DIGITAL Futzing with the HARVEST DVD-Audio

[Wagonmaster_91]

I am a bit late to this discussion but wanted to comment about the LFE channel having some things that shouldn't be there. From the sample Jon posted, it sounds to me like it is the bass guitar going DR through the board and the kick drum mic getting leakage from everything around it. They were playing 'as a band' and not trying to get total isolation of sounds.
Now I gotta get my copy of the DVD-A out and do the switch. Thanks!

 

[LuvMyQuad]

From the sample Jon posted, it sounds to me like it is the bass guitar going DR through the board and the kick drum mic getting leakage from everything around it. They were playing 'as a band' and not trying to get total isolation of sounds.

I believe it was recorded in real time in a barn. Maybe there are some overdubs. But your assessment of the same as mine on the sound.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

I might need to write up a different process than Adam in Audacity to suit the way I do it; but to get the same results. I believe it's due to the fact Adam uses an Apple version instead of Windows and also that was four years ago. The terminology on some of that may have changed and I just usually label the channel then grab it and move it, instead of all that mapping business later.

 

[scooob]

Out of curiosity, I just checked in Quicken and found that I bought it on January 11, 2003 at Best Buy, along with the following: R.E.M. - Automatic For The People, Yes - Fragile, Queen - Night At The Opera, Steely Dan - Two Against Nature, The Police - Every Breath You Take - The Classics, and Lyle Lovett - Joshua Judges Ruth. Most of those cost me $17.99 each plus tax; if only such a selection were available at that price these days!

Finally, and apologies for going more off-topic, but I couldn't find this mentioned from a QQ search I did: has anyone else found that the front and rear channels are reversed on the DVD-V of Zappa's Baby Snakes movie?

 

[scooob]

I went back and reread this thread, and thanks to Jim the Oldbie's post, I was able to create a corrected version of Harvest surround on a USB flash drive that I can play on my OPPO BDP-95. It sounds so much better!

I had used the trial version of DVD Audio Extractor a few times years ago to rip stereo mixes from DVD-A discs for my computer and iPhone, but I went ahead and plunked down the $38.50 for a lifetime license today, and pulled the surround tracks from my Harvest disc. Then per Jim and others' instructions, I used Audacity to remap the front and rear channels for tracks 1-4, 6 & 7, exported the changed versions to FLAC files, and bam, they play fine on the OPPO from the flash drive. Thanks to all who left breadcrumbs from their journey to pull this off!

Truthfully, I still find it a bit of a strange surround mix. Vocals and drums are panned hard left on several songs, and it just sounds a little off balance. Maybe Neil told Elliot that he wanted it to sound like it did when recording it in his barn, or listening from the rowboat on his lake! But in any case, I'm not complaining -- after having the disc for the better part of two decades, to be able to hear it without the authoring errors is sweet indeed.

 

[godathunder]

Ive just tried the out the front/rear swap with heart of gold.

Night and day improvement. Its like everything suddenly snaps into focus.

100% preference for the modified version in a blind ab test.

Ill modify the other tracks later, Im intrigued to hear the results as Iits an album that never felt particularly satisfying in surround

 

[ssully]

Apparently the mix has been corrected/redone for Atmos

The E1DA Cosmos Stack: ADCiso and 2 APUs. An example of bad multichannel - Neil Young's 'Harvest' on DVD-A (2002), fixed in new Atmos mix.​

 

[svtmike]

Just popping in to say thank you. I fixed this mix for listening in my A4, where I cannot turn the seat around! It now just sounds right.

 

[svtmike]

Well, after ALL THESE YEARS, I finally ripped this DVD-A to PC, and sure enough it's plain as freakin' day, the fronts and rears are swapped on tracks 1,2,3,4,6 and 7, as originally reported by QQ member 'drpaulng' back in May of 2007. So I'm a little slow.

That's not the only issue with this mix. The LFE isn't really an LFE, it's a real audio channel with full frequency information in it. In fact, if you pull up the LFE track on it's own and listen to it on a normal full range speaker (paste it into a stereo wav file and listen to it), you can hear Neil singing the lead SOLO!! Yes, this is the only place in all of the channels where Neil is without the background or harmony vocals. It's not "right up front" in the mix, but it's there.

So how much music info is lost by having it in the LFE channel? Well, probably not a lot, because a lot of it is drums which are also in the rears, but man, whoever mixed this thing must have been really spaced out.

If this was the first 5.1 disc that I ever ripped, I'd probably have to resort to many alcoholic beverages to sort it out.

This is such an iconic album it's a shame that this mix is such a mess. Not sure how people like Cai rated it so high, but maybe the joy of having an album of this heritage appear as a DVD-A helped in the decision.

HARVEST is a very very very very bizarre DVD-A, but what do we expect from Neil Young? The answer, as always, is expect NOTHING from Neil. Because Neil marches to his own drummer, which is probably why we all like the guy.

One more thing, IMHO, even with the channels swapped out to be proper, it's still not that great of a surround mix! :music
My original vote of '7' is still about right.

I'm going to take a look at this to see if moving the high frequency stuff from the LFE to the C channel, and making the LFE just the low frequency content helps the sound. Will probably take a couple of days to make the changes in Audacity and listen in the car.