ZZ Top Tres Hombres Q4 - Are the channels correct?

[JonUrban]

I am off work today, and am putting some reels to 24/96 hard drive for preservation to DVD-A. I am not that familiar with the ZZ Top album "Tres Hombres", and when I was watching the thing record in Vegas, I noticed what looked like the front right channel in the rear right position.

However, later in the playback, it looks like the channels are correct! Does anyone have any experience with this title? Maybe that's just the way they mixed it.

Here are two views of the recording. The first one is the first track on the tape. To me, it lools like track 1 & 4 should be the fronts.

On the second jpg, it looks like 1 & 2 are the fronts, which is normal.

Any ideas?

 

[steelydave]

Bizarre, I just wrote a long post here about how in quad mixes stereo instruments are never panned diagonally, but then I put on my DTS CD of this title to double check, and that is indeed the case with this title, the drums are stereo imaged between the front left and rear right speakers. At first I thought that was a mistake and that the right front and rear channels were swapped, but if you listen to the vocals, they're placed in the front two speakers, so if you switched things so that the drums were across the front, then you'd have diagonally panned vocals and I don't think that's what they intended. Bizarre!

Dave.

 

[Q-Eight]

The Worst of Jefferson Airplane has some diagonally opposed instruments on a few songs - specifically "Somebody to Love".

There are a few tapes out there that have it done, though it's not a common occurance.

 

[dauQula]

When 'La Grange' first came out, and up until several years back, the drum track on the song was without the tremendous cavernous echo that the quad version and Classic-Rock stations now seem to prefer. I don't know when the switchover occurred, but when a new compilation of older hits comes out, frequently someone chooses a different stereo mixdown.

 

[Sansui Louie]

I noticed that also. The original drum track was muffled to the point of being 'bad'. The cavernous echo is a bit much, but I guess I prefer it to the muffled sound.