HiRez Poll Deodato - PRELUDE & DEODATO 2 [SACD]

[fredblue]

I just got this from DV. Listening to it now, in fact. Something I noticed right away with the first track, Also Sprach Zarathustra, and also on track 3, Carly & Carole, the left rear has very little going on in the surround mix. Or is that just my system? Right rear has a lot of percussion, but not left. Almost like they forgot.

its been a while since i played it but i think that's how the mix panned out on the old Quad.. iirc several of the CTI mixes have similar things going on, you might find later on some stuff on Deodato 2 maybe is also like that?

 

[b.smith]

I just got this from DV. Listening to it now, in fact. Something I noticed right away with the first track, Also Sprach Zarathustra, and also on track 3, Carly & Carole, the left rear has very little going on in the surround mix. Or is that just my system? Right rear has a lot of percussion, but not left. Almost like they forgot.

IIRC aren't the horns pretty prominent in the rear left in Also Sprach Zarathustra when they start?

 

[van1]

its been a while since i played it but i think that's how the mix panned out on the old Quad.. iirc several of the CTI mixes have similar things going on, you might find later on some stuff on Deodato 2 maybe is also like that?

I think both discs are excellent in surround, but you are right about the Prelude album. It does sound ‘triphonic’ - cant believe 3.0 wasnt huge in places but my understanding, i think from the liner notes, was that Deodato 2 was mixed for quad but the quad mix of Prelude was done some time after the album. So they probably did the best they could at the time.

You dont have a defective disc, just enjoy the great 2-fer.

 

[steelydave]

That's right, Prelude was originally recorded (and possibly mixed in stereo?) in September of 1972 or thereabouts, and released in stereo in January of 1973. When CTI got into quad 6 months later, they went back and remixed it for quad because it was their best selling album by a country mile. It, along with Deodato 2, were the first quad mixes that CTI did, so it's possible that Prelude was in fact their very first, so perhaps the quad mixing of that album was a bit of a learning experience in itself.

There are a handful of occasions on the album where a channel falls silent for a few minutes - I wouldn't say it's my preferred quad mixing style, but I think it's fun to have these albums that stand out as an alternative approach to quad mixing. Variety is the spice of life, and all that.

The quad mix of Deodato 2 is far more conventionally constantly 4-channel active, as are all the other CTI studio album quads that D-V have done including Airto's Fingers, Grover Washington Jr.'s Soul Box, and George Benson's Body Talk, so Prelude is really the anomaly. I think it's worth mentioning that the vast majority of Prelude is very much 4-channel active - I think it's just that in this age of everyone being super-paranoid about the calibration of our surround systems that if one speaker shuts off for a minute or two, we immediately worry that something's malfunctioning. Once you get to know this mix, it's kind of fun that a speaker goes silent for a bit, you forget it's there, and then all of a sudden you're surprised by some screaming trumpets or a burst of bongo fury or something.

 

[Owen Smith]

Are these SACDs taken from the quad master tape or is this a matrix decode? Reading what is written on the back of the SACD label it's hard to tell. It just talks about tape, but that could easily be stereo and be decoded.

 

[steelydave]

They're from the discrete four-channel master tapes, I can 100% confirm this without equivocation.

 

[Owen Smith]

They're from the discrete four-channel master tapes, I can 100% confirm this without equivocation.

What is your source for that please?

 

[steelydave]

My source is that I literally work for the company.

 

[van1]

To give @Owen Smith the benefit of the doubt, the Airto/Deodato In Concert album is taken from the 'original sq encoded source', which may have caused some confusion.

D-V are usually upfront with the source material, it's original tapes unless stated. I can only think of 4 releases where they have made a statement like this

 

[fredblue]

To give @Owen Smith the benefit of the doubt, the Airto/Deodato In Concert album is taken from the 'original sq encoded source', which may have caused some confusion.

D-V are usually upfront with the source material, it's original tapes unless stated. I can only think of 4 releases where they have made a statement like this

so to recap, the 4 releases to date that state the original Quad tapes no longer exist are;

"Airto/Deodato In Concert",
Don Sebesky's "Giant Box",
Grover Washington Jr.'s "Soul Box",
Herbie Hancock's "Sextant"

..with 3 of the 4 using the best available discrete sources (presumed safeties) and only "Airto/Deodato In Concert" using a decode from the SQ-encoded masters.

 

[van1]

The discrete Airto disc is excellent and the Live in concert disc is worth getting as a bonus.

The Hancock disc sounds superb. I haven't picked up the 'box' releases yet but I like what I've heard on Tidal and YT, especially Grover Washington jr

so to recap, the 4 releases to date that state the original Quad tapes no longer exist are; "Airto/Deodato In Concert", Don Sebesky's "Giant Box", Grover Washington Jr.'s "Soul Box", Herbie Hancock's "Sextant" ..with 3 of the 4 using the best available discrete sources (presumed safeties) and only "Airto/Deodato In Concert" using a decode from the SQ-encoded masters.

 

[NYMo]

Ok....got this in the post yesterday.....I've been listening to this album for over 45 years ( still have my original vinyl).
The tape hiss is horrendous and spoils the listening of the album.
I used to master CDs 25 years ago and if I got something like that in, I would firstly see what software I had to delete the tape hiss.
My ( average) software would take an audio "snapshot" of the hiss and then render that and take the sonic signature out leaving the audio without noise.
Then I would see if the digital artefacts ( an unfortunate byproduct) affected the remaining audio.
I was only a home business, but if I was in the business like Vocalion, I would have at least a Sonic Solutions workstation to deal with the tape hiss, as it's the first thing we look at when mastering.
I'm going to A/B this with my original vinyl album and see if the tape hiss is prevalent there, but at this point, I can't get over the tape hiss on this release and this SACD will become another statistic in the non played pile !

 

[Owen Smith]

This doesn't bode well for my copy when I have my surround system back in action. I hate tape hiss having grown up in the CD generation.

 

[NYMo]

EDIT
Re-listening (and taking off my mastering hat) the content is really good !
The Quad of Deodato 2 has more, and changing, instruments in the rears so it is more exciting. Prelude has percussion in the right rear and the trumpets in the left ear and the occasional Tropea guitar solo ( which btw are very bitey on the vinyl too).
So, I've voted 8 ( still can't get past the 4 channel hiss that fades at 4 different times !) but the music makes up for it and I'm glad to own this and hope Vocalion keep releasing more great albums !
Cheers

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Holy crapitolli; this one's flippin' amazing!
Especially like getting hit with "ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA (2001) " right off the bat...
I'm floored, an easy easy 10

 

[Mineralist]

well, Prelude's mix a bit better, but 10 for both

 

[par4ken]

EDIT
Re-listening (and taking off my mastering hat) the content is really good !
The Quad of Deodato 2 has more, and changing, instruments in the rears so it is more exciting. Prelude has percussion in the right rear and the trumpets in the left ear and the occasional Tropea guitar solo ( which btw are very bitey on the vinyl too).
So, I've voted 8 ( still can't get past the 4 channel hiss that fades at 4 different times !) but the music makes up for it and I'm glad to own this and hope Vocalion keep releasing more great albums !
Cheers

I never noticed a problem with tape hiss. You could run it through a Hush DNR noise reduction system or extract the files to PCM and remove the hiss in software. But I'm glad that you enjoyed it otherwise, so do I!

 

[Owen Smith]

I never noticed a problem with tape hiss. You could run it through a Hush DNR noise reduction system or extract the files to PCM and remove the hiss in software. But I'm glad that you enjoyed it otherwise, so do I!

I listened to the multi channel SACD part of this a couple of weeks ago on my Oppo 95. I didn't hear any tape hiss, the transfer quality sounds very good to me.

 

[fredblue]

I listened to the multi channel SACD part of this a couple of weeks ago on my Oppo 95. I didn't hear any tape hiss, the transfer quality sounds very good to me.

there is hiss but to me its not out of proportion. funnily enough, i meant to mention a while back but forgot to post here about it, i have a CD-4 Japanese LP of "Deodato 2" in decent nick and when you drop the needle the run in groove which is fairly long has an inky black background, then tape hiss kicks in (its not CD-4 noise, i know only too well what that sounds like! ) and then the music starts.

this led me to suspect the hiss
may be baked into the mix rather than the result of any mastering.. and that maybe DV potentially decided rather than obliterate the hiss with NR they left it in maybe

ah i dunno, i still love the SACD and play it loads, to me its still a "10".

 

[NYMo]

Yes, it is baked into the mix but it is the surround channels where the problems lie.
ok...there is tape hiss from the very start of the album...I'm not so worried about that. What I was worried about was that when the surround left horns come in, there is a lead up of around 4 seconds of tape hiss ( by memory..my Oppo 95 won't play 4 channel any more, only 2 channel or 5 !)where the tape hiss comes in before the actual horn audio starts. This is what should have been edited but wasn't.
It would have only taken a few seconds to truncate it and then put a very fast envelope in the 100 milliseconds before the horn lines are actually audible.
Most probably a small thing for most listeners, but as a former masterer, these things stand out like dog balls !
YMMV