Alan Parsons Project "Pyramid" super-deluxe box set (Atmos & 5.1 BluRay) Aug. 24, 2024

[rtbluray]

“Pyramid” sounds amazing so far in 5.1, Alan as always just totally gets how to approach surround sound

 

[izgoblin]

“Pyramid” sounds amazing so far in 5.1, Alan as always just totally gets how to approach surround sound

And this just goes to show how people's opinions can differ so strongly. I also only listened in 5.1 as I do not have an Atmos setup.

As for me, the original UK LP is one of the best sounding albums I own. Of course it is only stereo, so this 5.1 mix must be even better, right?

Not for me. Whereas the approach to surround itself is fine I suppose, it suffers from a modern, yet outdated style of EQ and compression. Whatever Alan knew about making music sound amazing back in the 70s, he has completely forgotten I think. For me, there are two disturbing aspects of this mix that made it impossible for me to enjoy. One, the filtering on the vocals so that what only remains is the high end. A couple of songs sound almost as if the singer was singing through a telephone. The human voice doesn't sound like this, and it was certainly recorded better, but Alan apparently filtered out much of the midrange in the vocals to make them stand out in the mix. Especially when you have that many speakers to separate instruments and vocals via placement in the surround field, this is totally unnecessary.

Additionally, there is so much compression somewhere in the chain that this the loudest surround disc I own. I couldn't turn the volume up to a typically comfortable level without feeling like I needed to turn it down. As a result, it was not enjoyable to me at all, and I can't imagine ever playing it again. I'll stick with the stereo UK LP. Geez, for the $120 I paid, I sure hope I like the outtakes and demos.

I followed it up with Steven Wilson's new 5.1 remix of Yes' Fragile and could crank that one up happily. I don't love everything about that mix, but the contrast just showed how to handle a surround mix and mastering of a hi-resolution disc vs. how not to.

 

[mandrix]

And this just goes to show how people's opinions can differ so strongly. I also only listened in 5.1 as I do not have an Atmos setup.

As for me, the original UK LP is one of the best sounding albums I own. Of course it is only stereo, so this 5.1 mix must be even better, right?

Not for me. Whereas the approach to surround itself is fine I suppose, it suffers from a modern, yet outdated style of EQ and compression. Whatever Alan knew about making music sound amazing back in the 70s, he has completely forgotten I think. For me, there are two disturbing aspects of this mix that made it impossible for me to enjoy. One, the filtering on the vocals so that what only remains is the high end. A couple of songs sound almost as if the singer was singing through a telephone. The human voice doesn't sound like this, and it was certainly recorded better, but Alan apparently filtered out much of the midrange in the vocals to make them stand out in the mix. Especially when you have that many speakers to separate instruments and vocals via placement in the surround field, this is totally unnecessary.

Additionally, there is so much compression somewhere in the chain that this the loudest surround disc I own. I couldn't turn the volume up to a typically comfortable level without feeling like I needed to turn it down. As a result, it was not enjoyable to me at all, and I can't imagine ever playing it again. I'll stick with the stereo UK LP. Geez, for the $120 I paid, I sure hope I like the outtakes and demos.

I followed it up with Steven Wilson's new 5.1 remix of Yes' Fragile and could crank that one up happily. I don't love everything about that mix, but the contrast just showed how to handle a surround mix and mastering of a hi-resolution disc vs. how not to.

Well the vocals on the Atmos mix suffer somewhat as well. I was wondering if it was just me and my hearing (constant tinnitus). Otherwise the Atmos mix is enveloping. I haven't managed to make it all the way through the album yet as it got late and I had to stop last night.

 

[dabl]

And this just goes to show how people's opinions can differ so strongly. I also only listened in 5.1 as I do not have an Atmos setup.

As for me, the original UK LP is one of the best sounding albums I own. Of course it is only stereo, so this 5.1 mix must be even better, right?

Not for me. Whereas the approach to surround itself is fine I suppose, it suffers from a modern, yet outdated style of EQ and compression. Whatever Alan knew about making music sound amazing back in the 70s, he has completely forgotten I think. For me, there are two disturbing aspects of this mix that made it impossible for me to enjoy. One, the filtering on the vocals so that what only remains is the high end. A couple of songs sound almost as if the singer was singing through a telephone. The human voice doesn't sound like this, and it was certainly recorded better, but Alan apparently filtered out much of the midrange in the vocals to make them stand out in the mix. Especially when you have that many speakers to separate instruments and vocals via placement in the surround field, this is totally unnecessary.

Additionally, there is so much compression somewhere in the chain that this the loudest surround disc I own. I couldn't turn the volume up to a typically comfortable level without feeling like I needed to turn it down. As a result, it was not enjoyable to me at all, and I can't imagine ever playing it again. I'll stick with the stereo UK LP. Geez, for the $120 I paid, I sure hope I like the outtakes and demos.

I followed it up with Steven Wilson's new 5.1 remix of Yes' Fragile and could crank that one up happily. I don't love everything about that mix, but the contrast just showed how to handle a surround mix and mastering of a hi-resolution disc vs. how not to.

Interesting observations. I was just revisiting the Ammonia Avenue surround mix and had similar thoughts about the mid range sound on some of the vocals. I haven't compared to the original stereo mix. Unfortunately age is not kind to hearing, so putting too much top or midrange to compensate wouldn't be a surprise. It may be Alan could use another set of ears for a sanity check. I had similar thoughts about the Turn of a Friendly Card surround mix. Some of that may be in the recording in that case, again did not do any comparing.

I've noticed with Steven's mixes in general he doesn't seem to tweak things a lot in the way some other 'real' engineers do, leaving things sometimes sounding a little flat maybe but at least 'not futzed with' so much.

 

[Bill B]

“Pyramid” sounds amazing so far in 5.1, Alan as always just totally gets how to approach surround sound

Can't wait for the stand alone to be announced

 

[JulesRules]

Mine has arrived with the signed cover print - on to the mountain it goes

Don't you mean the pyramid?

 

[progtodd]

They say backordered now WTF?
I’ll wait for a price reduction or the stand alone.

I'm with you!

 

[edisonbaggins]

AA, YotC, ToaFC, and now Pyramid (though I haven’t heard this one — just going on reviews)…
If AP is the sole engineer on a MC project, it’s pretty much a hard pass, for me.
I agree that he likely needs a second set of ears in the process, but can you imagine being the poor individual who has to tell him about issues and get him to make tweaks, which might possibly very significant?

 

[mandrix]

I don't have any problems with Alan's mixing. But the the vocals leaves a bit to be desired on Pyramid.
But I can live with it, because it's what we have, and I do love the album. I don't usually use the equalizer settings in the AVR but I might start for some select albums. It could be my hearing, or chronic tinnitus for decades, but a fair few modern albums suffer from the same thing on vocals and/or cymbals.

 

[hi-res_edition]

Alan works with an assistant engineer, are they not credited?

 

[dabl]

Alan works with an assistant engineer, are they not credited?

Even if they were, that alone wouldn't mean anything. It's possible Alan's assistant is a trusted confidant I suppose and has the kind of relationship with him where he might offer up opinions on the overall sound, but I'd say not likely, and if so, then they both appear to be hearing it the same way.

When I said another set of ears I meant a trusted set and someone not afraid to tell it like it is.

In my years as an assistant engineer in NYC my experience was that job didn't entail either solicitations of opinion or offering one on the overall sound from whoever you were assisting. You might pipe up about some glitchy edit or something but not 'the vocals on this mix sound really mid-rangy and the whole thing sounds pretty squashed'. But I never got to the point where I'd been assisting the same person for many years to say something like that, let alone to someone like Alan Parsons.

 

[Imbobman]

AA, YotC, ToaFC, and now Pyramid (though I haven’t heard this one — just going on reviews)…
If AP is the sole engineer on a MC project, it’s pretty much a hard pass, for me.
I agree that he likely needs a second set of ears in the process, but can you imagine being the poor individual who has to tell him about issues and get him to make tweaks, which might possibly very significant?

Yes, I agree also though I haven't heard it either.
Reminds me a bit of George Martin. From what I heard(no pun intended) , He was losing his upper range hearing & had the good sense to have his son, Niles, start 'helping' him on projects.
Parsons seems like a humble enough guy but ya, I wouldn't want to be the one to tell him he's losing it & his mixes sound like crap!

 

[Perp]

AA, YotC, ToaFC, and now Pyramid (though I haven’t heard this one — just going on reviews)…
If AP is the sole engineer on a MC project, it’s pretty much a hard pass, for me.
I agree that he likely needs a second set of ears in the process, but can you imagine being the poor individual who has to tell him about issues and get him to make tweaks, which might possibly very significant?

I thought I was the only one that found problems with AP’s 5.1 mixes. Tales sounds good but not the releases afterward, including Year of the Cat.

 

[4-earredwonder]

I thought I was the only one that found problems with AP’s 5.1 mixes. Tales sounds good but not the releases afterward, including Year of the Cat.

How can you possibly enjoy these releases, Jeffrey Michael,when you're laying PERPENDICULAR?

 

[steelydave]

Even if he still had golden ears, Parsons shouldn't be mastering his own mixes - it's like that old saying about people who act as their own lawyer in court "a person who represents himself has a fool for a client." Similarly, I think a person who masters their own work has a fool for a client.

Even if the mastering engineer does very little (or nothing) having a third party with a fresh set of ears that haven't been emotionally biased by having worked on the material is invaluable.

I was sort of curious though, because I always thought that Eye in the Sky, despite not being the most exciting 5.1 mix, sounded really good from a tonality perspective, whereas all the subsequent 5.1 mixes (and the Al Stewart 5.1s) sounded abysmal, with the treble frequency range especially boosted to the point of absurdity. Looking at the credits for these discs, it turns out that Miles Showell (well-regarded Abbey Road remastering engineer who does a ton of vinyl cutting) did Eye in the Sky, whereas Parsons either did the subsequent ones on his own, or more recently with Dave Donnelly, whose DNA Mastering is responsible for some high-profile abominations including the almost universally loathed 2002 Chicago CD remasters on Rhino. It appears that DNA now does immersive mastering (https://dnaimmersive.com/) so it wouldn't surprise me if they're behind the sound of Pyramid as well.

It's my general feeling that these mixes start out sounding good (or pretty good at least) and are probably mixed using a copy of the original stereo mix as reference, only to be smashed with a sonic meat tenderizing hammer right at the very end. Turn of a Friendly Card is by far my favourite APP album, and when the 5.1 came out I was so dismayed (to say the least) by how it sounded - audiophiles throw the word "unlistenable" around a lot as a scarlet letter for remasters, but with this album for me it truly was the case - that I took it upon myself to try and remaster it.

I ended up matching it (EQ-wise) to the Classic Records 192/24 HDAD DVD (my favourite mastering of this album) and once I did that - and de-clipped the waveforms, which had an egregious 5dB brick wall haircut - it revealed itself to be a really nice mix, even if it's a touch sterile most likely due to being done in a DAW and not a multi-million dollar analog studio like the original stereo mix. The reason I say I think these mixes are mostly wrecked in mastering is that in doing this remaster, it seems like the treble boost (and massive lack of low end) is applied uniformly over everything in the mix, not just specific elements or instruments. For example, if the hot/sibilant hi-hats were treble boosted individually in the mix, if you attenuated the treble over the entire mix to try and fix it, you'd find that the other "normal" elements in the mix were muted as a result, but that isn't the case with the 5.1 mix of ToaFC. Maybe I should revisit my "Second Guessing the Mastering Engineer" series for this one, if there's any interest at all..

But getting back to Pyramid, and the APP remixes in general, you just wish they knew their prospective audience a little better - I'm not a betting man, but I'd wager there's no one buying surround remixes of Alan Parsons Project albums who feels like music is "too dynamic" or "not punchy enough." It's especially dumb to take this kind of approach with Atmos, where the DialNorm metadata setting is encoded based on the overall "loudness" of the mix, so the more the mastering engineer compresses the mix, the more the DialNorm value is telling your amp to turn down the volume. This makes the pursuit of "loudness" a zero-sum game where the only real result is the degraded audio quality introduced by aggressive EQ and compression/limiting.

 

[sjcorne]

I always thought that Eye in the Sky, despite not being the most exciting 5.1 mix, sounded really good from a tonality perspective, whereas all the subsequent 5.1 mixes (and the Al Stewart 5.1s) sounded abysmal, with the treble frequency range especially boosted to the point of absurdity.

The two solo 5.1 albums released through Frontiers (2019's The Secret and 2022's From The New World) also sound pretty good. Ammonia Avenue was the first one to exhibit the loud and bright sound.

 

[marpow]

Listening now to CD 1. (Original 1978 remastered 2024 with bonus tracks)
I am doing a new tactic in listening.
Rather than jump to the surround, I am taking my time, and get a good warm up to the Atmos.
This box set allows you to do that as none of the CD's are LIVE CD's.

 

[JulesRules]

The two solo 5.1 albums released through Frontiers (2019's The Secret and 2022's From The New World) also sound pretty good.

And those were mastered by... Dave Donnelly! So it can't just be the name.

 

[JediJoker]

Listening now to CD 1. (Original 1984 remastered 2024 with bonus tracks)

Huh? Pyramid was originally released in 1978. The '84 album from APP was Ammonia Avenue.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

unboxing by Paul at SDE