher level. The clarity and dynamics are fantastic. Listening to it you would think it was all recorded yesterday. The disc arrived just a couple of days after my new stereo SACD player was delivered (a MARANTZ SA14S1 SE) but first I wanted to check out the 4.0 mix as I had never heard it (and thinking that the stereo mix could not possibly get much better than the RCA CD, so it could wait...)
Man, what a surprise! The mastering is unbelievable on both mixes (4.0 and 2.0). This is how all SACD's should be done. I hope there will be other releases for my (musical) taste with Michael Dutton's mastering.

 

[kap'n krunch]

OK.. who said that this one was not as good as the other Tomita releases?????
Let me smack him upside the head!!!
(with a lot of love, though... as they call it in Spain , un coscorro'n...)

Sublime.. just beautiful.. another masterpiece by the Maestro himself (RIP)..
Just the climax crescendo ending in Bolero is worth the price of admission...

As a musician , I am always in awe to the perfect twists on his arrangements , and as a recording engineer I am flabbergasted by all the technical prowess in the recording AND mixing of this...as I was taught by the late great Wayne Wadhams,...the art of using effects is to make them sound "transparent; to not make them noticeable"...I could be HOURS figuring out pans, EQs, F/R reverb and delays.. but that would make it lose its charm...
The only "gripe" (to call it something) is that he used dbx noise reduction which KILLS the transients. but you know?? It's a really quiet record..

of course, NEVER less than a 10 for Maestro Tomita-San

 

[key_wiz]

This is surround mix gem! And the fidelity is incredible as well.

Content wise? Borderline between 9 and 10. I’ll give it a “9” just because there are other Tomita albums out there to rate a bit higher.

But this is very nice. I hope D-V gives us more Tomita!

 

[ndiamone]

Well I got turned onto this original version as a half-blind short little chubby film and music dork born into the wrong century.

[quote "kap'n krunch"] I was taught by the late great Wayne Wadhams,...the art of using effects is to make them sound "transparent; not to make the effects noticeable".[/quote]

Which is exactly the same school all of my recording film television music etc professors were from - and the same POV I teach from to this day.

My very first film projectionist mentor was - like me - also visually impaired, short, fat, and a dork - the only difference was his dad being at NASA was able to get connections to tape vault guys at the record companies - which is at whose house I first heard this off of 15 IPS half inch 4-track tape on an Ampex 440-4 thru EIGHT McIntosh tube amps (one each for bass and treble per channel) and two leftover sets of Voice of the Theatre speakers liberated out of the junior high school gym and auditorium.

The second place I ever heard that mix in surround was at the planetarium his brother ran (later added in Laserium) who was always looking for good music in surround sound to provide the backdrop for both the planetarium shows as well as the summer Laserium experiences.

Now while the dub of the original 15 IPS 4-track master sounded considerably better than the Japanese CD-4 of the same thing - for years and years and years the CD-4 was the only way to get it in surround.

He and I spent days and days and days dubbing these onto Q-8 for me and a handful of other dorkboys in the days before they would all have defected off onto computer science. After being worn out and making several replacement dubs over the following years - he passed away and his mother and sisters threw everything in his house away before anybody else could get to it.

As everybody knows - the past SACDs and DTS's and all had all been sourced from either poor quality safety dubs, heavily mangled or over-processed masters, or been a demodulated needle drop from the CD-4.

This on the other hand sends me right back to being thirteen years old sitting in a dark planetarium on a hot summer day trying to escape the heat.

 

[Mesozoic Mike]

I voted an 8. Sound is great. I guess for me personally, the music is just not very much to my liking, Others will love it though, so don't let me dissuade you from getting this disc.

 

[ndiamone]

Well I just got their sampler SACD with edited sample tracks from most of their recently-released first-time-in-digital 4.0 including Dr Teleny, Dottie West and Ray Conniff.

Most of them just blow the pants off of whatever was released before.

Understandably, for some of the Columbia and RCA titles of the early 70s either
A) discrete multitrack mixes no longer exist, forcing upmixes and decodings or
B) the master is in fact a 4-track production stem intended to be mixed down

In the case of B) since track-sharings on original work parts were all over the place (and that's not counting productions that were done in stages with parts flown over and back to different recorders which has to then be re-synched for a new multi-track master from which a remix can then be made) - the resulting 4-track master sounds unnatural.

One example is the Mancini Greatest Love Songs slated for release later this year or early 2020. The sample contained in this audition disc matches the Q-8 exactly with the girls in front left the boys in rear left and the orchestra in front right and rear right.

Me I would have remixed it either with orchestra left-total and right-total and vocals at 10:30 and 1:30 and then mixed in the orchestra tracks in the rear LtRt and a very light mono vocal mix in the rear center with a lot of its' own reverb enhanced for effect

Another example is the Ray Conniff where only the matrixed SQ master remains - no half-inch 4-track or 1-inch 8-track from which to remix. Try as they might, even with the best analog and digital decoder hardware and software and steering circuitry and etc, they can't ever totally get rid of the annoying inter-channel ghosting and wandering that plagued the original album.

But if you get one of the audition discs, it's still an interesting listen.

 

[jefe1]

Sampler sacd.....is it on their website?

 

[winopener]

Me2?

 

[ndiamone]

No - you get it the same way you get every other acetate/audition disc -
thru radio, stereo or other types of review channels. I got this one because
a guy doesn't listen to electronic, ambient classical, house or techno.

People probably didn't want it because it has no cover art and just a typefaced
label in a normal CD-Acetate sleeve. But it WAS Pressed - in France according
to the code in the center of the disc.

 

[ssully]

How does this compare with the same tracks included on this Japanese SACD

EDIT: this meant to go on the Debussy Snowflakes are Dancing thread,

 

[warp2600]

How does this compare with the same tracks included on this Japanese SACD

Same tracks?

 

[JediJoker]

Same tracks?

Yeah, I think @ssully is confused. There are no shared tracks.

 

[ssully]

Oops, this meant to go on the Debussy thread.