Frank Zappa Waka/Wazoo Deluxe 4CD + Blu-Ray 5.1 and Atmos!!!!

[ronleepdx]

I love being able to click through the three different mixes on the Blu-ray, but the authoring is a drag, with the menu music coming in right after the album ends. Yuck. I pulled all the tracks off and dumped 'em on the computer. If you own a copy of this, and would like a hand with that, PM me.

 

[Which_One_Is_Pink]

Great googly moogly! Mr. Zappa has finally ( shipped on Dec. 18th, must have been shipped via pony express ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) arrived at my house today to play some tunes HURRAH!

 

[Nethersage]

Great googly moogly! Mr. Zappa has finally ( shipped on Dec. 18th, must have been shipped via pony express ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) arrived at my house today to play some tunes HURRAH!

At least you havr been warned about the dynamic level differences between the 2-channel stereo and the surround mixes on the Blu-ray, so can protect your speakers.

 

[DuncanS]

Great googly moogly! Mr. Zappa has finally ( shipped on Dec. 18th, must have been shipped via pony express ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) arrived at my house today to play some tunes HURRAH!

I think mine must be somewhere on my side of the pond by now, probably stuck in UK Customs! Though why it went from NJ to Illinois when there are more airports closer is beyond me it must have left via O'Hare

 

[Which_One_Is_Pink]

I think mine must be somewhere on my side of the pond by now, probably stuck in UK Customs! Though why it went from NJ to Illinois when there are more airports closer is beyond me it must have left via O'Hare
View attachment 87019

Well mine started in La Vergne Tennessee which is approximately a 3 hour drive to my house in northern Alabama! At least yours had to go across a pond and I ain't got no customs excuse.

 

[Progfiend]

I think mine must be somewhere on my side of the pond by now, probably stuck in UK Customs! Though why it went from NJ to Illinois when there are more airports closer is beyond me it must have left via O'Hare
View attachment 87019

My tracking info is almost identical, except it departed the processing center on the 31! I can see the US from my living room window, I just can't see the package...LOL!

 

[DuncanS]

My tracking info is almost identical, except it departed the processing center on the 31! I can see the US from my living room window, I just can't see the package...LOL!

A few minutes ago I was on a conference call, the door bell rang, so when the call ended I went to the door and there in the porch was my package with the Zappa discs!
I paid about 40% more (for postage & tax) than I needed to, as it turns out , I was afraid it wouldn't be released on this side of the pond!

 

[NYMo]

I used to master albums in the 90s and Noughties ( nothing fancy) but there are certain things we do to ensure that the product comes out as well as it can.

1) We use a reference track or tracks that we audibly know very well and use that as an indicator as to how our mastering is going.
Ie....if I'm doing a jazz mastering, I will have,say, a Steely Dan track as the ref track ( if the stuff I'm mastering is similar in sound to them)
This does two things.....it lets me ascertain tonally if I am getting near to the the ref track ( I KNOW Steely Dan sounds great so on my personal monitors, if my mastering approaches the ref track, I know I'll be doing ok.
By analysing the VOLUME LEVEL, I know that my final mastered volume level will be great if I can get it to the level of the Steely ref track.
( Sometimes that's pretty hard to do with commercial CD's)
What we have here with these Zappa releases is problematic....I have read various comments here about the levels and even one guy said they should remaster it again ...I AGREE...there is a problem with this mastering job.
There is nothing wrong with the sounds of the mix...the albums sound great...but the LEVELS !!!
Not only are they at least 6db too low on Waka/Jawaka but they are EVEN WORSE on the Grand Wazoo !! ( which shocked me as I listened to Waka first).
It is obvious that when these were mixed they didn't use a ref track and I surmise they didn't play the album at substantial volume after it had been mixed.

2) The job of the mastering guy, in this instance, if you have two albums to master, is make sure THE ALBUMS ARE ROUGHLY THE SAME LEVEL....that's not rocket science !! That's just how it's done.
Obviously this was never done ...at the least they should have put the two final mastered files into the same Pro Tools arrangement ( with an accompanying appropriate Zappa ref track)
They then would have noticed that Grand was much lower level than Waka and fixed that.
The client...ie us final purchasers, shouldn't have to be turning the volume up and down between the two albums.
( I use a 3 preamp/3 amp analog setup Front LR, centre and rear LR so it's more of a pain for me than most)

3) The people that then authored the Blu-ray should have said something to the masterers when he put the Record Company Logo and cinema music that was at least 6db LOUDER THAN THE AUDIO FILES !!

All in all, a botched job in my estimation...and that doesn't even take into consideration if AHMET ZAPPA GAVE THE FINAL APPROVAL !!
( I know they sold the rights to UMG or whoever...so I don't know if he actually got to hear it before it got pressed) .but to anyone actually using it ..ie us, it's a mess...fortunately the music is top notch. For me the musical highlight on Waka is the Sneaky Pete Kleinow pedal steel solo on One Shot Deal !
BTW If anyone out there is doing there own mastering, don't forget your REF TRACK !
PS I also got Donald Fagen The Nightfly in the post today as well and played it straight after the two Zappa albums...talk about bloody chalk and cheese !

 

[perzon57]

I used to master albums in the 90s and Noughties ( nothing fancy) but there are certain things we do to ensure that the product comes out as well as it can.

1) We use a reference track or tracks that we audibly know very well and use that as an indicator as to how our mastering is going.
Ie....if I'm doing a jazz mastering, I will have,say, a Steely Dan track as the ref track ( if the stuff I'm mastering is similar in sound to them)
This does two things.....it lets me ascertain tonally if I am getting near to the the ref track ( I KNOW Steely Dan sounds great so on my personal monitors, if my mastering approaches the ref track, I know I'll be doing ok.
By analysing the VOLUME LEVEL, I know that my final mastered volume level will be great if I can get it to the level of the Steely ref track.
( Sometimes that's pretty hard to do with commercial CD's)
What we have here with these Zappa releases is problematic....I have read various comments here about the levels and even one guy said they should remaster it again ...I AGREE...there is a problem with this mastering job.
There is nothing wrong with the sounds of the mix...the albums sound great...but the LEVELS !!!
Not only are they at least 6db too low on Waka/Jawaka but they are EVEN WORSE on the Grand Wazoo !! ( which shocked me as I listened to Waka first).
It is obvious that when these were mixed they didn't use a ref track and I surmise they didn't play the album at substantial volume after it had been mixed.

2) The job of the mastering guy, in this instance, if you have two albums to master, is make sure THE ALBUMS ARE ROUGHLY THE SAME LEVEL....that's not rocket science !! That's just how it's done.
Obviously this was never done ...at the least they should have put the two final mastered files into the same Pro Tools arrangement ( with an accompanying appropriate Zappa ref track)
They then would have noticed that Grand was much lower level than Waka and fixed that.
The client...ie us final purchasers, shouldn't have to be turning the volume up and down between the two albums.
( I use a 3 preamp/3 amp analog setup Front LR, centre and rear LR so it's more of a pain for me than most)

3) The people that then authored the Blu-ray should have said something to the masterers when he put the Record Company Logo and cinema music that was at least 6db LOUDER THAN THE AUDIO FILES !!

All in all, a botched job in my estimation...and that doesn't even take into consideration if AHMET ZAPPA GAVE THE FINAL APPROVAL !!
( I know they sold the rights to UMG or whoever...so I don't know if he actually got to hear it before it got pressed) .but to anyone actually using it ..ie us, it's a mess...fortunately the music is top notch. For me the musical highlight on Waka is the Sneaky Pete Kleinow pedal steel solo on One Shot Deal !
BTW If anyone out there is doing there own mastering, don't forget your REF TRACK !
PS I also got Donald Fagen The Nightfly in the post today as well and played it straight after the two Zappa albums...talk about bloody chalk and cheese !

There are no volume differences on my disc bought here in Norway, and the general volume is maybe a little low but not by much compared to other discs I have. This is for the Atmos mix, I don't listen to the other mixes.

 

[NYMo]

There are no volume differences on my disc bought here in Norway, and the general volume is maybe a little low but not by much.

Not all ears are the same !
Edit My apologies, I may have been a bit hasty in the above comment.
I now find there is a European one made in Germany.
Do the problems only lie with the US one ( which I have) It was made in Mexico ??
Just change from Atmos ( or 5.1) to stereo to hear the extent of the problem.

 

[sjcorne]

The job of the mastering guy, in this instance, if you have two albums to master, is make sure THE ALBUMS ARE ROUGHLY THE SAME LEVEL....that's not rocket science !!

In this case, the volume error was out of the mastering engineer's control. After the 5.1 & Atmos mixes were mastered and given final approval, the masters (probably .WAV for the 5.1 and ADM for the Atmos) were converted to Dolby TrueHD by the Blu-Ray authoring team. Dolby TrueHD has a built in "dialogue normalization" setting that sort of acts like an automated volume control.

As I understand it, our processors at home (AVR, Blu-Ray player, etc) automatically lower the gain based on the difference between -31 and whatever the assigned dialnorm value is. Both albums should have been assigned a dialnorm value of -31, meaning that the overall level would be unaltered because 31 - 31 = 0. However, Waka/Jawaka was assigned a value of -26 causing the overall level of the mix to drop by 5 dB. The Grand Wazoo was assigned a value of -18, so the level drops by a whopping 13 dB. If you rip the 5.1 mixes to a digital file format like FLAC, the dialnorm can be bypassed. Unfortunately, there's no getting around this for the Atmos mixes because they have to stay in the encoded TrueHD format for all channels to be extracted.

 

[stachrech]

My tracking info is almost identical, except it departed the processing center on the 31! I can see the US from my living room window, I just can't see the package...LOL!

Mine came in yesterday from Importcds.Greetings from Surrey BC

 

[stachrech]

There are no volume differences on my disc bought here in Norway, and the general volume is maybe a little low but not by much compared to other discs I have. This is for the Atmos mix, I don't listen to the other mixes.

Same here - ATMOS only!

 

[himey]

Same here - ATMOS only!

"Same here" that you don't have any volume difference between the two Atmos mixes?
or "same here" you don't listen to the other mixes?

 

[paligap]

In this case, the volume error was out of the mastering engineer's control. After the 5.1 & Atmos mixes were mastered and given final approval, the masters (probably .WAV for the 5.1 and ADM for the Atmos) were converted to Dolby TrueHD by the Blu-Ray authoring team. Dolby TrueHD has a built in "dialogue normalization" setting that sort of acts like an automated volume control.

As I understand it, our processors at home (AVR, Blu-Ray player, etc) automatically lower the gain based on the difference between -31 and whatever the assigned dialnorm value is. Both albums should have been assigned a dialnorm value of -31, meaning that the overall level would be unaltered because 31 - 31 = 0. However, Waka/Jawaka was assigned a value of -26 causing the overall level of the mix to drop by 5 dB. The Grand Wazoo was assigned a value of -18, so the level drops by a whopping 13 dB. If you rip the 5.1 mixes to a digital file format like FLAC, the dialnorm can be bypassed. Unfortunately, there's no getting around this for the Atmos mixes because they have to stay in the encoded TrueHD format for all channels to be extracted.

Okay, so who assigns these dialnorm values? Whoever it was, it was a screw up. I've listened only to the Atmos mixes, and the difference between the two on my disc and my system is huge, not to mention the difference with the menu music.

 

[NYMo]

In this case, the volume error was out of the mastering engineer's control. After the 5.1 & Atmos mixes were mastered and given final approval, the masters (probably .WAV for the 5.1 and ADM for the Atmos) were converted to Dolby TrueHD by the Blu-Ray authoring team. Dolby TrueHD has a built in "dialogue normalization" setting that sort of acts like an automated volume control.

As I understand it, our processors at home (AVR, Blu-Ray player, etc) automatically lower the gain based on the difference between -31 and whatever the assigned dialnorm value is. Both albums should have been assigned a dialnorm value of -31, meaning that the overall level would be unaltered because 31 - 31 = 0. However, Waka/Jawaka was assigned a value of -26 causing the overall level of the mix to drop by 5 dB. The Grand Wazoo was assigned a value of -18, so the level drops by a whopping 13 dB. If you rip the 5.1 mixes to a digital file format like FLAC, the dialnorm can be bypassed. Unfortunately, there's no getting around this for the Atmos mixes because they have to stay in the encoded TrueHD format for all channels to be extracted.

That’s all solved then..... it was number 3.
My guesstimate db drops were pretty spot on since I never measured it !
Yes …it’s all in the ears

 

[The Rang]

Mine came in yesterday from Importcds.Greetings from Surrey BC

Excellent, there are a few of us in the area

 

[Progfiend]

Mine came in yesterday from Importcds.Greetings from Surrey BC

Hey neighbour! Lucky you, I am still waiting. Definitely never ordering from the Zappa store again. It’s weird, I never had any issues in the past with them.

 

[NYMo]

Thanks to SjCorne for shining the light.
If one switches between Atmos, Dolby HD 5.1 and stereo mix you'll soon see where the problems are.
In switching between my 5.1 ( which is my system) to Atmos, the bottom end is increased as well as the overall level ..but there is a funny phase thing that occurs by the downmix.
But switching to Stereo ..there lies the problem.
This problem level SHOULD have been picked before it went for pressing ( in Mexico)
This Blu-ray NEEDS TO BE RE-PRESSED !

 

[stachrech]

Excellent, there are a few of us in the area

Hey neighbour! Lucky you, I am still waiting. Definitely never ordering from the Zappa store again. It’s weird, I never had any issues in the past with them.

It took 3 weeks for me to get it.December snow fall caused delay in delivery of my 3 parcels from Importcds but all of them arrived already and is the time to enjoy it