Elliott Scheiner 5.1 Mixes

[0tto]

ES is more careful about public comments these days.

exactly my thought as well.
and not just ES. older generation typically had plenty of time to become overly cautious or extremely snobby.
QQ is a lone webwide community with so much dedication to old and new forms of surround and i'm pretty
sure albeit these, involved in surround production, not being here registered, at least from time to time checks us out

 

[fredblue]

Yes, if he can get those pre-Gaucho Steely Dan albums to us in 5.1, he need never speak a word in public. I heard they were surround mixed by him almost a decade ago. Does anyone know the true reason why they haven't been released? Given the group's notoriously infuriating perfectionism in the studio, you might assume they are the block, but it all seems very odd.

From what I've read over the years, ES definitely completed remixing "Pretzel Logic" into 5.1, with "The Royal Scam" next on the slate.

There was an interview (which agonisingly I still can't find online, you'll just have to take my word for it.. or not!) in which it was revealed the multi's for some of the songs on the "Can't Buy A Thrill" and "Countdown To Ecstasy" albums were missing, in addition to the by then already disseminated info (so the interview in question was after the 99-00 remasters) about "Aja" missing multi's for "Black Cow" and the title track.

Quite what happened after that interview (the rest of the albums in the SD catalogue for which all the multi's could be located got remixed into 5.1 by ES, or those missing multi's were eventually located and the whole lot got remixed, etc) who can say!? Only ES I guess.. and he's not talking!

Deja vu, or wot!? I've posted as much a couple of times on here before about all this, the last time being only the other day!

 

[fredblue]

You have to read the notes with gaucho and see what a mess it was trying to get that out-too much politics, who has rights to what and who owns what, (record company's). If not for that I'm sure we would see more.

IIR all this correctly, that'd be re: stuff like their contract with ABC, etc., where ABC asserted they were owed one more album by SD. SD's new label MCA (who financed the "Gaucho" sessions) begged to differ.. Walter broke his leg in an accident (hit by a car), his girlfriend of the time suffered an overdose, the master tape of "The Special Arrangement" got wiped by an intern in the studio (!!) and DF was so heartbroken he couldn't bring himself to re-record it.. the list of disasters and setbacks and such that occurred during the making of "Gaucho" is endless, its a miracle the album ever got finished at all..!!

 

[fredblue]

For anyone curious to get a glimpse of what Steely Dan's "The Second Arrangement" might have been like, had it survived the wiping and made it onto the "Gaucho" album...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41AHMIX72iI&sns=em

 

[jojos95159]

http://www.soundandvision.com/content/ht-talks-elliot-scheiner-steely-dan-dvd-audio-update

I think this is the article you were referring to! I'd love to hear these mixes as well!
J

 

[ProgRules]

Any or all of the six pre-Gaucho Steely Dan albums would make me ecstatic.

Unfortunately, no countdown available...

 

[Caspersozza]

Given their well-documented obsession with studio perfection, it seems particularly ironic that Steely Dan multis would be wiped or go missing. In fact it beggars belief. This is a band that sometimes did 400 mixes of a track before they were satisfied. Maybe that was the problem, come to think of it. There were so many master tapes that somewhere along the line the technicians got confused or just plain fed up. Hmmmm. I'm not convinced by that thought. There are plenty of acts you would readily accept may have been careless with their recorded legacy, but not Steely Dan.

 

[fredblue]

Given their well-documented obsession with studio perfection, it seems particularly ironic that Steely Dan multis would be wiped or go missing. In fact it beggars belief. This is a band that sometimes did 400 mixes of a track before they were satisfied. Maybe that was the problem, come to think of it. There were so many master tapes that somewhere along the line the technicians got confused or just plain fed up. Hmmmm. I'm not convinced by that thought. There are plenty of acts you would readily accept may have been careless with their recorded legacy, but not Steely Dan.

it does beggar belief.. @: afaik the majority of (if not all) the masters were under the record companies' "watch".. a fair few MCA (now Universal) artists (and their subsidiaries/label acquisitions; ABC, Command, etc) have missing masters as a fair few apparently went walkies decades ago and ended up in the hands of private collectors, etc (Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Who, Steely Dan, Four Tops when they left Motown, etc. among those affected iirc., I've mentioned it here before & again v.recently).. by the time remixes had become "the thing" it was too late (and more recently people like DTS, during the Aja 5.1 pre-planning) discovered the tapes had gone bye-bye's..

there's threads/info etc about it all online (can't find anything at minute unfortunately but they're out there if you hunt around).

 

[Caspersozza]

12 Must Listen ES mixes.. crikey! That's tough, there's so many obvious tracks that were big hits or well-known (well-worn even).. Here goes!

12.) "Godwhacker" (Everything Must Go - Steely Dan - DVDA),
11.) "The Very Thought Of You" Duet w/Linda Ronstadt (Nature Boy: The Standards Album - Aaron Neville - SACD/DVDA),
10.) "Time Out Of Mind" (Gaucho - Steely Dan - DTS/SACD/DVDA),
9.) "Cornwall Blank" (Homecoming - America - DVDA),
8.) "Without You" (The Captain And Me - The Doobie Brothers - SACD/DVDA),
7.) "Try And Love Again" (Hotel California - Eagles - SACD/DVDA),
6.) "Florida Room" (Kamakiriad - Donald Fagen - DVDA),
5.) "Waiting For Your Love" (IV - Toto - SACD),
4.) "Miss Riddle" (Dig - Boz Scaggs - DVDA),
3.) "Take Me There" (Winelight - Grover Washington Jr. - DVDA),
2.) "New Frontier" (The Nightfly - Donald Fagen - SACD/DVDA),
1.) "You're My Best Friend" (A Night At The Opera - Queen - DVDA).

Love the chart, Fred. Scheiner's work on America's Homecoming is particularly sparkling, an example of how well hi-res surround works with slightly less busy music. Have you listened recently to track 8 on that album, their cover of John Martyn's Head And Heart? I would suggest that it is the most brilliant example of ES's craft on the album, a constantly unfolding wonder of surround mixing.

 

[fredblue]

Love the chart, Fred. Scheiner's work on America's Homecoming is particularly sparkling, an example of how well hi-res surround works with slightly less busy music. Have you listened recently to track 8 on that album, their cover of John Martyn's Head And Heart? I would suggest that it is the most brilliant example of ES's craft on the album, a constantly unfolding wonder of surround mixing.

oh yes! I know the Homecoming DVD-A inside out! There's not a duff mix on it (though I could say that about at least 10 ES surround mixes, really the guy is supremely talented).. Head and Heart is very beautiful indeed, as you say. still my fave combination of music & mix on the disc is Cornwall B (the album's only real rock out kick ass number). the mix, rather like the music itself, is as much about what doesn't happen as does! economical and nicely thought through. love it!

 

[gloco]

Following some R&D at home around getting away from disc based surround I've been transferring my archive to multichannel FLAC. After recently acquiring the lousy Layla box set just for the ES mix as well as the Moondance set I've prioritised ES material. Currently listening to the Zoom disc - not that I dislike the video performance, but isolating the ES DTS mix without picture allows for more focus on the surround production and I have to say I love it more!

I'd like to add to this thread with a challenge for the ES fans - playlist me 12 must listen ES mixes! I've got everything bar Boz Scaggs (I can't track one down sadly) ready and waiting. The possibilities...

I'm really curious here...how do you playback those multi-channel Flacs?

 

[skindzier]

G - not to answer for inquad, but let me tell you what I do... I have a PC that I had custom built for music. It is a part of my living room setup. I have good sound card with 5.1 rca analog jacks out. On the PC I run JRiver Media Center which is a great interface. It allows you to organize your tracks like iTunes and has a great queue on the fly feature. JRiver will play pretty much any file at its native bit rate. When I have friends over we often play "pass the remote" with everybody queuing up a few tracks while we drink, play cards, whatever. With a good sound card you can approach the quality of the DACs on some of the higher-end equipment and have the convenience of not having to get up to change discs and make playlists or make up a queue as you go. There are USB DACs that you can shell out thousands for that are supposed to sound unbelievable. One cool thing with ripping to flac is that you can get a sound editor app like Audacity and do some minor edits as you see fit (for example on something like Dark Side or Wish You Were Here where songs flow into each other you can apply a fade to create a "single" version of the song that works much better if you are throwing random songs into a queue. I love it and would never go back to listening to physical media.

 

[bmoura]

I'm really curious here...how do you playback those multi-channel Flacs?

If you have an Oppo 103 or 105 Blu-Ray Disc player, it can handle the Multichannel FLAC files. Ditto for most DACs.

 

[The Bright Side]

I'm really curious here...how do you playback those multi-channel Flacs?

In my experience, any player will do. I use VLC Media Player or Totem under Ubuntu. I use pavucontrol to regulate the volume of each channel, so depending on where I'm sitting in my room, I can easily turn the rear channels up or down. When I'm in Windows, I use Foobar2000 or Winamp for playback.

As for connections, I run an HDMI cable from my Nvidia Geforce GTX 680 graphics card to my Yamaha RX-V661 receiver. Great sound to my ears, but probably not the highest end of high end audiophile setups.

 

[Blrac]

How do you record in multi channel to the computer? Forgive my ignorance but I have my computer hooked up to my receiver via hdmi and would love to set this up! I can run an hdmi cable from my blu ray player (which plays my sacd and dvd audio) to my computer to record that way? I assume I need an audio card that allows this and software that will record it in mc flac? Suggestions on any or all of this would be appreciated.

 

[skindzier]

Pretty sure you'll need a blu ray drive on the PC. I don't know of a way to make a PC talk directly to an actual blu ray player - somebody correct me if I'm wrong! You can get a usb external blu ray drive for less than $100. I use these PC tools to extract and play multichannel flac files:
1.) DVDFab Passkey ($75-$100) depending on their current "coupon" on the website) - Decrypts DVDs/Blu Rays. There are other free/cheaper options for decrypting but they can be a bit convoluted.
2.) DVD Audio Extractor ($40)- This is the tool that actually pulls the data off a DVD/Blu Ray & creates the flac files (Note: It can't convert DTS-HD directly to full resolution files yet, though they say it is coming - there are ways around that though)
3.) JRiver Media Center ($50) - for playback. (There are lots of free options as well - I just happen to really like the JRiver interface and options)

If you have an HDMI connection on your PC, you should be able to use it for audio to your receiver (if it also has HDMI). However, you'd probably want to eventually look at a sound card with multichannel analog out. computeraudiophile.com is a great site for figuring PC-related audio out. I got most of my info from there while I was learning the ropes.

 

[The Bright Side]

Hey guys, I second skindzier's recommendation for Computer Application Studio's "DVD Audio Extractor".

http://www.dvdae.com/download

It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac and I have been using it on Linux to extract audio from DVD-A as well as DVD-V. To any format you like. If you want, you can extract AC3 and DTS straight to .ac3 and .dts files, too. It's never failed me, and it's in active development, with new versions coming regularly. I can't speak for the Blu Ray support, since I don't have a Blu Ray drive, but all other support is really excellent.

As I said, for playback... VLC is really the best option in my opinion. Doesn't cost a cent and is a swiss army knife.

 

[Blrac]

Ok to make sure I understand corectly--buy external blu ray drive (obviously one that plays dvd a) so I can use the software you mentioned. Now several things: first what about sacd? Iirc there isnt software that will do the dsd mc copying? second what is the difference/necessity of decryption vs. extraction? next I assume I need software to do the mc playback, any I prefer and finally why do you suggest rca analog cables vs hdmi output to receiver? I woud think hdmi has better quality digtal sound because I sold my old Oppo that had them and got the Pioneer 62 FD to use hdmi so I could hook it up to my receiver without the rca inputs. I typically listen in direct mode with no processing to music. Thanks for the advice so far and I hope we havent hijacked this thread, if so please let me know the best place to continue this coversation.

 

[Blrac]

I just added my equipment, the cheap stuff that I currently own, to my profile. Don't laugh, it sounds amazing to my ears which admittedly don't hear like they used to. I figured this may help in addressing my questions so you can see what I am using and how to make it sound the best it can.

 

[0tto]

first what about sacd? Iirc there isnt software that will do the dsd mc copying? second what is the difference/necessity of decryption vs. extraction?

there are no way to do digital rip off SACD on computer. the computer wouldn't see SACD at all. you may do analog recording over 6 analog interface of soundcard
from hardware player but that's won't be identical to original. about 2 years ago was developed hack for Sony PS3. if you have one, you can use it to do digital copy
off SACDs to HDD.
about 2007 Sony introduced some laptops with drives, able to read SACD but then quickly abandoned this idea.


encryption been used to protect data on disks from being copied. thus "vs" doesn't apply in this case. if disc is encrypted it need to be decrypted for extraction of the content.