Also, the Charles Gerhardt (plus David Raksin) releases from the RCA classic film music series are some of the best orchestral -- and arguably best film music -- albums ever released in quad. The players actually sat around the centrally placed microphones for recording, so the sound is discrete and enveloping. And the performances are universally praised. They were produced by George Korngold, son of influential composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
If you're into film music at all, these are essential purchases and highly recommended. They're all part of the sale.
I wish modern-day "multichannel" orchestral recordings sounded as good as these.
I agree - the only reason I didn't mention any of these is that it's sort of outside of my area of expertise and I wanted to focus on the handful that I could authoritatively vouch for. I'm glad to see other people talking about them. It's a really neat experience to hear music you've only ever heard previously in (extremely frequency response limited) mono in glorious high fidelity surround. I also really love the
Star Wars/Close Encounters disc that Mike himself mixed a year or so ago; it blows away any of the actual surround mixes of this music that you'll find in the digital releases of these films or the recent Atmos streaming mixes of the Star Wars soundtracks.
Also for you Quad collectors out there-
I just noticed that -Track number:
7. The Thing from Another World – Suite (Tiomkin)*
Prelude – The Flying Saucer under the Ice – Melting Sequence – The Hand – Plasma I – Plasma II – The Growing Plants – The Thing on the Walkway – Electrocution
Is:
*Previously unreleased in quadraphonic sound
These bonus tracks come from a compilation album called The Spectacular World of Classic Film Scores (
RL 42005) released in 1977. The first side of the album was a kind of "greatest hits" of all the Gehardt/NPO soundtrack albums (all done by D-V) but side 2 is all previously unreleased music that I guess was left off of these albums because of time constraints. Of the five tracks on side 2, only one hasn't appeared as a bonus track in surround on a D-V release (George Dunning 'Salome - Dance of the Seven Veils) and that's only because there's no quad 'parent album' to attach it to. The other four tracks are on the Rosza, Waxman, Tiomkin and Herrman D-V SACDs, all of which are available as part of this sale along with the other Gerhardt/NPO quad SACDs which don't have bonus tracks.
Is it possible that the 1973 self titled The Three Degrees album got a quad mix back in the day? Now, that would be something! Gamble & Huff, MFSB and Sigma Sound all cooking at maximum overdrive!
I interrogated Sigma Sound's chief quad engineer Arthur Stoppe about the possibility of any unreleased PIR quad mixes and sadly the answer is 99.9% likelihood that no other unreleased mixes exist. Because Sigma was an independent studio not owned by PIR (or their distributor, CBS) any mixes they did would've been billed at the usual (expensive) hourly rate. As a result, they were somewhat conservative in terms of which artists had their albums remixed in quad, and if they did commission a mix, they definitely released it to recoup their costs. As a result, while the O'Jays (their biggest act) had all their quad era albums done, other acts had some done but not others (Billy Paul, MFSB, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes) and then a lot of their lesser-selling acts had no quad mixes at all, including The Three Degrees, The Intruders, Archie Bell & The Drells, and others.
