Gentle Giant's "Free Hand" and "In'terview" coming on DVD audio in february..

LizardKing · Nov 14, 2012

G E said:
Octopus is available as SACD now from Japan, part of the SHM-SACD series. It is incredible. Great 3d soundstage.
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=UIGY-9057

The Octopus SACD is stereo only, personally I found the sound quality on the SACD very disappointing - my old played to death vinyl and 320K MP3 files :yikes sound better.

Plan9 · Nov 14, 2012

Wow, I have to disagree there. The SHM-SACD is the best I have heard this album sound. Better than any CD issue IMO. I haven't compared it with a 1st UK pressing though.

blue.monk · Nov 15, 2012

LizardKing said:
The Octopus SACD is stereo only, personally I found the sound quality on the SACD very disappointing - my old played to death vinyl and 320K MP3 files :yikes sound better.

Hmm, I love the SACD. It's by far the best version I've heard.

Bleedink · Apr 2, 2013

steelydave said:
Well I got Free Hand in the mail today (In'terview should be with me tomorrow) and I think the surround mix has been botched at some point. I think the front and rear channels have been reversed on one side, so lead vocals/bass guitar/drums come from the front left and rear right. I swapped the cables on my player so that this was rectified and everything sounds way more cohesive - I will do some more listening to this and maybe rip it to my hard drive at some point to verify. Perhaps someone else with this disc could let me know if they're having the same issues.

The good news is the mix is in excellent fidelity and very very active. Exactly what you'd want from a circa 1975 quad mix!

I noticed the same thing and it is very distracting. Everything vocal wise seems to come from one side. It seems like something was really screwed up in the mix. I keep trying to enjoy it cuz it's great music but darn if I can get past the weird way they did the vocals on this. It's been a while since I listened to it and I thought I was the only one who noticed and it's hard to believe someone didn't you know actually listen to it before they put it out. I think there were some other weird things I noticed like instruments tending toward weird placements (things that shouldn't be in the rears are). I have heard lots of quad mixes that sound great even without 4 equal speakers with the right delays and such. This was not one. Someone should have already fixed it.